Senator Omidvar: Always.

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I give notice that, at the next sitting of the Senate, I will move:

That, notwithstanding the order of the Senate adopted on Thursday, April 28, 2022, the date for the final report of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology in relation to its study on the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention be extended from December 16, 2022, to February 28, 2023.

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: My question is for Senator Gold, the Government Representative in the Senate. Senator Gold, last week Statistics Canada released a report that noted that more than 8.3 million people, roughly 23% of our population in Canada, is today either a landed immigrant or were at some point. Most of them, we know, will go on to become citizens.

Today, we learned that the government has a new target for immigration over the next three years: By the year 2025, we will be bringing in 500,000 immigrants per year. I think this is a good thing. Immigration done well benefits us all.

But the really encouraging thing, Senator Gold, in all of this is that immigrants are no longer simply choosing “MTV” — Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver — but going to other places. The Maritimes is a big winner. Wonderful. However, it does not appear that the government is matching the increase in immigration with an increase in settlement funding.

In Nova Scotia, for example, where the increase is significant, the number of immigrants between 2018 and 2021 increased by 51%. Congratulations, Nova Scotia. But the funding for their primary settlement agency, Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia, or ISANS, increased only by 7%. The agency reported to The Globe and Mail that they were having significant challenges keeping up with the pace of demand.

Can you tell us, Senator Gold, if the government is planning to — in a parallel — increase the funding for settlement agencies in Nova Scotia and, indeed, across Canada to keep pace with the increase in immigration?

Senator Omidvar: Thank you, Senator Gold, for that fulsome answer. I’m glad to have given you advance notice of it.

I do have an area of concern, though. In the next three years, the government is planning to increase immigration in almost every category, but by the year 2025, its target for refugees will decrease by roughly 2,600 or more.

Given all the turmoil in the world, given the 100 million displaced people in the world, our own pride in being a country of refuge, Senator Gold, are we turning our back on our own brand?

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on Bill C-31, an act respecting cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing. I support this bill in principle, and today I will focus my remarks on the dental benefit portion of the bill.

I wish to congratulate my colleagues, Senator Yussuff and Senator Seidman, for their excellent speeches. For my part, all this talk about dentists and kids takes me back to my own childhood of being dragged to a dentist. I was very traumatized. I have a vague memory of a lot of persuasion being at play. I think hard candy was involved, but I have my own teeth today, all of them. I’m very grateful that my parents had the means to insist on this essential care. It’s not the same for all Canadians. I speak from a bit of first-hand experience.

In 2016, just eight years ago, a Syrian refugee family with eight children under the age of 15 landed in Toronto. As their sponsor, the first three months were completely hectic for them and for us. We soon discovered a challenge we had not prepared for: the oral health of the eight children. Their teeth were in terrible shape. They were rotten, frankly, because apparently there were rivers of hard candy running through the camps, as opposed to healthy food.

Even to our untrained eyes, we could see there was a problem. However, although the federal government picks up the costs of health care for refugees in the first year of arrival, this coverage does not extend to routine dental care, only to emergency dental care. In other words, the family would have needed to wait for a dental emergency to get the care they needed or until they qualified for the Healthy Smiles program, which was a year.

Left up to our own resources, the sponsoring team had to dig into our pockets, and we relied on the good will of many volunteer dentists.

Oral health for all children, as we have heard today, is very important. Let me quote some further facts for you.

According to the 2010 Canadian Health Measures Survey, well over 50% of 6 to 19 year olds have or had at least one cavity and have, on average, 2.5 teeth affected by tooth decay. Bad oral health is the most common chronic disease in children, five times more prevalent than asthma.

Poor oral health also increases gum disease, and has been linked to cancer — as Senator Yussuff has pointed out — Alzheimer’s, diabetes and heart disease. A study has shown that:

Across OECD countries . . . 5% of total health expenditures originate from treatment of oral diseases. Direct treatment costs due to dental diseases worldwide have been estimated at US$298 billion yearly, corresponding to an average of 4.6% of global health expenditure. . . .

Having good oral health is good for the kids. It’s good for our health care system. It’s certainly good for the economy.

