Senator Omidvar: Thank you for your sponsorship of the bill, your explanation of it and, in particular, for putting yourself in this story in a very personal way. I really do appreciate that and, of course, I support the creation of a national council for reconciliation.

My question is a follow-up to Senator McPhedran’s question. I must confess that I now have a concern about the funding of the national council of reconciliation. You said that this organization will seek charitable status and seek funding from charitable organizations to complete its financing.

Many people in Canada now, especially people from the Indigenous community, have concluded that charitable giving in Canada is a colonial construct. By going down this path of seeking charitable funding, the council could, in effect, be buying into a colonial path.

Don’t you think it is important for the federal government to fund the national council of reconciliation to the full and commit to it in this bill?

Senator Audette: I asked that question, Senator Omidvar. I thought that they would go through an entity that looked like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for example.

By discussing not with the government, but with the people who were involved, right now it’s at the stage where they want to make sure that they are not officially attached to the federal government in order to keep their independence, knowing that the funding will either be there or it may slowly go down, or it may increase. They were aware of that when they had those discussions.

It is something that we can ask, but this is what was explained to me. I will finish in French to make sure that I am understood.

[Translation]

The important thing is that there are groups other than the First Nations, Métis, Inuit or specific groups of Indigenous leaders, for example. They’ve already begun discussions to have formal entities that have relationships with the federal government, to have a human rights tribunal for First Nations, Métis and Inuit, a space where an ombudsman can respond. This exercise is really something that should be done by a non-profit organization, the national council for reconciliation, but talks are already under way elsewhere and there’s a direct relationship with the federal government.

I see that you’re looking confused. I don’t think you understood what I was saying. I would be happy to better explain what I meant.

[English]

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Would the Honourable Senator Audette take a question?

[Translation]

Senator Audette: Yes, of course.

[English]

Senator Omidvar: Thank you for explaining to me the unfolding of this council of reconciliation. If I may suggest this, the issue of funding and independence should be seriously looked at in committee. There is a history of institutions that have been started by the federal government and then abandoned because of a lack of funding and because the position was made that charities will pick it up. Ombudspeople and tribunals are not funded by charity; they are funded by governments themselves.

Thank you, Senator Audette, for taking my question.

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, too, rise to speak to you on Bill S-201, an Act to amend the Canada Elections Act for the purposes of lowering the voting age from 18 years to 16. I want to commend Senator McPhedran for her persistency on behalf of young people so that they can have a say in our democracy and welcome our efforts in bringing this amendment for the third time to the chamber.

The history of who gets to vote in Canada has never been set in stone. In 1885, only male, property-owning, British subjects aged 21 and older were eligible to vote. Today, all Canadian citizens aged 18 or older, regardless of gender, income or ethnic origin have the right to vote. Evolution has been at the heart of electoral law.

However, every time voter eligibility has evolved, objections have been raised. For example, before some women were enfranchised in 1918, Senator Hewitt Bostock argued that:

. . . women will be put in the position of receiving something that they do not appreciate, and consequently very probably they will not exercise their right to vote.

I’m sure many women cringe when they read and hear this point of view. I have heard many similar arguments against lowering the voting age to 16.

Instead of telling you the virtues associated with this idea, let me deal with the objections to it.

The first objection is that young people are too young to deal with complex matters such as voting. Plus, they are so young that we cannot reasonably expect them to make informed choices. In addition, their brains are not sufficiently developed at 16 to enable them to make logical choices. And, finally, what would be the point in any case, since young people would only vote the way their parents tell them to?

In other words, they are too young, too immature, too impressionable, too inexperienced to be granted the most valuable right of citizens: the ability to cast a vote.

Instead of giving you just my opinion, let me share the evidence from jurisdictions that have lowered the voting age.

In 2007, Austria enfranchised those aged 16 and older. There is a 13-year body of evidence to draw from. What the data tells us is that the turnout among 16- and 17-year-old Austrian voters has not been substantially lower than the overall turnout rate. Evidently, young people will vote if they are given the opportunity.

Let’s deal with the objection related to immaturity.

Young people cannot be entrusted with the vote because they will make uninformed choices. If given the vote, they may cast their vote for the sake of voting without understanding the implications of the choices they are making. They don’t have enough political knowledge and are not able to tune in to the political discourse of the day. Honourable senators, frankly, if this holds true for young people, I would submit it holds true for many adults as well.

Once again, I looked to countries that have enfranchised youth to determine if this argument holds water. A study conducted in Austria before the 2009 European Parliament election showed that young people voted based on their political preferences just as much as older voters. They were not ignorant of the context — quite the opposite. They had distinct political preferences which they exercised through their vote.

