- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Courtenay—Alberni
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $148,159.67
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, it is a huge honour to rise today to table over 70 petitions in support of Bill C-310, which is calling for the first responders tax credit for search and rescue volunteers and for volunteer firefighters to be increased from $3,000 to $10,000.
I want to give huge kudos to every member in the House and to every party, because we have had petitions tabled from the Green Party, the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Bloc and of course the New Democratic Party on behalf of firefighters and search and rescue volunteers from coast to coast to coast, calling for the government to make this change in the upcoming budget.
This is a tribute to all the selfless hours those search and rescue volunteers put in. They put their lives on the line for us. It is critical that we support them and that the government supports them in this call to action. Again, I put my hands up to the 165 communities that have written letters, to the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs for the really important work and advocacy its members have been doing, but most importantly, to those who put their lives on the line for each and every one of us to make sure we are safe, especially in rural Canada.
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- Jun/16/23 2:06:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, like my colleague before me, I also want to pay my respects to all those who have been impacted by the terrible bus crash in the Prairies, and their family members. I thank all the first responders and everybody in our health care system especially. It is a traumatic experience for them and for everybody in those communities.
We are in the middle of a crisis in my riding. There are wildfires that have cut my riding right in half. Over 30,000 of my constituents are cut off from the rest of Canada. Many of them are struggling. I have to give a shout-out to all those people who are fighting the wildfires, all the first responders and the people in our community who are stepping up, like those who work at the food banks. We are looking out for each other. It is what we do in Canada and across this country, especially in rural Canada; we look out for each other.
It is a tremendous privilege to rise to speak to this bill. I have worked with my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George since we both got elected in 2015. He brought forward a bill for a PTSD strategy. He has experience in this area, or at least knowledge of it. He has been a strong advocate for first responders and people working in health care since I have gotten to know him, and I do appreciate his bringing forward this bill. We are both from rural B.C., and we understand the importance of looking out for our health care workers, especially in rural Canada.
We know this bill would amend the Criminal Code to require a court to consider the fact that the victim of an assault was, at the time of the commission of the offence, a health care professional or first responder engaged in the performance of their duties, and that that would be an aggravating circumstance.
The main thing that we, members of the NDP, want to say is that, clearly, no health care worker or first responder should ever be subjected to violence in the workplace. Bullying, abuse, racial or sexual harassment and physical assault should never be considered part of the job. Health care workers take care of us at our most vulnerable times; they look out for us. We rely on them. We have a responsibility to take care of them in return. That has not been happening. I am going to speak to that in depth.
Violence against health care workers is a pervasive and growing problem in the Canadian health care system. Both the number and the intensity of attacks are increasing at an alarming rate. Assaulting a health care worker not only harms the individual person but also puts our entire health care system at risk. I am going to speak to that in more depth. Workplace violence is a major factor driving Canada's dire health care staffing shortage. We know that workplace violence is a pervasive problem in health care settings across the country. However, prior to COVID-19, health care workers already had a fourfold higher rate of workplace violence than people in any other profession. We know it has gotten worse since then. Incidents of violence against health care workers have escalated dramatically during the pandemic and postpandemic.
We were already in a crisis, like I said, prepandemic. We have seen that there is a labour market shortage in the health care system. We have seen the increased demands on the health care system. In 2017, a survey cited that 68% of registered practical nurses and personal support workers experienced violence on the job at least once that year. Imagine someone going to work and that, at least once a year, there will be a violent attack committed against them. Who wants to work in that environment? It is just terrible to hear these stories. Nearly one in five of the RPNs and PSWs surveyed said they had been assaulted nine or more times in that year alone. We have heard, from the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, that violence-related incidents and claims for frontline health care workers have increased by almost 66% over the past decade, which is three times the rate of the increase for police and correctional service officers combined, who are also facing an increase.
We really need to step back and look at how, over the last couple of decades, we have seen a huge erosion of our health care system. I am going to speak a bit more about that.
If we look at Canada's ratio of nurses to patients, we have one of the worst in the world. In universal health care, we are at the bottom. We are just above the U.S. That is just a terrible stat on its own. Nurses know this full well. Their patients see them running from patient to patient and the stress this creates.