Colleagues, I know that during questions and debate today, we have talked about concerns that this bill moves into provincial jurisdiction. We know that provinces and territories in Canada have pre-existing dental care programs for children. However, according to the Canadian Dental Association:

While several of these programs have a solid infrastructure in place, others are currently underfunded and, as a result, do not always respond to the individual oral health needs of pediatric patients.

They noted that P.E.I. does oral health fairly well, whereas the outcomes don’t seem to be so good in my province of Ontario.

In an ideal world — I do not dispute, Senator Seidman — it would have been preferable to use the plumbing of existing provincial agreements and sign agreements with the provinces to bolster their own programs to get the money faster, through existing machinery, to the people. I do not dispute that. However, as we well know, such agreements are hard to negotiate. They take a very long time. Every agreement with every province and every territory is different, and, inevitably, we would see a patchwork of services.

As we have heard from Senator Seidman, Quebec does this, Ontario does this, Newfoundland does this, et cetera.

With this initial two-year program, the government accomplishes a number of objectives. First, it covers the whole nation regardless of where you live. If you have a child aged 1 to 12 years old, they will benefit from the program. It is contingent only on income levels.

Second, it takes effect almost immediately, bringing much-needed relief to poor people in a timely manner.

Third, I believe it allows the government to assess the efficacy of a two-year initial pilot program, let me call it that, as they consider rolling out the permanent program.

Whilst we are on federal-provincial agreements, let me clutch a bit on the province I live in. Even when agreements are signed, there is no assurance of accountability. In Ontario, parents are still waiting for $10-a-day daycare program, although the agreement was signed, I don’t know, maybe even a year ago. Again in Ontario, we have seen a government accrue a budget surplus of $2.1 billion when our health care system is in shambles. It is the same government that is using the “notwithstanding” clause to deal with the labour issues. It makes sense to me that the federal government will trust families to make the right decisions for their children. That given a chance, given a little extra money, the extra boost in financial confidence, they will call their dentist and make appointments for their children and use the money to bridge whatever gaps there may be in provincial programs.

To those who say that $650 is not enough, honestly, you may well be right. But the government has not dreamt up this figure out of thin year. At pre-study at the National Finance Committee, we heard from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the average cost of dental care for children under 12 — remember under 12 they still have milk teeth — is under $650. The same was confirmed by the Canadian Dental Association.

In comparison to other jurisdictions — you may be interested in this — we are playing catch-up. We are always playing catch‑up, I feel. Australia rolled out a very similar program in 2014. Its program functions very much the way this program is designed to function, except it extends to children up to 19 years old. Of course, the gold standard would be the National Health Service in the U.K., which covers all dental costs and encourages parents to start with dental appointments as soon as milk teeth appear.

We all know that this is a time-sensitive program. This interim program of two years will eventually develop into a more permanent program; at least that is the hope of many Canadians. It targets those in highest need. Parents who have private dental insurance are not eligible, and those who are covered by a provincial program are only eligible to have out-of-pocket expenses compensated. Provinces and private plans will always be the first payers, and the federal dental program will come after that. At committee, we were informed by officials that there will be no clawback from provincial governments, as this bill does not touch on or harmonize with any of theirs.

I do have some concerns about the bill. Some of these have been raised by other people, but I think it doesn’t matter if we raise concerns again and again; maybe the committee will take note of them. We know that about 10% of Canadians are non-filers. How will they access this benefit? For those who are already in the system and receive the Canada Child Benefit, it is fairly simple. The individuals have a CRA My Account and they simply have to use it to apply for the new benefit. My concern, though, is for the non-filers, and this is not an insignificant number, 10% to 12%.

I don’t know who these non-filers are. I know they are low-income, as studies have pointed out, but we don’t know if they have children. We don’t know if they are working or not; likely they are, but they are not filing their tax returns. I do believe it is time that the CRA address this very important question in a serious manner. To my question to the officials at the committee, I was told that they have a strategic plan called “Get ready,” but they don’t appear to have set any standards or benchmarks against this plan to assure the people of Canada that they are reaching non-filers, and that non-filers are beginning to file. I would like to see a benchmark, an objective put in place that after the end of their “Get ready” program, on evaluation, at least 3% more are filing. That would be a success.

