44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 25, 2022 11:00AM
- Apr/25/22 11:09:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Avalon for bringing this motion forward. He talked about standards of care. There are provincial standards of care across Canada. The trouble is that none of those standards are being met in any province, and the problem is both funding and the model of delivering long-term care in Canada, which to a large extent is a for-profit model.
I am wondering how his motion would help this. If we do not get the profit out of long-term care in Canada, how can we put strings on any funding we might provide to make sure these long-term care homes provide a dignified place to live for seniors?
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- Apr/25/22 11:10:00 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it will help because it will show we are interested in making sure we look after seniors in these facilities. However, as I said in my speech, we have to work with the provinces and territories to make that a reality. They control health care in their individual provinces. We have to sit down with them and make sure funding is available. Let us make sure the standards are up to a certain level that will guarantee seniors will have the good care and safety required in these facilities so that we will not see the same things happen again that happened through COVID-19 in recent years.
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- Apr/25/22 11:12:19 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am just as concerned as my colleague by what has been happening to seniors in long-term care facilities, but we do not have the same approach to finding solutions.
In Quebec, we realized what was going on, and our ombudsperson produced a report in 2021 with a number of recommendations to prevent this kind of thing from happening again if ever another pandemic strikes. Quebec realized what was going on, figured out what to do about it and is completely overhauling its health care system.
I have a question for my colleague.
If Quebec were to reject Canadian standards for long-term care in Quebec, does my colleague agree with his government that Quebec might not get any of that funding?
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- Apr/25/22 11:24:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the second point reads that “we need to make sure the conditions of work reflect the care standards our seniors deserve”.
Everyone agrees that we have a collective responsibility to care for our seniors as individuals. However, the conditions of work in long-term care facilities and seniors' residences do not fall under federal jurisdiction. That is the first problem, and I will come back to it.
The third point states that “the management of long-term care facilities is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction”. Here, they are basically admitting that it is none of their business. At least they are acknowledging it.
The motion continues by saying, “we share the goal of ensuring safer, better care for seniors”. Well done. I am very happy to see that the federal government has the same goal as Quebec and the provinces, that is, to ensure better quality care for seniors. That is effectively what Quebec wants.
However, health care is not under federal jurisdiction. If the federal government truly wishes to help the provinces and Quebec, it should convene a summit to discuss a sustainable increase in health care funding and health transfers, as requested unanimously by Quebec and the provinces, which are united on this. I will come back to this point.
The beginning of the second part of the motion states that, “in the opinion of the House, the government should work with the provinces and territories to (i) improve the quality and availability of long-term care homes and beds”. Quebec already has a plan for revamping its health care system. Parliamentary debates will be held to improve the plan, to determine whether it is sound and to look at the pros and cons, but that is the responsibility of the elected members of the Quebec National Assembly, not the House of Commons.
What our health care systems are missing is financial resources, meaningful recurrent investments, and a substantial increase in the federal government's contribution. That means increasing federal health transfers from 22% of system costs to 35% and increasing the escalator from 3% to 6% per year. That is what is being called for by Quebec and the provinces, as well as by many other stakeholders. I will come back to that later.
The second point in the second paragraph of the motion states, “implement strict infection prevention and control measures, including through more provincial and territorial facility inspections for long-term care homes”. Quebec has assessed, and continues to assess, its actions during the pandemic. It is not up to the federal government to tell Quebec what to do or how to do it. Besides, the feds do not even have the required expertise. The best solution the federal government can come up with is to take best practices found from coast to coast to coast and impose them, as if that were within its jurisdiction.
The third point in that second paragraph states, “develop a safe long-term care act collaboratively to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve, no matter where they live”. The Quebec National Assembly unanimously opposed such federal standards, and let us not forget that the House of Commons voted against imposing standards when the NDP moved a motion in March 2021, in the 43rd Parliament. The Liberals voted against that at the time.
The Liberal Party must be suffering from amnesia, because during this 44th Parliament, it is at it again with this motion. I have to say, since the advent of the NDP-Liberal government, positions have become muddled. One thing remains clear: their appetite for interfering in things that do not concern them.
Has a federal government ever been defeated in an election over issues related to health? The answer is no, because the provision of health care is not a federal responsibility. In Quebec, we have often seen governments get the boot over health-related matters.
Health has been an exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces since 1867. Quebec has exclusive authority over health, except when it comes to the health of indigenous peoples, military hospitals, drug approval and quarantines. It is therefore up to Quebeckers to have this debate and make the decision. In a democracy, it is up to voters to sanction their government.
