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!
11 Responses
THE BOARD DOES NOT REWRITE BY-LAWS. If anything is going to be changed or “re-written” it has to go through general council and be voted on – either as a proposed item in the agenda materials provided to everyone three weeks before the meeting, or as an agenda item for GC (AIGC) that is proposed by a councillor and needs two signatures from fellow councillors to be presented and voted on at the meeting. Whoever wrote the comment about the “old board” trying to re-write anything is either misinformed or clearly spreading propaganda. You all really need to stop this nonsense.
And why are comments being deleted? Isn’t this supposed to be a forum for discussion?