Hon. Bev Busson: My question is for the representative of the government in the Senate. Senator Gold, on October 5, the presidents of the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Nurses Association called an emergency COVID-19 summit of representatives of 30 national and provincial health organizations. We know how many challenges to the country the COVID pandemic has created, but the profound and longer-term threat to the integrity of our national health care system caused by the burnout, fatigue and moral distress experienced by front-line health care workers is amongst the most serious. Many nurses and doctors are packing up and leaving the profession.

Against this background, could you please inform the Canadian people, by means of informing us here in the Senate, whether the Minister of Health or Health Canada is in talks with its provincial counterparts to develop a strategic plan to confront this human resource crisis in health care. If Health Canada is not in such talks, might the Minister of Health consider sponsoring this strategic initiative?

Senator Plett: You know, senator, it’s a very valid question, but I’ll address two things. Number one: I have made this argument over and over when we have heard of the toll that COVID has taken over the last years. We hear of the deaths. Yet, the media and even our public health officials constantly omit the truth of the matter that 85% of the people who have died of COVID are 85 years of age and over. So you are correct. We are of that age, which is why even my sons, who are not big on vaccinations, encouraged me to get mine as quickly as I could. I was happy with that. They at least seemed to want to keep me around.

So we are inconsistent there. The second thing I would say is that it’s not only the Senate that is trying to do this; in the other place, we have those people that are not of our age. The Prime Minister is much younger and he is pushing it as actively over there as we are over here. Let’s try to get some consistencies into all of this.

I probably would go along with the argument, senator, but the inconsistencies of all of this is what is creating — we don’t have civil unrest yet, but we have a lot of civil unhappiness that is getting close. One of the reasons for that is the tremendous inconsistencies that we have about the rules and regulations. But your point is taken that, certainly, it is a disease that attacks people with weaker immune systems or older people, for sure.