More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
The federal government now expects far more Canadians with long-overdue dental needs to sign up for its insurance plan, and the health minister says that's why the estimated cost has risen by $7 billion.
In its 2023 budget Tuesday, the government revealed the federally-administered insurance program will be far more expensive over the next five years than it originally thought.
It is also projecting that ongoing costs after that will more than double, to $4.4 billion per year, up from $1.7 billion.
Duclos said administration costs have not contributed to driving up the price.
"It's more people with greater needs," he said in an interview Thursday.
"The fact that this is appearing to be in high demand, and in high need, is probably the outcome that for too many years prior to that program, there were people that were just not going to see a dentist for prevention purposes."
Dentists could end up seeing as many as nine million more patients who didn't have coverage before, new estimates suggest.
There are a lot of people who don't make enough money to be able to afford dental care, but make too much to qualify for provincial programs for people with low income, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday.
"We want to close that gap for working Canadians," Trudeau said at a press conference in Moncton.
The program is designed for people without insurance whose household income falls below $90,000 per year. Families who make less than $70,000 will not need to make co-payments.
Duclos said the scale of the program should not be underestimated -- it's bigger than just about any other permanent government benefit program to date.
"It's twice as large as old age security, it's larger than (the) Canada child benefit in terms of the number of families and children, it's larger than (the guaranteed income supplement), it's larger than the early learning and child-care program that we're putting into place," he said.
Dental care is the centrepiece of the confidence-and-supply deal the Liberals signed with the NDP in March 2022.
The New Democrats have pledged to vote with the government on key items to prevent an election before 2025 in exchange for progress on certain priorities.
That includes firm timelines to launch the dental-care program by the end of this year for lower-income, uninsured children under the age of 18, seniors and people with disabilities. Full implementation is expected by 2025.
Within two weeks of signing that deal, the Liberal government put forward a budget that included federal dental care. Duclos said more work has been done since then to get a better sense of the cost.
He said they realized demand would be higher than expected when seeing uptake of the dental benefit for children under 12 this year.
The Liberals expected the temporary benefit would go to roughly 500,000 children between Oct. 1, 2022, and June 30, 2024.
But the government has already cut 240,000 cheques to help families pay for oral health appointments.
The plan is to replace that benefit with a full-fledged insurance program for eligible people by the end of the year, but Duclos and his team still have plenty to sort out before people can start making claims.
The aim is to provide coverage for people who don't already have insurance, without disrupting the patchwork of provincial and private plans that provide benefits across the country.
Duclos said he's well aware of the possibility that low- and middle-income earners could simply opt out of their employment plans in favour of the free government coverage.
"There will be mechanisms and relationship management exercises that will be there to support the importance of the federal program to be complementary, to be incremental to the existing coverage," he said.
People who have group benefits through their employer won't qualify for the federal program. The government will require employers to report to the Canada Revenue Agency which staff members have existing coverage, so they can't double-dip.
People on provincial plans, however, may be able to benefit from provincial and federal coverage at the same time, Duclos said.
"We're going to be open to complement that partial coverage by provinces and territories," he said.
The next major hurdle for the government before it can launch the program is to figure out who will handle the claims.
It will launch a request for proposals in June.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 31, 2023.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”