Feds working to create stand-alone dental-care insurance program

The benefit, known as Bill C-31, would give children with families who make less than $90,000 a year as much as $650 per child to care for their teeth.

The Liberal government is moving toward providing dental-care insurance directly to qualifying Canadians, rather than working with provinces and territories to bolster existing coverage.

That will involve hiring an external company to process claims for the new stand-alone insurance program, Health Canada officials told The Canadian Press. On Friday, the Procurement Department invited companies with experience in those claims to apply for pre-qualification.

Health Canada officials, who gave a briefing on the condition they not be named publicly, said that would help the government refine the program before hiring a company to do the work.

They are still working on the details, but the officials said the dental-care coverage in the new program will closely reflect the benefits programs for First Nations, Inuit, refugees and veterans, who fall within federal jurisdiction for health care.

The decision to move ahead with a federally administered program comes at a difficult time for federal-provincial relations, as some provinces stress the importance of defending their autonomy from an incursion on their constitutional jurisdiction.

On Thursday, for example, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith published a memo to her cabinet ministers, instructing them to push for unconditional transfers in their dealings with the federal government, rather than allowing Ottawa to set the terms of federally funded programs.

In the memo, she specifically criticized a lack of consultation with Alberta on the federal dental-care plans.

“Too often, Ottawa only seek input on the implementation of their unilateral policies,” Smith wrote in the memo, which she posted to her Twitter feed.