OTTAWA -- A new report says hundreds of thousands of Canadians may have missed out on government money intended to help with the rising cost of living because the housing and dental benefits rolled out last year have had "atrocious" take-up.
"These are pretty atrociously low take-up rates. We should be learning lessons from this the next time around we have much higher take-up rates," Macdonald said in an interview.The federal dental benefit was rolled out in the fall to provide families with up to $650 per child under 12 for dental care. It was the first step toward creating a national dental care program, a key promise in the Liberals' confidence-and-supply agreement with the NDP.
He says the federal government could have eased the requirements for applying, or at the very least, better informed Canadians about the programs. The dental benefit was estimated to cost $352 million for the 2022-23 fiscal year, but only $156.3 million had been disbursed by the end of March, amounting to about 44 per cent.