Avoiding duelling programs
Premier Dennis King urges Trudeau to fund existing school food, dental options in P.E.I.
Premier Dennis King is hoping P.E.I. parents and students will not have to choose between competing federal and provincial school lunch programs in the near future.
The Trudeau government is due to release its budget on April 16. The budget has been preceded by a series of high-profile announcements, which have included an announcement of plans for a national school food program.
The flurry of budget announcements has come as the federal Liberal government faces flagging polling numbers and a 2025 election year.
The torrent of federal announcements in recent days prompted a question in the legislature on April 12 by Progressive Conservative MLA Brad Trivers.
“It seems like a number of the announcements either replicate or complement existing programming we already have here on Prince Edward Island,” Trivers said.
“Question to the premier: Have you made any outreach to the federal government about these announcements?”
King said he had recently written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggesting the two level of governments work together to improve the existing P.E.I. school food lunch program, which provides low-cost meals to children on a pay-what-youcan basis.
“Perhaps they could put some money into our program where we could expand the offering throughout the summer season, for example, or even maybe put into place a full-fledged breakfast program,” King told the legislature.
In his April 9 letter to Trudeau, King noted that the province has had a paywhat-you-can school lunch program since 2020.
“We believe that a direct federal investment in our school food program is the most effective way to achieve our mutual goal of making sure children do not go hungry,” King wrote in the letter.
“Avoiding duplication of efforts and extra layers of administration will ensure that more money goes directly to improving the health, education and well-being of Island students.”
'UNMITIGATED DISASTER:' KING
King also raised the federal dental care program, which Ottawa says would eventually provide dental coverage for Canadians with a household income below $90,000 a year.
P.E.I. also has a dental program that provides some coverage to low-income residents, but the program only offers coverage single individuals earning less than $30,820 or a family of four earning less than $61,638.
King said federal Health Minister Mark Holland has so far had little luck in convincing P.E.I. dentists to sign onto their program. King claimed only one dentist has signed up for the federal dental program.
Holland told Saltwire in March that more than 4,500 P.E.I. seniors had signed up.
King called the roll-out of the federal dental program in P.E.I. “an unmitigated disaster.”
“The minister of health and I met with Mark Holland, the federal Minister of Health, a little while back,” King said.
“We pleaded with him to piggyback on the dental program that we have in our province to make it easier for dentists to actually do the filing and billing and to not be so cumbersome with the paperwork.”
STILL NOT CLEAR
The Dental Association of P.E.I. has raised several issues with the federal dental program, including administrative hurdles and misleading communications from the federal government that has claimed that patients will face no co-pays.
It remains unclear how the provincial and federal dental programs will overlap and whether individuals will be able to obtain coverage under both.
“So now we have two programs," King said. "And I think the greatest frustration that dentists and Islanders have is that individuals are showing up to get access to dental care only to find out that the program isn't set up yet and they're not going to be covered for the costs."
King said he has told federal Minister Mark Holland that the new federal dental program would be more successful in P.E.I. if it “piggybacked” on the provincial dental program.
King said negotiations on the new federal dental program are still ongoing.
He also said Ottawa and P.E.I. have worked together very well on many other programs, including the $10 a day childcare program and P.E.I.’S heat pump program.
He suggested that some of the rush to implement the federal dental program has been driven by political concerns, including the lacklustre polling numbers for the federal Liberals.
"There's a constant frustration with the political arm of government when they partner with a province like ours in terms of getting the adequate credit for the investments that they're making. I would hope that that isn't at play here," King said.