- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- North Island—Powell River
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $145,542.18
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to be here today as the seniors critic for the NDP to talk about Bill C-295, an act to amend the Criminal Code targeted at neglect of vulnerable adults.
This bill would do two things. First, it would amend the Criminal Code to create a specific offence for long-term care facilities, their owners and managers to fail to provide the necessaries of life to residents of the facilities. Second, it would allow the court to make an order prohibiting the owners and the managers of such facilities from being, through employment or volunteering, in charge of or in a position of trust or authority towards vulnerable adults and to consider as an aggravating factor for the purpose of sentencing the fact that an organization failed to perform the legal duty that it owed to a vulnerable adult.
I am going to be in support of this bill. We saw dreadful outcomes during the pandemic. So many seniors across this country faced challenges that we cannot imagine and then there were deaths beyond our imagination. It is really important, as we remember this time, to remember the men and women in uniform who serve this country, who were sent in to some long-term care facilities and saw things they were horrified to see in their own country.
It is really important to understand that when we ask those in our military to step up for us, they are used to stepping up outside of our country in these kinds of circumstances. They were in this country and saw seniors who had died just because of neglect, because they were dehydrated. This is Canada and that should never happen. Those folks did a huge service to us, something I hope they never have to do in their own country again.
It is also important to point out that the vast majority of seniors never enter long-term care. That is important. I hear from the Seniors Advocate in British Columbia all the time that we should remember most people stay at home and that is where they end their lives. However, when seniors move into such facilities, families and loved ones need to know those people are safe and that standards are in place, something they can put their trust in.
We know that sometimes families move their loved ones to be closer to them from one province or territory to another. What is surprising is that the standards are different in each part of this country, which really leaves increased vulnerability. I appreciate that the government did table some long-term care standards, but the thing that was terrifying to me is that they are voluntary. A lot of good work was done in looking at those standards, making sure they made sense for long-term care, and now we see that they are voluntary.
This worries me because it provides a huge risk to seniors and the people who love them most. Again and again, we see loved ones doing the best that they can. If they live far away or there are any kinds of challenges, knowing that their loved one is in a long-term care facility and not getting the support that they want makes people feel ill.
I am going to quote something important by Candace Rennick, CUPE's national secretary-treasurer, who said:
Voluntary standards did not protect the 17,000 residents of long-term care homes who have died so far because of COVID-19. Canadians want better protections for seniors. This country needs standards that are backed by the force of law. People need to know that their loved ones will spend their last days living with dignity and respect. They need to know that there will be penalties and consequences for long-term care service providers that don’t follow the rules.
If all we have in this country is a national voluntary standard, there will never be the level of accountability that I think Canadians want to see.
This bill would amend the Criminal Code, but I am afraid that it will not do all that it must to protect seniors. We need more long-term support for them and a practice of having more accountability. What this really means to me is that when seniors die in this situation, there need to be actual charges laid, and we are not seeing that. We are seeing families taking on long-term care facilities, and that is not right. There needs to be a process and we need to start having charges laid. That is a real deterrent.
Graham Webb, executive director and former staff lawyer of the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, has called the Criminal Code amendments “a very viable approach”. However, he said, “I'm really not aware of a single charge ever having being laid for the neglect of a long-term care resident. I think it’s important that the criminal justice system is able to respond when we see such flagrant cases of institutional abuse and neglect of older adults.”
I think that is startling. Even if we see a minor change to the code, it is still not fulfilling the other end, which is the actual movement toward laying those charges and holding people accountable.
Members know just as well as I do that when people are held to account, other people observing start paying attention. I think it is shameful that in this country seniors are so vulnerable that they can be sacrificed without a thought. They built our country. We owe them so much more, and we owe them dignity.
One of the things I found particularly painful in my role as the seniors critic is how many people with loved ones in a seniors facility have come to my door and talked about how hard they worked to try to look after them. They could not always be there the way they wanted to, because they had to work or because they had children. Then, when they went to visit, they saw things that horrified them, and they fought in that system the best that they could and with everything they had. Now that their loved one is gone, the pain is so raw that they do not want to talk about it because of the guilt they feel. They feel guilt because our system is broken. That is wrong, and that is why we must fix this.
