- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Vancouver Kingsway
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 55%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $176,659.41
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I am pleased, as always, to stand and speak on behalf of the people of Vancouver Kingsway, bringing their concerns, ideas, hopes and aspirations to this chamber.
As health critic for the New Democratic Party, I am always happy to see a bill that addresses the state of health in our country and proposes a solution. This bill is very specific. Bill C-295, an act to amend the Criminal Code, targeted at the neglect of vulnerable adults, would do two things.
First, it would:
[amend] the Criminal Code to create a specific offence for long-term care facilities, their owners and their 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 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.
All Canadians were horrified over the last two years to see residents in Canada's long-term care homes living in the deplorable and, frankly, outrageous conditions that so many of the people who built this country are forced to live in. We saw how seniors in long-term care homes have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Canada, long-term care residents accounted for 43% of all COVID-19 deaths.
Between March 1, 2020, and August 15, 2021, over 56,000 residents and 22,000 staff in Canada's long-term care and retirement homes were infected with COVID-19, resulting in more than 14,000 deaths among staff and residents. Frankly, the most astounding figure that I saw was that Canada had the worst record of all OECD countries, the highest percentage of deaths in long-term care homes on a per capita basis of any OECD country. That speaks to a deplorable and long-standing issue in our long-term care sector.
Throughout the pandemic, there was a difference between for-profit long-term care facilities and public or non-profit facilities. The for-profit facilities had much worse patient outcomes than not-for-profit homes in general. According to an analysis by the Toronto Star, residents of for-profit facilities have been more three times as likely to catch COVID-19 as those in a non-profit facility, and for-profit facilities have seen more than twice as many staff infections per bed. Resident deaths have also been more common in for-profit facilities.
All Canadians were stunned when we saw that the provinces of Ontario and Quebec had to call for the Canadian Armed Forces to be deployed in some of the hardest-hit long-term care homes across Canada, where they documented horrific accounts of inhumane treatment, abuse and substandard care. “Assault” is not too strong a word.
According to the CAF reports, residents in two Ontario nursing homes died not from COVID-19, but from dehydration and neglect. The stories were documented by soldiers. I have read those documented notes of CAF soldiers, who simply wrote down in unembellished form what they saw when they entered those homes. They read like a horror story from a third world. They found residents lying in bed in soiled underpants. They found instructions that care aides were not allowed to change the bedding on a bed for 24 or 48 hours, even when the patient had an incontinence problem. Incorrect medications were given to patients. Patients were malnourished and were not fed properly. This was simply outrageous.
I want to make the point that COVID did not cause these problems. COVID exposed these problems in Canada's long-term care sector.
To date, more than 30 proposed class actions have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic across Canada, and several of them allege that the owners and operators of long-term care and retirement facilities failed to take appropriate health and safety measures to protect their residents from COVID-19. Several provincial governments have adopted legislation limiting the potential liability of long-term care owners and operators.
For example, under the Supporting Ontario's Recovery Act, 2020, plaintiffs now need to show that those operating long-term care centres were grossly negligent to avoid statutory liability protection. That is a higher standard than applies to ordinary negligence claims. In this country, what provincial Conservative governments have done is to act not to protect the vulnerable patients in long-term care homes, but to protect the managers and owners of those long-term care homes who were responsible for unbelievable incidents of abuse and neglect. That is shameful.
The courts have not yet considered the meaning of “gross negligence” under that legislation, but the phrase has been defined by the Supreme Court of Canada going back 80 years. I can state that it is a very marked departure from the generally required standard of care or even simple negligence.
Under section 215 of the Criminal Code, it is currently an offence for a person to fail to provide the necessaries of life to a person under his or her charge if that person is “unable by reason of detention, age, illness, mental disorder or other cause, to withdraw himself from that charge,” and “is unable to provide themselves with necessaries of life”, and “the failure to perform the duty endangers the life of the person to whom the duty is owed or causes or is likely to cause the health of that person to be injured permanently.” That is a very high standard, because it requires death or a permanent injury to be the foreseeable outcome.
Bill C-295 would create a specific offence under section 215 of the Criminal Code where a person is an owner or manager of a long-term facility and fails to provide necessaries of life to residents of the facility, and where “the failure to perform the duty endangers the life of the person to whom the duty is owed or causes or is likely to cause the health of that person to be injured permanently”.
We have some concerns about even that test, but the point is that bringing the attention of Canadians and members of the House to the deplorable conditions in the long-term care sector in this country is a valuable and worthy exercise of our time in this place. Anything that we can do to address that is needed.
We think that Canada's New Democrats have a much better and more structured approach to this problem. We want to end for-profit long-term care and bring long-term care homes under the public umbrella.
