Last Monday I had the unpleasant sensation of breaking a tooth. I certainly wasn’t expecting to spit out a quarter of a molar when biting into a rice krispie square, but there was nothing for it. I had to see a dentist.
By good fortune I was able to get the problem resolved quickly. Dr. Patel at the Fredericton Dental Clinic was able to see me the next day, and a slot for the extraction surgery opened up the day after that. By Wednesday afternoon, I was minus a shattered molar, and today I’m well on the way to recovery.
By greater fortune — or more precisely, through the grace of our society — I wasn’t bankrupted by the process. In fact, this emergency wasn’t a financial emergency at all; merely an inconvenience.
As I may have mentioned in the past, I am not by any standards rich. I work a minimum-wage job, and have had to deal with the problem of rising inflation as it bites into my paycheque. Canada’s Medicare program doesn’t cover dental work (though that is changing, more on that later), and private medical insurance programs are, in my view, chancy as they are for-profit organizations. Medical care should not be in the hands of people whose chief concern is how much money they can get out of you.
For many years, I’ve had to live paycheque to paycheque; saving money for the proverbial rainy day was something of a fantasy. Any larger expenses I could make in those days were due entirely to my income tax refund or to the quarterly GST (later the GST/HST) Credit available to low-income Canadians. Even now, I am still at the mercy of my low income: I cannot own a car due to the high maintenance costs (insurance, fuel, etc.) and my apartment is a glorified postage stamp because I simply cannot afford anything larger.
But in recent years, the social safety net for low income Canadians has been improved upon. This tax season I learned I qualified for something called the Canadian Worker’s Benefit, which helps those with incomes below a certain level, and the above-mentioned GST/HST Credit has been buttressed twice with one-time payments designed to help the poorer among us weather the higher costs we suffer under, first from the pandemic, and more recently from the inflation crisis. It was these benefits that allowed me to shoulder the cost of my dental surgery.
Still to come is the establishment of federal dental coverage for families and individuals with low incomes; a promise set up between the ruling Liberals and the New Democratic Party. The plan is in its early stages — as I understand it, I will not be able to apply for it until 2025, barring setbacks — but when it is deployed, it should cover any individual with an annual income below $70,000, and for families with incomes below $90,000. This will be a great help for anyone who can’t afford a dentist on a regular (or even an emergency) basis.
All of which goes to show how much a nation can help its less fortunate citizens if and when it remembers to do so. Wealthier Canadians might not appreciate this service; they don’t benefit from it, after all, and the prevailing attitude among the rich is “if I don’t benefit from it, I shouldn’t have to pay for it.” Some would happily condemn me and those like me to poverty if it meant their tax bills might be a little lighter. I am therefore thankful that our current government is not willing to play that game for the most part.
These benefits are not perfect, nor are they universal or eternal. I suspect there are sectors of our society that don’t get as much protection (would I still qualify for as much benefit if I was Indigenous, for example, or if I was a trans person?) and a future government can cater to the rich and strip these benefits away with a wave of their hand. We will need to keep voting for governments that will preserve and expand these benefits, to ensure they will be there for Canadians when we need them most. Just as those benefits helped me when I needed them last week.