Madam Speaker, I will give a very honest answer. Strangely enough, no one talks to me about dental care in my riding.
As many people know, children in Quebec have some coverage. I know the Quebec government has extended coverage to include some people who need surgery but cannot have it because they need dental care before they have their surgery, so it has extended its coverage. The Quebec government made that decision without waiting for Ottawa to decide what it was going to do.
Quite honestly, people are not talking to me about that. Seniors want to talk about the loss of their purchasing power, about having to make difficult choices between groceries, care, rent and leisure activities. They tell me they are feeling so squeezed financially that they have no room to manoeuvre after working their entire lives.
Many seniors who are now 65 or 70 years old do not have a pension plan, even though they worked hard. I am thinking of people who worked as restaurant waitresses, or people who worked hard physically, in factories, for example, and did not have access to a collective agreement that guaranteed a pension plan.
Today these people are worried and do not understand why the government did not think of them when drafting Bill C‑47.