A debate has been raging for months in Quebec over the issue of long-term care and the decisions that were made during the COVID‑19 crisis. That debate is still going on, and it is the Quebec government that will take steps to correct the situation and the public that will decide, this October, if it is satisfied with the actions of its government.
Quebec already has solutions. It does not need the federal government to provide them.
In his November 23, 2021, report, the ombudsman pointed out flaws, but he mostly identified measures that the Quebec government must implement so that this never happens again.
In response to that report, the Quebec government presented its plan for reforming the health care system. The plan includes an array of measures, such as large-scale recruitment, better access to data, the construction of new hospitals, and increased accountability for executives. Additionally, the coroner is still investigating. People are calling for a public inquiry into the situation at long-term care facilities.
In any case, it is up to Quebeckers to take stock of the situation and to fix their system. I have said it before, and I will say it again: Quebec already has standards. Quebec's Act respecting health services and social services includes regulations for long-term care homes. I remind members that 86% of long-term care homes in Quebec are public facilities.
The report prepared by the Canadian Armed Forces at the end of its deployment to Quebec's long-term care homes is clear. There are already plenty of standards and rules for things like contamination prevention and control and PPE. However, that was not enough to stop the virus.
Why was Canada's federal stockpile empty? Why did we send PPE to mainland China when we were about to be hit hard by the virus? The government should answer these questions before lecturing others.
The main reason these rules were more difficult to follow is also very clear: There was a labour shortage. I will quote the Canadian Armed Forces report: “According to our observations, the critical need for CHSLDs is an improved level of staff with medical training”.
If the federal government truly wants to help the provinces and Quebec get through the pandemic and improve care for our seniors, it needs to stop patronizing us. It needs to drop this idea of mandatory national standards that are ill suited to the different social and institutional contexts, and it needs to increase health transfers, which will allow the provinces and Quebec to attract and retain more health care workers.
That is the federal government's job. It needs to increase health transfers. It knows that, but it thinks it can keep making one-time investments instead of recurring investments, even though we need to get through this pandemic.
The Bloc Québécois is steadfast in its demand for the federal government to immediately increase health transfers to 35% of costs and to index them going forward. The Parliament of Canada itself made this demand when it adopted a Bloc Québécois motion calling on the government to significantly and sustainably increase Canada health transfers to support the efforts of the governments of Quebec and the provinces, health care workers and the public. All of the premiers have made this demand. The Quebec National Assembly has made this demand. All of the unions, the FTQ, the CSN, the CSQ and the CSD, have made this demand, pointing out that the systemic funding problems facing the provinces and Quebec are hampering Canadians and Quebeckers from accessing the services they need.
On April 4, 2022, the Quebec medical community, including the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec, the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec and the Association des médecins hématologues et oncologues du Québec, along with several unions, joined the Bloc in calling on the federal government to hold a public summit on health care funding. All voters across Quebec and Canada want our health care systems to be improved. According to a Leger poll, 85% of voters support the recommendation made by the premiers and their united stance.
This motion is as pointless as the last election. It is not standards that will ensure better care, but rather the funding needed to deliver that care.
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- Apr/25/22 11:34:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very happy to rise here this morning to speak to Motion No. 47 on improvements to long-term care, put forward by the member for Avalon. This motion points out that the COVID pandemic has exposed long-standing issues affecting long-term care, and it asks the federal government to:
...work with the provinces and territories to (i) improve the quality and availability of long-term care homes and beds, (ii) implement strict infection prevention and control measures...(iii) develop a safe long-term care act...to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve....
I am also happy to say that I will be supporting this motion. As a New Democrat, I am very proud to say that we have used our power in the current minority government to secure a commitment from the federal government in our confidence and supply agreement to bring in a safe long-term care act to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve, no matter where they live. This long-overdue legislation must be implemented without delay, and I thank the member for Avalon for introducing this motion, which adds further impetus to this necessary action.
I would first like to thank all the workers in long-term care across Canada. They have been at the front lines of the pandemic for the past two years and more. This is hard work. It is stressful work, and it is done by people who truly care for the people whom they care for. I want to make it completely clear that these workers are not the problem in the long-term care crisis.