The second question is about capacity. We know that certain parts of the country, especially rural and Northern communities, do not have good access to dental care. There are shortages in dentists and hygienists. The extra demand from the South — I hesitate to say “South” in the context of Canada, but I think you all know what I mean — creates a concern that supply of dental services and dental professionals may migrate to the South. One unintended outcome could be the loss of dentists and dental hygienists from small and rural communities.

The federal and provincial governments should think long and hard about using an untapped source of workers, and those are internationally trained dental health care professionals. We know that many of these internationally trained professionals come here through the Express Entry program, which favours people whose skills are badly needed. However, when they arrive, they get in what I call “credentialism hell,” which takes a great deal of time and a huge amount of resources to pull yourself out of.

This is a national problem which is complicated by the fact that regulated occupations such as dentistry are under the jurisdiction of provincial governments, who, in turn, maintain, “This is not our business — these are self-regulating, independent occupations. We cannot force them to do anything.” It is a veritable maze.

However, the issue of capacity in the context of dental care in remote and rural communities could be addressed by providing a restricted licence to those dentists who have passed some portion of their exams as long as they work in a restricted location, restricted practice. Clearly, this would have to be done province by province, but it does provide an impetus for provinces to consider this or other proposals. Perhaps the federal government could even play a role in incentivizing such behaviour. This practice is followed by Australia, for example.

In conclusion, colleagues, the absence of dental coverage for poor people, especially children, is a blemish on Canada’s avowed aspiration to be a nation of inclusion and opportunity. This bill takes the first small but very important step in building a healthier future for our children.

Thank you.

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I rise today to support the motion by Senator Bellemare to create the special human capital committee in the Senate.

The labour market, employers and employees are the engine of our economy and the bedrock of our prosperity. In 2021, 15.4 million Canadians were employed full time. Their needs, along with the perspectives of industry, sectors and regions must be reflected in our committee structure. They need a primary place for deliberation in the committee context.

Currently in the Senate, these priorities, such as those we have debated here — gig work, the evolution of the labour market or the impact of artificial intelligence and robotics on the future of work — receive, at best, a passing glance.

Recently, we have had quite a few debates on EI, and the necessity for EI reform has been made clear to many of us. We are also beset by significant labour market shortages by sector, region and season. These issues, colleagues, are not an afterthought. They are in the mainstream.

I therefore agree completely with Senator Bellemare and other members of the Rules Committee about the need to launch such an effort.

Form follows function, as we have all heard, but in the Senate’s case, we need the form, structure and arrangements to bring us to wisdom.

Colleagues, so much in the world of work has changed in the last three decades. People no longer get a job and stay in it for life. Entire labour market sectors have been washed out and replaced by others. Apparently, if you’re a social media influencer, you are in the highest demand category, while mainstays in our economy, such as manufacturing, are in steep decline, succumbing to globalization and automation. For some, it is the best of times; for others, it is the worst.

The rate and pace of change is furious, and who knows — it may change again if reshoring becomes a reality.

Nowhere else is this clearer than in the world of the gig economy. Statistics Canada has noticed this particular type of work arrangement — “gig work,” as we call it — has increased by 70% to 1.7 million workers. The average wage of a gig worker is about $4,000.

Now $4,000 is great if it’s a side gig you do on the weekends or in the evenings to supplement your income, but I think we all know what $4,000 means if that is your only source of income.

These are serious matters, colleagues, and our arrangements in the Senate must reflect evolving matters of national urgency. A committee on human capital will also necessarily intersect with immigration. We have labour market shortages that we aim to fill with immigration. We have little predictability for employers because it takes so long to get a work permit. We have variable routes for different regions and sectors and so-called high-skilled and low-skilled workers. I believe that this new committee will be well placed to give due attention to this matter, because the largest proportion of immigrants who come into the country — and, as I noted today, soon up to 500,000 a year — will be attached to the labour market. But there are remaining parts of the immigration context such as social cohesion, social inclusion, the rights of immigrants, citizenship and racism, and these should all stay with social affairs.

These are very important subjects for nation building. I point this out because I don’t want there to be any miscommunication on my part that all of immigration should be covered by the human capital committee — absolutely not.