Long-term care is part of our health care system. When seniors are in hospital, they are in a health care system. Very often after that they are transferred to a long-term care home and suddenly they drop off the health map. That is incomprehensible and it endangers these people. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the reality that for-profit companies cannot be reliably counted on to protect our loved ones and keep workers safe.
We also believe that the victims of negligence in Canada's long-term care facilities deserve justice. That is why, due to the confidence and supply agreement, the one that the Conservatives scoff at, the New Democratic Party was able to force the Liberals to commit to tabling a safe long-term care act, to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve no matter where they live.
I was in this House for nine years of the Conservative government. It never passed a long-term care act. With the current government, in the seven years since the Liberals have been in power, they have never passed a long-term care act. It took the New Democrats to come to this House and demand that on behalf of Canada's seniors. That is a positive step that we look forward to enshrining in this place.
Although Bill C-295 is a step in the right direction, it of course will not solve the problem. Rather than addressing the issues through a private member's bill, Canada's New Democrats expect the Liberal government to honour the confidence and supply requirements through government legislation. We will be present for that.
Finally, the Liberal Party promised in the last election to invest $6.8 billion in long-term care, $1.7 billion to ensure personal support workers are paid $25 an hour and $500 million to train personal support workers. That money has not flowed yet and New Democrats are calling on the government to honour its commitments and start putting money into the long-term care sector so that every senior in this country, no matter where they are, gets access to safe, quality, long-term care as their age and their contributions to our society so dearly benefit and deserve.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on this bill. The NDP will be supporting it, because we, as the party of health care, have been extraordinarily concerned about the deplorable conditions in long-term care, which COVID may have exposed but which have existed for a long time.
My question is about resources. The bill, of course, would punish people after neglect has occurred. The NDP is concerned about preventing that neglect in the first place. In the last election, the Liberal Party promised to invest $6.8 billion in safer long-term care. It also promised to invest $1.7 billion to ensure personal support workers are paid $25 an hour, and $500 million to train 500,000 personal support workers. I do not think a single dollar of that funding has flowed yet from the government.
Can my hon. colleague tell the House when the money is expected to flow, so we can take care of our seniors instead of punishing people who abuse them?
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in this House and speak on behalf of the great people of Vancouver Kingsway and as the health critic for the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Tonight, I speak to Bill C-293, which, in our view, represents an unacceptable attempt to provide the illusion of accountability and oversight with respect to Canada's response to the most severe pandemic in a century.
I am going to briefly review the measures the bill calls for. If enacted, it would require the Minister of Health to establish an advisory committee to review the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. It would require the Minister of Health to establish, in consultation with other ministers, a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan.
It would amend the Department of Health Act to provide that the Minister of Health must appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities called for under the act.
From the very inception of this pandemic back in early 2020, New Democrats have been calling for a root-to-branch, independent, penetrating and comprehensive review of Canada's COVID-19 preparedness and response. Unfortunately, the measures outlined in Bill C-293 fall far short of that standard.
By way of background, the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health was established in May 2003 by the then minister of health, Anne McLellan, following the outbreak of SARS. The committee's mandate at that time was to provide a “third-party assessment of current public health efforts and lessons learned for ongoing and future infectious disease control.”
The next year, in 2004, the Public Health Agency of Canada was established in response to the advisory committee's recommendations. That agency was specifically mandated to be Canada's lead organization for planning and coordinating a national response to infectious diseases that pose a risk to public health.
Canadians expected that the federal government would build and maintain the capacity to protect them from future pandemic threats. Instead, both the Liberals and the Conservatives allowed that capacity to atrophy under successive governments.
Canadian officials first became aware of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, on December 31, 2019, yet PHAC did not assess the pandemic risk posed by COVID-19 or the potential impact were it to be introduced to Canada.
As a result, the agency underestimated the potential danger of COVID-19 and continued to assess the risk as low until March 15, 2020, nearly a week after the World Health Organization had declared a global pandemic. By then, Canada had already recorded over 400 confirmed cases and community spread was under way.
Even as the machinery of public health ground into action, deficiencies in the federal government's pandemic preparedness and response were glaring. Pandemic response evaluations conducted in Canada to date have documented serious deficiencies.
A scathing internal PHAC audit released in January 2021 found limited public health expertise at the agency, including a lack of epidemiologists, psychologists, behavioural scientists and physicians at senior levels. The audit also found a lack of emergency response management expertise and capacity within the agency, the very agency charged with preparing Canada for a pandemic.
PHAC communications were terrible. Internal auditors found that PHAC was missing sufficient skills and capacity for risk communications. Our chief public health officer is Dr. Theresa Tam. Her office noted that she often received information in the wrong format, with inaccuracies or in an inappropriate voice needed to convey information to the Canadian audience.
