Maintains dental coverage and affordable housing are threatened by Conservatives
With the prospect of an early federal election more certain by the week, Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Public Services in the outgoing Trudeau cabinet, is warning that a Conservative government under Pierre Poilièvre would almost certainly make deep cuts to programs introduced by the Liberals in the past nine years – including national dental care and access to affordable housing.
“Pierre Poilievre wants to take away dental coverage for millions of Canadians and leave you and your family without the health care you need and deserve,” Duclos said in an interview with Newsfirst Multimedia during a recent stop in Laval to attend a multicultural gathering.
Dental plan threatened, he says
The Liberal government’s Quebec Lieutenant said Poilièvre has gone on record several times trying to discredit the Canadian Dental Care Plan, which was adopted by the Liberals largely at the urging of the NDP minority opposition in Canada’s parliament.
“Any time someone has asked him why he is against, he has said it is because it doesn’t exist,” Duclos said, maintaining that Poilièvre, driven by right-wing ideology, has also been known to refer the dental plan as a “communist” policy.
“So, this is very strange obviously for any sensible person to understand that language,” said Duclos. “But then it’s part of the fake news argument: he pretends that people shouldn’t register because it doesn’t exist, and then because it doesn’t exist, he says we can do without it – which is obviously completely false.”
He said that, to date, more than 3.1 million dental program applications have been approved, with one million in Quebec alone. As well, he said more than 1.3 million Canadians have received dental care through the plan. “More than 95 per cent of all dentist here in Quebec have used the program,” said Duclos. “For now, it is seniors and people under the age of 18. But, in 2025, we are expected to open the program to everyone.”
Affordable housing
On affordable housing, Duclos, who was the minister responsible for the Liberal government’s first national housing strategy, maintained that since 2015 when the Trudeau government first came into office, the Liberals managed to build more than 50,000 units of affordable housing, paid for largely by the federal government.
He claimed that Pierre Poilièvre, as the cabinet minister responsible for housing in the former Harper Conservative government, “built six in total for his whole mandate across the entire country.”
On the Liberal leadership
Regarding the Liberal leadership race, Duclos declined to say whether at this point he is supporting any particular candidate.
However, an outline of his thinking on the matter, furnished to Newsfirst Multimedia by a Liberal administration staff member, noted that Duclos has “said time and time again that the next leader of the party needs to be bilingual and have the interest of all Quebecers at heart.”
Duclos acknowledged that by this definition, the field of suitably bilingual candidates becomes somewhat narrower. Of the two most prominent ones – Mark Carney and Chrystia Freeland – he noted:
“They are not perfectly bilingual, just as I am not perfectly bilingual. Perfectly bilingual Canadians are rare. But what matters is whether you are able to engage with Canadians in whatever language they use. That is absolutely essential.”
Impact of Trump presidency
Duclos said the Liberal government had long been preparing for the eventuality that Donald Trump would be re-elected as president of the U.S. “I would say that people want to be reassured,” he said.
He said the Liberal government “started in late winter, early spring 2024, since at that time there was a high probability that President Trump would be re -elected, so it was possible. And then it became probable that he would be re-elected. So given that, we had to reactivate our engagement work in the United States.”
Dismisses deficit worries
On the country’s growing annual operating deficit – which currently stands at more than $60 billion for 2023-24, compared to $35.3 billion in 2022–23 – Duclos, who has headed the economics faculty at Laval University and has a PhD from the London School of Economics – maintained that the government’s debt is nothing to become alarmed about.
“It isn’t only the debt that matters – it’s also the size of the economy,” he said, noting that Canada’s economy has been assessed by the International Monetary Fund to be the second-fastest growing economy in 2026-27 after the U.S.