As the motion points out, COVID-19 has exposed a fragmented and under-resourced long-term care system across Canada, and this has been a problem for many years. I remember speaking here just over a year ago to an NDP motion that called for significant changes to make sure our seniors are cared for properly and with dignity. In that speech, I mentioned a couple of stories that illustrated how long-standing this problem is. I would like to briefly reiterate those points today.
In 2013, nine years ago, I met with a family who had lost both their mother and their father to substandard care at a privately owned care home in Summerland, British Columbia. The province investigated the family's concerns and found that the staffing levels of the facility were far too low. Months later, the company that owned the facility, Retirement Concepts, reported that it was trying to hire more staff but was having trouble filling the new positions. As Mike Old of the Hospital Employees' Union said, Retirement Concepts is well known for paying low wages, and that has resulted in chronic understaffing at many of its facilities.
Retirement Concepts operates 20 facilities in Canada, most of them in British Columbia. In 2016, Retirement Concepts was sold to Anbang Insurance Group of China for more than $1 billion. Since then, problems at Retirement Concepts homes seem only to have gotten worse. As of last year, the operation of its properties in Summerland, Courtenay, Nanaimo and Victoria had been taken over by the provincial health authority, all because care levels were inadequate due to understaffing.
Retirement Concepts is not alone in its understaffing problems. I remember visiting another facility in Penticton in 2015, seven years ago, and talking to the staff about working conditions there. I was shocked to find out that some of the staff who had worked there for 20 years were making less money in 2015 than when they had started in 1995. No wonder they were tempted to leave whenever they could. A friend whose mother was in that facility recently told me that the staff was hard-working and attentive but completely overwhelmed. There was always a “now hiring” sign out front. Apparently, the home could not afford to pay workers as much as the local hospital, so it was constantly losing the most experienced staff whenever a job opened up at the hospital.
Experts have been issuing dire warnings for years about this crisis, but successive federal governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have failed to act. Then the pandemic hit. Hundreds died needlessly in care homes during the pandemic, sometimes in horrific conditions. The armed forces had to be called in because staff was overwhelmed in many places. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, more than 840 outbreaks were reported in long-term care facilities and retirement homes during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This accounted for 80% of all COVID deaths in Canada during that wave, representing the worst record among comparable countries and double the OECD average.
We must never allow this to happen again. Federal leadership is urgently needed to protect vulnerable Canadians living in long-term care, both throughout the pandemic and in the years to come.
In these debates, we have heard a lot of calls for national standards of care. Yes, we need those national standards, but the fact is that no provincial standards are being met now. The benchmark for quality long-term care is 4.1 hours of hands-on care per resident per day; no province or territory currently meets this standard of care.
There is a lack of accountability for long-term care facility operators due to lax enforcement of standards and regulations. For example, a recent CBC investigation revealed that 85% of long-term care homes in Ontario have routinely violated health care standards for decades, with near total impunity.
The problem is funding. Lack of funding results in short-staffed institutions and underpaid workers. Underpaid workers are forced to work two or three care homes at once, and we saw how that spread the virus during the early stages of the COVID pandemic.
At the heart of the funding problem are the for-profit long-term care homes. Among care home residents, 80% have underlying medical issues that have meant they have had to move into those care homes. Long-term care is medical care, but it is not covered under our universal, not-for-profit health care system in Canada, and because long-term care lies outside the health care covered by the Canada Health Act, many care homes are run first and foremost for profit.
This means Canadians often pay substantial out-of-pocket costs for long-term care, which can vary significantly depending on the region and whether it is a private or public facility. Service quality varies widely depending on ability to pay, and service quality can have a significant impact on the health of care home residents, especially during a pandemic. Residents and workers in for-profit centres have faced a higher risk of COVID-19 infection and death than those in non-profit and publicly operated homes.
Decades of research have demonstrated that long-term care homes run on a for-profit basis tend to have lower staffing levels, more verified complaints and more transfers to hospitals, as well as higher rates of both ulcers and morbidity. On top of that, during the pandemic, many for-profit operators have been paying out millions in CEO bonuses and dividends while accepting public subsidies and neglecting the residents under their care.
The NDP is proud to have used its power to secure a promise from the government to advance a safe long-term care act through the confidence and supply agreement, and I will add that this agreement also includes dental care and pharmacare, so that we can have a truly universal health care system in Canada.
