Norbert Cunningham: Dental care plan in shambles

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With a bit more than a year left in its minority government mandate, the federal Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is sailing choppy waters forging ahead with two new healthcare plans they claim are intended to complement Canada’s medicare without being part of it, raising considerable objections and concerns in New Brunswick and elsewhere.

In New Brunswick, the Canadian Dental Care Plan will soon be taking applications from citizens – but for the time being only if one is a senior older than 65 – and the only real thing ‘free’ about it is getting registered.

It’s already looking a shambles and engendering familiar divisive rhetoric of partisans left-to-right, all of it self-serving for nearing re-election goals rather than public interests via improved healthcare systems. Add ever-present differences between provinces and the federal governments who endlessly squabble over their constitutional jurisdictions and how to handle overlapping interests. (The other big plan in the works is a half-baked ‘pharmacare’ prescription drug scheme that is a topic for another time).

Each will cost taxpayers billions, though estimates resemble shifting sands. And what the federal government says are ‘negotiations’ with provinces, look more like impasses. In New Brunswick, the Dental Society says most of its members just aren’t interested. It’s not mandatory. Imposition is a stink Prime Minister Trudeau desperately wishes to avoid. His lustre is seriously lacking after serial missteps, and mostly these hastily created plans are to keep the third-place New Democratic Party supporting him in power. The actual plans are afterthoughts being cobbled together as they go.

And already representatives of seniors are reporting few can find any dentists participating in New Brunswick. Why would they? Nobody asked them and they aren’t enthused about added bureaucracy and administration.

Pandering to and patronizing voters for electoral gain seldom makes good policy in the public interest.

Norbert Cunningham is a Brunswick News columnist and a retired editorial page editor of the Times & Transcript.