Then there’s the argument that adolescent brains cannot manage the logical processes required for voting, even though they can drive cars. They can join the reserves. They can work. They can pay taxes. But apparently they cannot manage the logical processes required for voting.

According to neuroscientists, in scenarios where tasks are mainly cognitive, adolescents show competence levels comparable to those of adults. This means that when the level of stress is low and there is time to evaluate different choices, young people can make thoughtful decisions. Because voting is an activity that teenagers — and in fact all of us — can think about ahead of time, they are able to make just as reasonable decisions as adult voters.

Finally, regarding parental influence, people ask, “What’s the point of allowing young people to vote, since they will surely vote the way their parents tell them to?” I don’t know about your children, colleagues, but in my family the opposite is almost always true. Kids have perspectives, they have priorities, they have opinions, and they don’t hesitate to tell us — especially us parents — what is wrong with our world. Plus, the influence does not go one way. Young people can and do affect their parents’ civic engagement and attitudes as well. My children have been instrumental in influencing me about global warming and climate change.

Additionally, there are other reasons to look seriously at this proposal. It will have a positive impact on electoral participation in the long run. This is because young people under 18 are most likely to still be in school and to live with their families — two factors that have been shown to encourage voter turnout. In the long term, this higher level of participation at a young age, may then facilitate the development of a lifelong habit of voting. As Rick Mercer, he of the famous rants, has said, “Voting is learned behaviour and it is addictive.” I am a big proponent of lowering the voting age to 16 because we know if people start voting, they will continue to vote their entire life.

It is also important to consider the impact allowing younger people to vote can have on their families, for those young people whose families are not politically engaged. Learning how to vote at school or in their community may help them to empower their family members to vote with them. Youth can be and are incredible behavioural change agents.

We make decisions in this chamber that have significant impacts on the lives of young people — decisions about cannabis, the labelling of food, assisted death, slave labour in our supply chains and, of course, climate change. A common complaint I hear from young people is that the older political elites control their future. Giving them the right to vote at this age will ensure that we hear their views and take them seriously.

Even though I have frequently referred to Austria as one of the jurisdictions that has enfranchised young people, I would also add that the voting age is 16 in Scotland, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Malta, Jersey, Guernsey, Wales and the Isle of Man. There are also several countries where 16‑year‑olds can vote in certain regional or municipal elections, including Germany, Switzerland, Estonia and the United States. The idea of allowing young people to vote should not seem so unrealistic, considering it is already taking place in many parts of the world.

Young people are campaigning for the right to vote in not only federal elections in Canada but also provincial and municipal elections. The Vote16BC campaign has received broad support, gaining endorsement from the City of Vancouver, the Union of B.C. Municipalities, and the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, among many others. The Samara Centre for Democracy finds that beyond voting, young people are the most active participants in Canada’s civic and political life. They talk about politics more than anyone, are present in the formal political sphere, respond through activism and are leading their communities through civic engagement. Whatever happens at the ballot box, political leaders overlook the passion and engagement of young people at their own peril. It therefore makes sense to leverage this enthusiasm for politics into the ballot box.

I don’t want to make the argument for lowering the voting age without linking it with civic education. I don’t believe you can do one without doing the other. For example, in Austria, the lowering of the voting age was accompanied by awareness-raising campaigns and enhancing the status of civic and citizenship education in schools. In terms of citizenship education, all provinces and territories include this subject area in their curriculums. Some provinces, including Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec, have even created separate civics or citizenship courses. The foundation for leveraging civic education in our system already exists.

Perhaps the best way to conclude my speech is to look to the future. It is young people who will inherit the future, uncertain as it is. It is young people who will live with the results of our choices today. It is young people who will need to fix the mistakes older generations have made. Lord knows, we have made many, and we will likely make many more. It only makes sense to let them into the ballot box, because the future is rightly theirs, not ours. Colleagues, let’s send this bill to committee for thorough study as soon as we are able to. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Galvez, debate adjourned.)

[Translation]

Senator Omidvar: Thank you, Senator Dalphond. I always dread questions from the lawyers in the room, because I’m not a lawyer. This one I’m grateful for, because you got it completely right. It is not a criminal court proceeding but an administrative court proceeding.

Thank you for your support. I hope you will help me pass this and get it to the Foreign Affairs Committee so we can very quickly get witnesses, discuss this and bring it back to the chamber. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Duncan, debate adjourned.)

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Honourable senators, I sadly lost the challenge to the dinner clock, but I hope I have moved your hearts and minds. We were at the spot where I was talking about Charter challenges and constitutionality. Let me pick it up from there to briefly reconfirm what I have said, because my memory is frail, and if you’re like me, your memory is frail too.