To me, it goes back to the simple reality that we need to see the long-term care standards in legislation. We need to raise the bar. I get that every province and territory wants to do their own thing. I respect that, but let us make this the bar. If any province or territory wants to be higher than that bar, good for them. Let us make sure that no senior in all of Canada falls below it. Let us make sure that no family is in a position that they would think of moving their loved one from one province to another, simply so that they get better care. That is ridiculous.
I think Canadians need to listen to those on the front lines. For example, Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, noted that there has been “no consequence whatsoever” for the abuse and neglect that was exposed during the pandemic, or for the needless deaths of residents due to poor infection control and non-COVID-19 reasons, such as dehydration and starvation. How could a senior be starved to death in this country? This is Canada. She further noted, “I think we need to search our conscience if the lives of the elderly are not worth a formal government bill and real change with teeth.”
As we vote on the bill before us, which hopefully people will support because it is a small change in the right direction, I hope we all think about our commitment to the people who built this country. Those people are increasingly vulnerable as they age. Think about the hard-working families who are doing everything they can to support that loved one. Think about the fact that we still do not have legislation that has teeth so that we can make sure to support seniors as they age.
In closing, as a person who represents a rural and remote community, we also have to recognize that those in small communities often see their loved ones go far away to get long-term care. They have to travel a great distance, which means they cannot be with them. Let us all fight to make sure that wherever one's loved is, they are safe.
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- Feb/1/23 3:16:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
There have been consultations, and I hope that if you seek it, you will find consent for the following motion: That, given that all elderly Canadians face the same rising cost of living and greedflation, the recent 10% increase to the old age security be applied to all qualifying seniors regardless of age.
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- Mar/29/22 6:23:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank you, as always, for acknowledging me here so that I can do my work in the House.
We are here today to talk about a motion that commits to another study. When we look at the reality of seniors across this country, what we know is that the bar of dignity for so many seniors has been lowered yet again. I always use the bar of dignity as my reference point, because I fundamentally believe that all Canadians should be treated with dignity. They should be able to feel that they can take care of themselves, and that when they go out and need essential things, they can get those things.
I agree with the motion before us. I think it is important that seniors be treated with dignity, that they not be overwhelmed with financial worry, and that they not be worried about their retirement savings running out. I think it is important that seniors should be able to live independently in their homes. Those are all important things. However, I also believe that there are a lot of shelves in this place filled with reports about how that is true and what next steps we need to take to make that happen. Here we are: We have a non-binding motion that is going to maybe result in a study so that there is yet another report on a shelf somewhere talking about what seniors fundamentally need in our country. I just do not know how long seniors want to wait to have these things addressed.
Earlier today, I met with representatives from Single Seniors for Tax Fairness. I really appreciated my time spent with them, talking about how the realities of our system benefit seniors who are married or in relationships, and that there is this huge, growing gap for our single seniors who have to look after themselves on their own. These are largely women who maybe worked at great jobs where they had a great income or had worked jobs that were low-income. To me, both of those are incredibly valuable and should be honoured and respected, but at the end of the day, they are the exact stakeholder group that is worried about whether they are going to be able to live with dignity for the last years of their lives and whether they are going to be able to pay for the essential things that they need.
I remember, several years ago, that we did a pretty substantive study on a national seniors strategy. I still think it is unbelievable that we do not have a framework in this country that says, “Hey, we have a large population of people who are aging, and because of that we should probably have a plan federally about how we are going to work with that and how we are going to work with provinces and territories in a meaningful way to make sure that none of the seniors across this country gets left behind.”
Unfortunately, COVID showed us that seniors are being left behind. We saw it again and again in horrific ways. This was not something that should have surprised Canadians. We have been hearing from these folks, and from groups that advocate for them, that we do not have the proper infrastructure in this country. When it comes to care facilities, we do not have the systems in place that really focus on making sure that people are cared for in a respectful way. We got to see it in the most horrific ways, and I do not think that this study or this report on a shelf would make a difference.
I am really torn. Do I think it would be good to have more information about what we need to do better? Maybe, but what I am really interested in is something that is actually going to make the action happen: something that is going to look at the reality that people are living longer and that their retirement savings have to last substantively longer, and something that is going to look at how money can be moved around and at what age one has to move over to a RIF. Those are important things to talk about. However, I also know that a lot of that work has been done.
