Effective Government Coverage in St. Catharines

The Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) is a federally administered public coverage that will help ease financial burden to accessing oral health care for up to nine million uninsured Canadian residents with an adjusted family net income of less than $90,000, with no co-payments* for those with family net income under $70,000.

*A co-payment is the percentage of the CDCP fees that is not considered by the plan and that people covered under the CDCP will have to pay directly to the oral health provider.

The CDCP aims to help those who have no access to dental insurance. Therefore, only those who do not have access to any form of dental insurance/coverage (private or employer-sponsored) are eligible to apply for the CDCP.

If you have access to dental coverage through private or employer-sponsored plan, you will not be eligible for the CDCP.

Dental health professionals play a vital role in delivering oral health care, and this plan will allow more Canadians to receive their care. Resources and tools on how to assist and inform their patients about the CDCP will be provided to the oral health professional community.

The CDCP will be administered by Health Canada. Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), through Service Canada, will act as a service delivery partner for processing applications for the CDCP, drawing on applicant provided information as well as taxpayer information provided by the Canada Revenue Agency (e.g., to assess family income). Service Canada will provide qualified applicant information to Sun Life, the contracted service provider, to enrol them in the CDCP and process claims.

In early 2024, oral health providers, who are licensed and in good standing with the regulatory body of the province/territory in which they practice, will be able to confirm that they want to be a participating CDCP provider directly with Sun Life. Participation in the CDCP will be on a voluntary basis.

As part of the CDCP application process, potentially eligible applicants will be required to attest that they do not have access to any dental insurance, which will be verified through a sample audit process by Health Canada. This attestation will be further validated using the T4/T4A dental requirement where employers, through the Dental Care Measures Act, are required to report if their employees or pensioners are eligible to access dental insurance.