The “lame duck” ODA Board met on May 30th, 2025. Four of the Board members present would no longer be on the Board two days later. The newly elected Board members that were democratically elected by General Council on April 25th, 2025, were not part of this meeting, nor the decisions made. Lame duck Boards should not engage in decisions unless they are of an urgent nature. The ODA continues to assert that “ODA staff are experts”; the staff advisor on this file was also not present.
Dr. Deborah Lin has been a pediatric dentist for 30 years and experienced all the provincial programs in a fulsome manner during that time, including their decline in both item and financial coverage. The government representatives sitting across the table during these negotiations have been brought to tears upon hearing her accounts dealing with patients on these programs. The Negotiation Team has built trust with the government, both with Dr. Lin present to express her vast knowledge of these programs, and with Past ODA President Dr. Lisa Bentley, as the Co-Chair of the team, a position she held with Christopher Pigott, a partner at Fasken LLP, who focuses on labour, employment, human rights, and public law.
This lame duck Board made the decision to demote Dr. Bentley from the Co-Chair position, and replace her with Dr. Maneesh Jain, our outgoing ODA President, and to remove Dr. Lin entirely.
Why? Was this an emergency matter requiring action prior to the commencement of the first newly formed Board, which will meet on June 19-21, 2025, at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville? Why has our past President unseated Dr. Bentley from this position mid-negotiation? Why has this lame duck Board chosen to replace long standing ODA volunteer, Dr. Lin, with someone who has apparently only had his license to practice dentistry in Ontario for a very short time, who is essentially an academic, who is the current President of the Canadian Society for Disability and Oral Health, an organization that has publicly stated that: “Canadian dentists set their own fees”, and that dentistry is a “monopoly” in Canada, and that “Canadians are therefore held hostage to the fee decisions of Canadian dentists who are subject to no oversight for the fees they set for their services”?
Are these the people we want at the table advocating for us ODA members? A self-serving past President and an academic with no historic experience with our provincial programs, whose organization has essentially indicated that we dentists are greedy and overcharging for our services?
Use your voice and demand that the new Board reverses these ridiculous decisions!
2 Responses
First they remove a female board member, and now this ! Won’t be long before the ODA is on the 6 o’clock news !
It is clear that the old Board mistreats anyone who does not follow our ODA CEO formula, the Frank Bevilacqua leadership formula of do nothing, and collecting your 426 K salary, and stomping on women. Anyone who dissents is removed, even if it is done improperly. And the old Board members such as Ed B, Sara Worth, Homa J, Jonathan Mayer, and especially the erratic Janet Leigh are all complicit. The meeting was called to get the vote our CEO and Past President wanted. Dr. Lin and Dr. Bentley were not even notified in advance. Shame. Cowardice and our leaders manipulating our processes. Let’s hope the newly elected Board members will not be marginalized, mistreated and bullied.