We need solutions and not studies. I really mean that, because I have talked to so many seniors across this country and in my own riding. Seniors have talked to me about the fact that they have to cut their medication in half, especially in the early months of the year when they have not paid the amount that means they get free medication. Seniors are putting their health at risk for the first few months, because they cannot afford to pay what they need to pay to get the medication they need.
When we look at housing, the reality is that affordable housing that is safe for seniors is getting harder and harder to find. We just saw, with the GIS clawback, a lot of seniors lose up to 100% of their GIS.
How many of those seniors actually lost their affordable housing? They are going to get that extra money, which is okay, but they are living in a place that is far more expensive than they were before and they simply do not have the money to make ends meet.
When we look at these solutions, they have to make sense for seniors. Doing another study is making a promise that we will do a study and maybe the government will do something about it this time. I am not persuaded that I will support this. I hear that everybody else looks at this and thinks this is a nice study, let us do that and no harm done, but is there harm done? How long do seniors have to wait? I am really torn on this.
I think that we need better plans. We need actions that are going to be taken. We need to make sure that there is support in place for people as they age so that they can have dignity. I think of my own mother, who is in a long-term care facility. She was a young senior and had a massive stroke. Her whole life changed in a day and our whole family had to change to accommodate that. I see her all the time. She has a decent pension. She was a nurse most of her life and has provided services to the communities that she served. She struggles to make ends meet.
This is assisted living. If she has a bad month, which means she cannot go downstairs and eat the food they provide for her, she has to pay a lot of extra money to have it come up to her. She does not have that money. It gets harder and harder.
I also think about the fact that seniors are starting to lose their well-being because they cannot afford to make ends meet. It impacts one's health, if one cannot afford to make ends meet. We look at the spectrum of seniors as they age. We know that some are doing very well. We know that some are really struggling. We know there are a lot in the middle who sometimes have a good year and sometimes have a very bad year.
There are a lot of solutions that could be provided that would really make some meaningful changes. I think of a bill that I brought to the House that talked about seniors who receive the guaranteed income supplement every year. We know that between 20,000 to 30,000 seniors every year lose their GIS for up to three or four months. Why do they lose it? They lose it because they do not get their taxes in on time. Do they get their taxes on time? Absolutely, they do, every year. However, for many reasons, such as their health, that they are caring for a loved one and they are elderly or the onset of dementia, they do not get their taxes in on time and that means on July 1, they lose their GIS for up to four months.
It was a simple bill that said let us just make sure that every senior across the country who receives the guaranteed income supplement gets a year of grace to get their taxes in so that no senior has to go through months without that extra bit.
I will never forget, my first summer as a member of Parliament, getting that call from a lovely woman who was 84 years old who had lost her GIS. The government said, yes, it was going to get that in place as soon as possible, but her landlord said that, since she could not pay the rent, she had to get out. She was 84 years old. Where she was going to go? We worked really hard to make sure that did not happen, but it does not seem right.
I want to see a bill that is actually going to take action, that is going to make sure that seniors are at the very core of it and that we do not just have another report on a shelf somewhere telling us what we should do while seniors suffer across the country.
I regret to say that I am not sure I will be supporting this, and that the NDP is not sure it will be supporting this. How many reports do we need on a shelf, when we urgently need substantive action for seniors across the country now?
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Madam Speaker, I also enjoy my time in committee with the member. This is probably the most devastating reality. The NDP has been very clear since August that something needed to be done. Earlier in the spring, we brought up multiple times that we were concerned that as these rollouts happened the most vulnerable would pay. Unfortunately, that is exactly what we have seen.
We have seen seniors with the GIS lose their fundamental ability to pay for the basics. We have also seen low-income parents who have lost or had part of their child tax benefit removed. The child tax benefit is there to make sure that children are not in poverty. That is what it is there for, yet we have seen this clawed back as well.
Therefore, I am frustrated. The reality is that this is too late. Seniors have died because they do not have the resources to pay for their medication. That has happened in this country because of this clawback. We know of seniors who were sleeping in their cars. One story that always sticks out in my head is from the Northwest Territories, where an elderly person was sleeping in her car when it was below zero outside.
How do we repair this? Why did it take the government this long? Only the government members can answer that. I am just here debating to try to get the money to the seniors as quickly as I possibly can.
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