Advocacy Campaigns & Initiatives

Days on the Hill:

Days on the Hill is CDA’s annual advocacy event that brings leaders from the dental profession to Parliament Hill to engage directly with federal decision-makers. Over the course of the event, CDA board members, dentist volunteers, education leaders, and CDA staff meet with Members of Parliament and senior officials to discuss priority issues affecting oral health, patients, and the dental profession. The initiative combines policy and advocacy with relationship-building, positioning CDA as a trusted partner to inform federal policies and ensure oral health remains a national priority. 

DOTH 2025

Two days. Nearly 30 meetings. One message: oral health policy only works when it serves patients, providers and Canada’s future dentists.

Days on the Hill is CDA’s annual opportunity to bring dentistry’s biggest issues directly to federal decision-makers. Over two days in November 2025, CDA board members, dentist volunteers, education leaders, and CDA staff met with MPs to discuss a short list of priorities affecting patients and the dental profession across Canada. This year, the CDA delegation also included the deans of two Canadian dental schools and a fledgling dentist who graduated in 2025. The conversations, held in close to 30 meetings, were focused and practical: what’s happening, why it matters in specific constituencies, and what federal policy can do to help.

The event featured a CDA booth on Parliament Hill where MPs and their teams could stop for informal, on-the-spot discussions. CDA was honoured to share the booth space with the Royal Canadian Dental Corps (RCDC).

Days on the Hill is about policy, but it’s also about relationship-building—creating continuity so that oral health remains a federal priority. CDA serves as a reliable partner for the federal government to help inform policies that impact oral health. “This is the one time of year when our advocacy committee, including six of our board members, comes to Ottawa to talk directly with MPs,” says Dr. Bruce Ward, CDA president. “We organize meetings with senior officials and MPs from all over the country, concentrating on two or three topics, to avoid overwhelming them.”

This year, those issues were shaped by a federal political landscape with many fresh/new faces in Cabinet positions. With a wave of newly elected MPs on the Hill, CDA’s conversations also focused on advocating for policy solutions and sharing information about oral health.

“We were surprised by the limited knowledge about the Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) among some of the new MPs,” Dr. Ward says. “The CDCP is a new program and many MPs are unfamiliar about how it works—who it serves, what the rules are. A lot of what we did this year was to educate officials and share information with them that they’ll need to share with their constituents.”