The National Assembly has come together to unanimously demand that Justin Trudeau’s government pay Quebec full compensation for its future dental insurance plan. And the Legault government has therefore agreed to devote part of these sums to expanding dental care coverage as well.
The motion of Quebec solidaire (QS), adopted without opposition on Thursday, stipulated that “health is an exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec”. The text proposed to support the Legault government’s request to obtain “unconditional financial compensation”. But the wording also asked the government “to commit to using transfers from the federal program to improve dental care coverage for Quebecers”.
The proposal was supported by 102 deputies, including 73 caquists. There were no abstentions.
However, on Wednesday, the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, had not advanced as to what his government would do with the 2.9 billion dollars. He estimates that he can recover them from the federal government under the “Canadian dental care plan”, provided for at a cost of $13 billion in Ottawa’s most recent budget.
A reinvestment, on its own terms
The Legault government always jealously defends its areas of expertise. Justin Trudeau had hinted that he might be willing to discuss compensation for the Quebec government, but he also warned that it should be used to provide dental insurance as generous in Quebec as elsewhere in Canada.
The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) thus had a passage of the QS motion withdrawn. The latter initially proposed to ask the Legault government to reserve “all transfers” to expand dental insurance in Quebec.
Currently, Quebec covers dental care for children under 10 years of age. The Trudeau government has been reimbursing dental care for children under 12 since last year.
In his 2023 budget, tabled Tuesday in Ottawa, Mr. Trudeau pledged to create a “Canadian dental care plan” that will extend, by the end of the year, this coverage to minors, the elderly as well as to those living with a disability who do not have private insurance. The plan will then be available to all Canadians with an annual family income of less than $90,000 by 2025.
Mr. Trudeau insisted Wednesday on the fact that there was no chicanery on the horizon in this file. The National Assembly has agreed to send him the unanimous motion adopted on Thursday.
The federal Minister of Health, Jean-Yves Duclos, chose to salute that Quebec sent the message with this motion, “that everywhere in the country, we believe in the importance of dental care which is essential for overall health” .
The deputy in solidarity and author of the motion, Vincent Marissal, was delighted that the CAQ had undertaken to improve the coverage of dental care, the left-wing party proposing, for its part, a universal plan for years. “We are going to monitor the file closely to ensure that the CAQ leads this battle against Ottawa to bring us back the money we need to invest in dental care,” reacted Mr. Marissal in a press release.