Petition: Improving Access to Operating Room Time for Pediatric Dental Surgeries in New Brunswick 

To the Honourable the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick assembled:

We, the undersigned residents of New Brunswick, are writing to bring urgent attention to a growing crisis in access to operating room time for pediatric dental surgeries.

More than 300 children in New Brunswick are currently on a waitlist for dental surgery with the province’s only board-certified pediatric dentist.

Many families are waiting one to two years — and in some cases longer — for their child to receive treatment. During that time, children may miss school, and can experience serious pain, infections, difficulty eating and sleeping, and long-term health impacts. In severe cases, untreated infections can lead to dangerous swelling and damage to developing adult teeth.

This situation is not only harming children — the impacts are also fundamentally unfair. Families from low-income, rural, and newcomer communities are disproportionately affected, and many do not have the ability to travel to access care elsewhere.

New Brunswick does not currently provide consistent access to operating room time for pediatric dental surgery. On average, only three to four operating room days per month are available for pediatric dental surgeries performed by the province’s only board-certified pediatric dental specialist — and in some months, none at all. This operating room time is often scattered across the province.

Other Atlantic provinces provide significantly more operating room access for pediatric dental specialists. In Newfoundland and Labrador, pediatric dentists typically receive eight operating room days per month. In Nova Scotia, at Halifax’s IWK Health Centre, two operating rooms in a single hospital are dedicated to pediatric dental surgery up to five days a week, and pediatric dental surgeries account for more than 30 per cent of all operating room resources at that hospital. New Brunswick children deserve access to the same standard of care.

Pediatric dentistry is one of 10 nationally recognized dental specialties in Canada, recognized by the Royal College of Dentists of Canada and the Canadian Dental Association. Pediatric dental specialists have advanced training and are referred the most complex cases, including children with medical needs that cannot be managed in general dental practice. Despite this, pediatric dentistry is not being treated as the critical specialty it is within New Brunswick’s hospital surgical planning — and children are paying the price.

This is a solvable problem, but it requires government action. We are calling on the Government of New Brunswick to take two immediate steps:

1. Formally recognize pediatric dentistry as a specialty in hospital surgical planning and resource allocation.
2. Allocate consistent and dedicated operating room time for pediatric dental surgeries performed by board-certified pediatric dental specialists. If operating room time cannot be expanded within the existing hospital infrastructure, the New Brunswick government should consider funding surgical centres outside of hospitals, similar to the model used to deliver cataract surgeries.

Every child in New Brunswick deserves timely access to essential health care, regardless of income, geography, or background. We urge the Legislative Assembly to act now so children and families can access pediatric dental surgery when they need it — closer to home, and without unnecessary delay.