My bill will seek to seize frozen assets and repurpose them back through court order to victims of corruption, in particular, victims of mass human rights violations and forced displacement. So the question really is: Is this Charter-proof?

Let me quote from a policy paper published on this particular question by the World Refugee & Migration Council, which was prepared by a noted lawyer, no less than former Attorney General of Canada and former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations Allan Rock. He says:

The section of the Charter that could potentially be invoked to attack asset freezes and confiscation is section 7 — the right to life, liberty and security of the person. . . . Although this section has been held by the courts to be very broad, the jurisprudence has also made clear that section 7 generally does not protect and apply to the economic rights of the applicant.

This is further underlined by Justice Gagné, who ruled in the case involving the freezing of the assets of former President Ben-Ali of Tunisia. She noted, “. . . generally, neither the right to hold employment nor the economic interests of the applicants are protected by the Charter.”

The paper concludes on this point:

. . . it is unlikely that an applicant would be successful in challenging Canadian legislation providing for the freezing and confiscation of the assets of corrupt foreign officials on the ground that it contravenes the Charter.

I would like to point out another very important aspect of this bill. Currently, we do not know the value of the assets that have been frozen in Canada. We know the names of the individuals, but we actually do not know whether they have any assets in Canada. There is no public transparency, since the government is not yet obliged to provide this information. This bill will raise the curtain, make it less opaque and compel the government to list not only corrupt foreign officials but also provide the value of their assets. In the absence of this information, Canadians are not able to advocate for confiscation and opportunities to achieve the benefits that I’m talking about.

Finally — and I’m glad I have the time to talk about this a little bit more — this legislation is not unique. We are following best practice from where? Switzerland, the original home of all assets held by all kinds of people in secrecy forever.

In 2015, Switzerland, to clean up its reputation, enacted the Foreign Illicit Assets Act. Under that law, the Swiss government can apply to their federal court to confiscate foreign assets. If granted, Switzerland can send the assets to the country of origin or another entity for the purpose of improving the lives and conditions of the inhabitants of the country and supporting the rule of law in the country, thus contributing to the fight against corruption.

In fact, I think they repurposed stolen assets back to Kazakhstan by court order and used a foundation to provide education for children in Kazakhstan. Both the United Kingdom and France are currently looking at similar legislation. The EU, which recently enacted Magnitsky, is also looking at this legislation as the next step in their fight against corruption.

This brings me to the final reason I believe this legislation is important. If Canada succeeds in passing it, I believe that others will follow. We followed the example of the U.S. in calling the Magnitsky Act into life, and former Senator Andreychuk improved on the U.S. version once it came to Canada.

The same narrative may well follow this act. This bill, I believe, will ignite the imagination of other jurisdictions by providing a concrete example of how individual jurisdictions can act. Others will pick it up and improve on it, and Canada will be the transformative leader.

In conclusion, colleagues, for far too along corrupt foreign officials have acted with impunity. They have not only stolen mass wealth but have created significant hardship for their people. Their actions have contributed to the displacement and misery of millions of people. Calling them out is simply not enough. We have to make them pay, and FARA will accomplish precisely that.

Thank you, honourable senators.

Senator Omidvar: Of course.

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Senator Miville-Dechêne, my question is more of a political nature. I must congratulate you on the work you have done over the last year, and the searchlight that has been shone on this issue, particularly on MindGeek and other pornography sites. I don’t know the answer to this question, but you may: Do you know if any political party included this particular issue in their policy platform during the last election?

Senator Miville-Dechêne: That’s a good question, Senator Omidvar. I have to say that Steven Guilbeault, when he served as Minister of Canadian Heritage, publicly said that this was an interesting bill, but he didn’t go any further. As you know, he was very involved and busy with Bill C-10, so I didn’t have an opportunity to discuss it with him any more than that.

I think one of his concerns was that we shouldn’t focus only on porn sites, but that all social media and the internet had harmful material and that our view should be broader. Obviously, it makes sense, but from my point of view, with a private bill, I couldn’t just go straight to the internet as a whole. It was too complicated, so I focused on porn sites. To be frank, half of teenagers go on porn sites when they want to watch porn. It’s not something that’s not used.

I have support among MPs from different parties. What I find incredibly interesting with this particular bill is that it’s non-partisan. I have support among people with different ideologies and who are in different parties, because obviously you could be a feminist, or you could be a more conservative person and still want to protect children. The way we do that can be the same. I really think this support is important. But no, there was nothing in the political platforms on that. I’m very sorry about that.