Canadians will remember the problems with Canada's so-called emergency stockpile. A May 2021 report, a full year after Canada declared a global pandemic, from the Auditor General confirmed that negligent management of Canada's emergency stockpile resulted in shortages of PPE for essential workers when COVID-19 hit.
Serious issues with the stockpile had been raised for more than a decade prior to that with nothing done. Canadians will remember we had to throw out millions of PPE in this country because they were out of date as PHAC was not accurately keeping track of them.
A March 2021 report from the Auditor General found that PHAC only verified compliance with quarantine orders for one-third of incoming travellers and did not consistently refer travellers for follow-up who risked not complying.
Later in that year, in December 2021, the Auditor General found that PHAC was either missing or unable to match 30% of COVID-19 test results to incoming travellers from February to June 2021.
In addition, because the agency did not have records of stay for 75% of travellers who flew into Canada, it did not even know whether those who were required to quarantine at government-authorized hotels had in fact complied.
As for long-term care, in May 2020, a report from the Canadian Armed Forces documented shocking and disturbing conditions in long-term care homes where approximately 1,600 trained military personnel had to be deployed. It highlighted serious concerns about shortages of personal protective equipment, staffing levels and failures to follow basic procedures of infection control to keep both residents and staff safe.
That is a sample of what we know to date. PHAC officials have said that they will address identified shortcomings by incorporating “learnings from the pandemic into its plans and test them as appropriate.” In response to the Auditor General's report, PHAC has promised to update its plans within two years of the end of the pandemic.
I want to stop there for a moment. This bill would have the Minister of Health, who is in charge of PHAC, appoint an advisory committee, not even an independent committee with powers but an advisory committee, to assess his or her performance and the performance of PHAC, which is under the aegis of the health minister. Talk about a conflict of interest. That is like the defendant appointing the judge. That is completely unacceptable on its own.
In April 2021, the then Liberal health minister said that a full investigation into Canada's COVID-19 response is required at the “appropriate time”. She noted:
We are still in a crisis and so our focus remains right now on getting Canadians...through this global health crisis...and when the time is right, our government will be very open to examining very thoroughly the response of this country to the COVID-19 crisis.
In September of this year, our current health minister said in an interview that there should be a broad-based review of how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled. He noted that a government decision could come “soon”, without specifying when or what kind of formal review should be held. However, when asked if it should be independent of PHAC, he would only say a “strong” review is necessary.
To date, the Prime Minister has deferred all questions about an inquiry or review of the pandemic response, saying that there will be time for a “lessons learned” exercise but that it must wait until the pandemic is over.
New Democrats want the federal cabinet to launch an independent public inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response under the Inquiries Act without delay. Throughout the pandemic, we have called for such an investigation and the time is now. We are past the emergency phase of the pandemic. We are approaching the third-year anniversary of COVID coming into this country. Now is the time for that root-to-branch inquiry.
Rather than providing a transparent, independent and comprehensive review of Canada's COVID-19 response, this bill would not do that. The measures do not meet the standard. Rather, this legislation represents an unacceptable attempt to provide the illusion of accountability and oversight with respect to Canada’s response to the most severe pandemic we have ever faced.
The Inquiries Act would establish an independent chair of that inquiry. It would empower that inquiry to subpoena witnesses, to order the production of documents and to hold evidence in public and under oath. It would allow them to retain appropriate experts, including counsel and technical experts to advise them.
Most importantly, the inquiry would be done independently of the government and in public. Every Canadian was affected by all governments’ pandemic response and Canadians have to have confidence that any inquiry that looks at the decisions that were made and the mistakes that were made is done in an honest way with integrity.
I note that experts across the country agree with the position of the NDP. Dr. David Naylor, chair of the federal COVID-19 Immunity Task Force and former chair of the federal review of the 2003 SARS epidemic, has called for an independent review. Richard Fadden, former national security adviser to the Prime Minister, has called for an independent review. Dr. Adrian Levy, Dr. David Walker and Dr. David Butler-Jones have all called for such an inquiry.
We do not need a citizens’ inquiry that is called for by Preston Manning, because we do not want this to be a political circus. We do not want a Liberal bill that stickhandles this inquiry into safe waters for a whitewash. We do not want a political circus. We do not want a whitewash.
The NDP and Canadians want an independent, objective and searching root-to-branch inquiry into all aspects of the federal preparation and response to COVID-19 and we will not stop until Canadians get that.
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- Dec/8/21 9:13:04 p.m.
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Madam Chair, does the minister agree that we should end the for-profit delivery of long-term care to our seniors across Canada?
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- Dec/8/21 9:12:29 p.m.
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Madam Chair, again, I guess Canadians have no answer from the Liberals about when they might get universal pharmacare.
Canada had the highest proportion of COVID deaths in long-term care of any country in the OECD. Will the minister confirm when national standards for long-term care will be in place?
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