Oral Health and Dental Care
Access to dental care is not covered under Canada’s universal health care system. This results in tremendous hardship and avoidable illness for many Canadians.
Canadians spend almost $12-billion annually on dental services. But only 6% of this is through publicly-funded dental programs. Canada has one of the lowest rates of publicly funded dental care in the world, lower than even the U.S. where 7.9% of total spending on dental care is publicly-funded. As of 2022, Statistics Canada shared that 35% of Canadians did not have dental insurance, with 24% admitting to avoiding the dentist due to cost.
As a result of this major gap in public funding, one in six Canadians currently have difficulty getting dental care because they can’t afford the cost, they don’t have dental insurance, and/or it’s too expensive to travel to the nearest provider.
It’s the most vulnerable people in our communities across Canada who generally don’t have access to dental care: low wage workers and their children; seniors and the institutionalized elderly; new Canadians; and Indigenous people.