Colleagues, I also support the creation of this committee because I believe that this would be the small first test and little step on the way to rethinking the entire committee structure.

Although we have added new committees over time, we need to rethink mandates and structures. I have been Chair of the Social Affairs, Science and Technology Committee for just a year, but I have been a member of the committee for almost four years. That committee, just to take it as an example, has a wide mandate: Social Affairs, Science and Technology. We therefore cover — or should cover — space, physics, chemistry, the health of Canadians, youth, women, LGBTQ2+ communities, the disadvantaged, the disabled, students and education, social cohesion, the labour market and multiculturalism. Senator Seidman will tell me what else I am missing from this list.

This committee also receives a significant amount of government legislation and more and more private legislation from both the Senate and the House of Commons.

I want to underscore the importance of studies from Senate committees, but in particular from the Senate Social Affairs Committee. I want us to remember the Kirby Reports on mental health, which led to the creation of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. I want us to remember the report on autism, Pay Now or Pay Later, which is finally getting its day in Bill S-203. Also remember, colleagues, the reports on poverty, housing, disability and homelessness that have led successive governments, regardless of political stripe, to implement their recommendations.

In more recent times, I remember the study on social finance, which led to the announcement of the Social Finance Fund.

These are just a few examples, but I want to underline that the power and longevity of the Senate lives and breathes in Senate studies.

I also want to address another part of the mandate of the Social Affairs Committee, which rarely gets attention, and this is science and technology. I believe this is a separate stream of knowledge and discourse and, as a general topic, should be removed from the Social Affairs Committee. Science, in its general form, including basic science, rarely gets studied at our committee. Certainly, in the past — and Senator Petitclerc will remember this — the committee has studied artificial intelligence in health care and prescription pharmaceuticals, which incorporated science, but they are related to health and are not what we would call basic science.

However, the committee has not studied general science for over a decade, colleagues.

In 2008, the committee completed a report called Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada’s Advantage. It was a report that looked at the federal government’s science strategy. However, given the broad range of matters that we are faced with, some things just dropped. In that context, general science has fallen victim to overload. That is a shame. Science is a very present force in our lives, and a new committee that had science more narrowly in its crosshairs would be far more appropriate and necessary.

These changes would allow the Senate Social Affairs Committee to focus on health and social affairs, including the science of health. Should these changes be followed through, the Social Affairs, Science and Technology Committee would become the social affairs and health committee.

I speak for myself as an individual senator. I am Chair of the Social Affairs, Science and Technology Committee, but please don’t misunderstand that I’m speaking on behalf of my committee — not at all. I’m speaking just for myself.

I should add that one of my other frustrations is with committee schedules. I know we have to make a choice of which committees we sit on, but because of the inflexibility of the schedules — and we have readopted the previous committee schedule — it becomes impossible, every now and then, to go to a committee that competes with the slot that you are assigned. I would appreciate some flexibility in the committee schedules as well to allow for cross-fertilization.

I know that these are longer-term projects, but they are extremely important for the future of the Senate.

I believe that starting on this one small step and creating a time-limited human capital committee is an important experiment, and I wish it well. Thank you, colleagues.

Senator Omidvar: Thank you, Senator Patterson, for that question. That is, in fact, the million-dollar question that we may have to grapple with. But, Senator Patterson, my name is Omidvar which means “hope” in Persian. I think where there is a will, there is a way. There must be a will around this question of reform and restructure. I believe that you, too, are a reformist. I, too, have experience on a special Senate committee. I watched Senator Mercer so brilliantly engineer its creation. I don’t think we need to leave it up to political efforts by one or two senators — successful as they may have been.

Senator Bellemare has put this motion on the floor in a thoughtful way. It has been discussed; it has been hammered out at the Rules Committee. I am pretty sure that they have had conversations with the Senate administration, or they are in conversation with them. I will rest on my premise: Where there is a will, there must be a way. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the inquiry of the Honourable Senator Coyle, calling the attention of the Senate to the importance of finding solutions to transition Canada’s society, economy and resource use in pursuit of a fair, prosperous, sustainable and peaceful net-zero emissions future for our country and the planet.