Nurses are really the victims of the failure of consecutive federal and provincial governments to stabilize and strengthen our health care system. They have been dealing with the huge erosion of cuts. They are dealing with the people at the front line. When there is a wait at an ER or a wait to get the services people so desperately need in their vulnerable state, it is the frontline health care workers who are dealing with a political problem. The cuts from all levels of government are falling on the people on the front line, and that is creating a huge strain on the patients and on their families, as we know. It is slowly eroding staff levels as well because people are having to make difficult choices.
The long-term health care system is now over 50% privatized. Privatization has a huge impact on the health care system as well, as there is a lack of protection for workers, inadequate wages and staffing levels that are quite low. The health care system is in deep trouble, and staffing is a major issue. There is frustration in the lack of care, like I said earlier, and the burnout it is causing people on the front line. This is a crisis, and it is propelling these terrible statistics.
One thing I wanted to highlight is that we need to do a few things to help fix that. We need to invest in our health care system, stop for-profit health care and ensure that we are supporting the staff. The bill before us is a really important start to that, but there is also the burnout.
We are hearing from nurses, and they are saying they have three options. The first is to leave the field. The second is to get burnt out and make a mistake while practising their care. This is falling on them. The overburdening of our health care system is falling on them. Can members imagine going to work, worried they would make a mistake while trying to take care of somebody? The third option nurses have is to reduce to part-time hours, but that creates even further erosion of the health care system.
There is a lot of compassion fatigue happening as well. I really appreciate my colleague before me talking about the lack of mental health support. We now have a two-tiered health care system. Our mental health care system is a two-tiered health care system. There are people who need care. We are hearing from people who cannot get access to that care. They have to get arrested just to get the care they need. That is absolutely ridiculous. They have to get arrested. What kind of state are they in at that point?
When they go to the ER and they are in that kind of state, it is health care workers who are dealing with them. This is not acceptable. We need to ensure that we create parity with physical and mental health, and that we are not reactionary. Right now our health care system is reactionary instead of preventative, and we need to get to a preventative state.
It is an uphill battle, and it is exhausting everybody in this country.
I do want to highlight that our critic from Vancouver Kingsway tabled a very similar bill, Bill C-434, to ensure that we are on this path, and I believe my friend from Cariboo—Prince George tabled a very similar bill.
We want to make sure that we get the definition of health care professional or first responder right, so we are supportive, obviously of this legislation, and we can work on that with our colleague at committee. I am sure we can find a pathway to doing that. This legislation is an important legislation that we have heard support for from the Paramedic Association of Canada, the Paramedic Chiefs of Canada and all important stakeholders.
I have to highlight something before I finish. The majority of health care workers who experience workplace violence are women, and this violence is often connected to gender-based discrimination and harassment. This needs to stop. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information's 2019 report on health workplace statistics, women account for approximately 82% of Canada's regulated health professionals, which includes nurses, midwives, physicians, dentists, pharmacists and other health professionals.
We have lots of work to do. We are very supportive and appreciative of this bill and legislation.
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Mr. Speaker, it is extremely frustrating. Again, there is some stuff we liked. We liked seeing that they were getting rid of interest on student loans. That is really important. It is something that we have been fighting for. We liked seeing that there is an excess tax at 1.5% on big banks and insurance companies over $100 million.
However, there is a lot missing. There was an opportunity to go after the excess profits of oil and gas, of the three big grocery stores, and that money could have been returned to Canadians. It could have funded removing the GST on home heating and ensuring that people are not paying a surcharge for Canada Post. It was a missed opportunity to help people immediately. As well, on taking care of first responders, which I talked about at great lengths, the government has not done enough for the people who put their lives on the line, who were there for us through COVID, and who are there for us every day and night.
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Mr. Speaker, I wanted to raise those important items because they were not in the budget, and they were not in the fall economic statement. They are missing.
Those are opportunities to help our communities and to help keep our first responders active, making sure they are protecting our communities and making sure we have economic development.
One thing that was missing, that we have been calling for, is the removal is the GST on home heating. It was a huge opportunity that the government missed. It could have increased the excess profit tax and covered that off. It also could have removed the surcharge at Canada Post, which is having an impact on people, on Canadians from coast to coast to coast, especially in rural and remote communities, and most especially in Nunavut, where the cost of shipping is extremely high. They are competing with Purolator, which does not even pay tax in Canada. It is a huge opportunity missed.
I hope the government is listening and that it can make these adjustments now to help support Canadians immediately.
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