We must continue to work collaboratively with patients, caregivers and provincial and territorial governments to develop national standards for long-term care and other continuing care, which would include accountability mechanisms and data collection and be tied to sustainable, long-term funding. The standards are not enough by themselves.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to improve standards of long-term care, because they have embraced a profit-driven model for the sector. The NDP will work relentlessly to change that. Profit has no place in the care of our seniors, just as it has no place elsewhere in our primary health care system.
Our seniors deserve to live in dignity and comfort, so in conclusion, I will be supporting this motion. I urge the government to live up to its promises and act quickly and boldly to fix the long-term care crisis in Canada.
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- Apr/25/22 11:52:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very happy to rise and join the debate on Motion No. 47.
First off, I want to thank someone. She is a lady who was very instrumental, not only in my decision to go into politics, but also in being a mentor for me. When getting into this position or other jobs, we often talk about our past lives in previous jobs. In a past life, I was honoured to be the president of the Greater Victoria Eldercare Foundation, which is Vancouver Island's largest senior health care foundation. It cares for many hospitals in part of the Vancouver Island and Victoria area, including Aberdeen Hospital, Glengarry Hospital, the Priory and Heritage Woods, the Summit, and also, at one time, the Oakbay Lodge as well.
I got into helping out with this foundation due to one lady: Lori McLeod. Lori continues to be the executive director there after about 15 years. In all my life of dealing with seniors, both before and since being in politics, I have not seen anyone more committed, and also more progressive and more imaginative, in helping in care for seniors than Lori. I am very much thankful to Lori.
If members of the government really want to do stronger work for seniors, they should pick up the phone and contact the Greater Victoria Eldercare Foundation and see all the incredible work it is doing to help Canadians age with dignity, as well as help with senior parents and the disabled as well.
I ask the government to do that because I know that this is just a motion. It is not a private member's bill like a regular act. It is just a motion. A motion, unfortunately, is much like good intentions. It is wonderful to talk about, and we may feel warm about it, but it does not actually accomplish much. It does not actually force or really push the government to make the changes needed.
The motion talks about the need to improve the quality and availability of long-term care homes, which is wonderful, but again there is nothing substantive behind the motion. There is no metric to say we need x amount or what we need to do. It talks about workers. We know that a lot of the workers caring for our family in these senior homes are new Canadians, especially from the Philippines. There is nothing the government has done that would actually speed up the process for PR status for temporary foreign workers working in this industry, which is so desperately needed. There is nothing being done by the government to recognize the foreign certifications to allow these new Canadians to work as perhaps LPNs or registered nurses in these facilities. While I applaud the very good intentions of this motion, we know where the path of very good intentions leads.
I do have great concern when government members talk so much about what they are doing for seniors. Everything seems to be based on their having spent money without actual outcomes being attached to it. We heard during COVID, “Oh, we sent everyone $500, whether they needed it or not”. I would have been very happy to support that if they had put all that money solely into the GIS, the guaranteed income support, for those who truly are low income and needed it, those who perhaps do not have CPP. Instead, they sent a cheque to everyone, which was pretty much like vote buying. We had so many calls from seniors who are very well off, who said they did not need the money. They asked why they were sent it. One would say it was vote buying, if one were cynical. Yes, I probably am cynical in that matter. Again, it just shows the government is not really serious about doing what needs to be done.
In 2017, during the 42nd Parliament, I introduced a private member's bill to eliminate the RRIF, or registered retirement income fund. Seniors, when they hit 72, have to start, by law, withdrawing a certain portion of their RRSPs to be taxed. What that does is to push them into a higher tax bracket. Perhaps they lose some of their GIS. If they are living in a care home run by a province where their rent is based on a percentage of their income, they end up having to pay a higher percentage of income. When I brought that bill forward, the government stated that it was money the government needed and that it would cost it too much, not realizing, of course, that the government will live on forever, while seniors do not.
The fact of the matter is that, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer noted, the government would get its hands on its filthy lucre eventually because, if a husband dies, his pension will be passed over to his wife tax-free. When she passes, it becomes fully taxable. These days, the average age for men to pass away is 81.4, and for women it is 85, so the government will always get its hands on the money, yet the Liberal government stated that it is more important that it gets that money now.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer stated that the government is clawing back about $1 billion a year from seniors because it needs that money now. It is quite funny. It gave $91 million to Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, and said that it did not need that money right now, so Elon Musk can have it, but it needs the money from seniors now. This is even though reality shows, because we do not live forever, but the government does, the government would get its hands on their taxes. It is taking $1 billion a year away from seniors, which pushes them into higher tax brackets, claws back the GIS and other programs.
