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Dear friends,
It has been a busy month here at home and on Parliament Hill!
Yesterday, I joined the Prime Minister in announcing the opening of applications for the Canada Dental Benefit for eligible families.
Delivering on dental care will provide much needed relief for families and is just one part of our government’s plan to make life more affordable for Canadians.
This month saw a number of other exciting announcements, including further investments in our Greener Homes Program. We have added a new stream to help households move to affordable and reliable heat pumps from costly home heating oil.
We know that the environment and the economy go hand in hand, which is why we also announced further contributions to Forests Ontario to plant 7.2 million trees, as part of Canada’s national 2 Billion Trees Program.
As Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, I launched the National School Food Policy survey, to seek the input of Canadians on how best we can meet the needs of students. I also announced the funding distributors for the Community Services Recovery Fund, with applications expected to be launched in early January.
As we begin to experience colder weather, we have also seen an increase in respiratory infections, especially in younger children. As a mother, I know how stressful it can be when your child gets sick.
The shortages of children’s medication that we experienced in the weeks prior were caused by unprecedented demand, and our government took action by working with manufacturing partners to solve this shortage and ordering a foreign supply.
1 million units of imported children’s pain relievers have begun to arrive on pharmacy shelves and an additional 500,000 units have been ordered and are expected over the next few weeks.
Now is the time to be vigilant, to take precautions to ensure we can keep our communities safe. This means wearing a mask in indoor public places, hand washing, and ensuring that you and your family are up-to-date on all routine vaccinations.
Our government remains steadfast in our commitment to improving the health-care system across Canada. Since the beginning of this year, our federal, provincial and territorial officials worked collaboratively to prepare concrete action plans to advance the use of health data and digital health for Canadians and to support health workers.
Unfortunately, instead of allowing provincial and territorial health ministers to do their work, and engage in a constructive and meaningful conversation about the future of health care in this country, premiers are forcing them to speak only of money and not the means of improvement.
The federal government is willing and ready to increase health transfers, but we cannot continue to pour money into a broken system. The current crisis in health care is undeniable proof that the old way doesn’t work and we need a concrete plan.
The federal government will not allow federal health dollars to displace provincial health dollars to pay for provincial tax cuts. The system needs support from all levels of government.
As we near the holiday season, festivity is in the air in Burlington! I was thrilled to participate in the Annual Tree Lighting and the Santa Claus Parade this past Sunday.
Sincerely,
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