If the government were actually serious about helping seniors, it would not put through a motion of good intentions that it would like to increase the availability of long-term care homes. Of course, we would like that, but we need to have more than good intentions. We need to actually have action such as the elimination of the RRIFs. The Canadian Association of Retired Persons calls for it. Seniors groups call for it. C.D. Howe Institute calls for it and states very clearly the government would get more money in the end than it does by taxing seniors early.
Another issue the Liberals could look at is GIS reform. GIS currently has a very high clawback rate, and the previous speaker spoke about the need to keep seniors in their houses longer and past that. To do that, they need a bit more money. We are reaching a labour crisis in our country. We could help the country and seniors by keeping them in the workforce longer. Allowing them to earn a bit more without a massively high clawback rate for the GIS would be a first step. We could have seniors working and collecting more money without punishing them. Again, that is actual action we can do and not just a motion of good intentions. We could do the same with CPP reform.
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- Apr/25/22 12:28:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the World Economic Forum is the favourite conspiracy hub of the Conservative backbench. Do members remember when Stephen Harper used to go every year to the World Economic Forum? He would bring Bev Oda, Tony Clement, James Moore and Joe Oliver. They would all go over to Davos, and that is where Stephen Harper made the announcement that they were raising the age for pensions. They were getting rid of the age for pensions and cutting off seniors in Canada. They did not do it in Canada for seniors; they went over to talk to the elite in Davos at the World Economic Forum.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague this. Why is it that the last time the Conservatives were in government they were hanging out at the World Economic Forum, cutting seniors off at age 65 from their rights, and telling that to the billionaire class at Davos?
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- Apr/25/22 12:29:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to reiterate the fact that the Liberals gave a one-time payment of $500 to seniors, some of whom did not require it, instead of investigating who were the most vulnerable. That should have been the reason for giving the $500, to ensure that the most vulnerable have the money to survive.
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- Apr/25/22 1:44:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my colleague opposite. However, at some point, we must speak frankly. In his speech, he stated, and I am tempted to say he had the nerve to state, that the Liberals made historic investments in the well-being of seniors. Did I understand correctly?
They stubbornly refuse to increase old age pensions starting at the age of 65. I would like my colleague to correct his statement, and I am giving him the opportunity to do so. Seniors are waiting for the Liberals to take action on their behalf and to help them weather this pandemic.
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- Apr/25/22 1:44:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, whether it is lowering the age for OAS from 67 to 65, or whether it is the dramatic increases that we saw for people collecting GIS in the first couple of years, to the last couple of years, when we have seen a 10% increase to OAS, not to mention the one-time payments that were provided during the pandemic and the hundreds of millions of dollars that were given to non-profit organizations in order to support seniors activities, programs such as New Horizons, I would challenge the member opposite to show me any government that has done more in recent generations to support our seniors in Canada.
We have a caucus that is committed to listening to seniors and being there in a very tangible way, and I look forward to continuing to be very progressive on the needs of our seniors going forward, including long-term care standardization and what we can do there, issues of mental health and so much more.
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- Apr/25/22 2:30:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government admitted its mistake with the GIS clawback and paid seniors back, but the one-time payment had a date restriction. Now, hundreds of seniors across this country are left out in the cold.
I wrote to the minister last week about this urgent concern. The Liberals must fix this. It is leaving seniors poor in our country. When will the current government stand up for seniors and start treating them all with dignity and respect?
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- Apr/25/22 2:31:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know just how challenging this pandemic has been for seniors. That is why, from the very beginning, we have been there to support them. On April 19, we delivered a one-time payment for those affected seniors.
We also passed Bill C-12, which ensures that seniors, particularly working and low-income seniors, are never again impacted by any pandemic benefits they take.
We will continue to ensure that we support and deliver for seniors every step of the way.
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- Apr/25/22 4:58:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for her service to seniors and the community. I really respect the work she has done in the community and also her comments today around seniors and the vulnerable.
I agree fully that money is lacking and is going to be lacking to deliver needed services. With the cost-of-living crisis and people paying more for groceries, rent and gas, one of the problems that we in the NDP see is the big tax avoidance from corporations. They are getting richer as those in our communities are getting poorer. The Liberals have long promised to overhaul the outdated tax rules to combat aggressive tax avoidance, but this does not seem to be in the budget.
Does the member think this budget should have proposed concrete improvements to the tax avoidance rules that corporations use to avoid paying their fair share?
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