44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 16, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/16/23 10:35:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the pandemic was hard on Canadians. It was particularly difficult for health care workers, including nurses, doctors, personal support workers, long-term care workers, maintenance staff, and so many others.
For three years, they have been on the front lines of this pandemic with no relief in sight. The government called them heroes, but those accolades have not been backed up with tangible investments in pay, working conditions or mental health supports. It is absolutely unacceptable that investments in mental health have not come to frontline workers, including health care workers, when the Liberal government is sitting on $4.5 billion of unspent mental health dollars. I remind the government that this needs to change.
Today, we are talking about the privatization of health care in Canada. The Liberals' recent health care negotiations with the provinces have not produced change or protections. The solutions that Canadians were expecting to hear to improving their access to care in this country did not come to fruition. Canadians did not hear of plans to address the staffing shortages of doctors or nurses.
As Tim Guest, the CEO of the Canadian Nurses Association, said, “While CNA is encouraged by the federal government’s commitment to prioritizing health-care workers, the need for a pan-Canadian health human resource (HHR) strategy and urgent action to address critical nursing shortages were not clearly addressed.”
The current Liberal government must address the human resource crisis in the care system in Canada immediately. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to make things better for Canadians by working with the provinces and territories to hire and rebuild the public health system and its human resource sector. Alternatively, he can continue to make the crisis worse by funding for-profit schemes that will poach staff from hospitals and the public health care system that all Canadians rely on.
I remind the Liberal government that allowing for-profit care to take over Canada's health care system is not only a contravention of the Canada Health Act, but also a costly project for Canadians, both in dollars and in lives, as the hon. member mentioned earlier. We have only to look at the catastrophic outcomes in private long-term care during the pandemic to see that.
The courts are also warning us of the folly of private health care. The Supreme Court of British Columbia looked at the impact of private, paid health care in its 2020 ruling on the Cambie case and found that “...the introduction of duplicative private healthcare would lead to increased costs and diversion of human resources, which would be contrary to the purpose of the provisions to preserve and ensure the sustainability of the universal public healthcare system.”
This decision was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2022. In its ruling, the justice found that suppressing all private care is necessary to ensure that access to medically necessary care is based on need and not on ability to pay.
It also stated, “The introduction of even small scale duplicative private healthcare would create a second tier of preferential healthcare for those with the means to either acquire private insurance or pay out-of-pocket once their benchmark was exceeded.”
That is worrisome. No Canadian should have to fight for equal care in this country, but that is exactly what privatization, for-profit care, does.
It is not just me saying this. It is the law of the land saying it. This is why it is imperative that the new bilateral health agreements result in thousands of new publicly funded health care workers to fix and support a growing sector of our economy, the care economy, where one in five Canadians already works. If the federal government cannot facilitate this in the agreements, they will be a failure.
The current nursing shortage has certainly proven that a lack of human resources in care is past critical levels. I will mention again that it is affecting the mental health care of caregivers.
Dr. Katherine Smart, the former president of the Canadian Medical Association, said:
What we're learning is more than alarming. It's potentially catastrophic.
Time is of the essence. More than a quarter of practising physicians claim low rates of overall mental health. Recent figures show that 20% of front-line health care workers have thought about suicide. A crushing 6% have planned an attempt.
A crushing 6% have attempted suicide, and we know that it has happened. The Liberals need to get to work to assist in solving the shortage of doctors and nurses in this country.
As the leader of the NDP pointed out, when the Prime Minister took office, there was a shortage of 5,800 nurses. Things are now five times worse.
Dr. Smart said that over 50% of physicians and medical learners reported high levels of burnout, compared to prepandemic levels of 30%. Moreover, nearly half of physicians reported that they would likely reduce their clinical hours. Canadians cannot afford any more reductions in access to doctors.
With that in mind, I am going to take a moment to highlight, for the Liberal government, news from the labour shortage study out of HUMA this year. The report holds critical testimony outlining solutions that would improve working conditions for health care workers, attract and retain health care workers, and allow for a pan-Canadian human resource plan.
These solutions come from health care professionals who know the problems in the system. I would note that not one of the solutions presented in the study was to jeopardize the public health care system by introducing private, for-profit care. Here are eight of the recommendations.
First, “work with the provinces, territories and other stakeholders to promote the alignment of educational and training opportunities in health care and other care economy sectors...”.
Second, “in collaboration with the provinces and territories, expand training and upskilling capacity for high demand industries, skilled workers, the care economy [and] health care workers...”.
Third, “work with the provinces and territories to remove barriers to labour mobility in the health care sector, including through the interprovincial/territorial coordination of regulation and licensing requirements.”
Fourth, “support access to care in rural and remote communities by providing further incentives for in-demand health care professionals to work in these communities, including through tuition assistance, loan forgiveness, or tax benefits...”.
Fifth, “consider offering additional permanent residency pathways to temporary foreign workers with in-demand skills or experience, including in the care economy...”.
Sixth, “review the Foreign Credential Recognition Program with a view to determining how it can better support efficient foreign credential recognition for internationally trained health care professionals.”
Seventh, “review compensation and benefits for care economy workers under its jurisdiction with a view to ensuring decent work and a regionally competitive wage; and further, that it work with the provinces and territories to improve working conditions for other workers in the care economy (including but not limited to migrant workers, and those in non-standard employment) and provide adequate compensation, basic health benefits, paid sick days, and workload management.”
Eighth, “consider establishing a national Care Economy Commission to develop, implement and monitor any workforce planning strategies for the care economy, including a centralized health care human resources strategy...”.
These are the real solutions to the health care crisis. These are the real solutions that would benefit people over corporate profits, and these are the real avenues to solving the human resource challenges in health care.
I am going to quote Michael Villeneuve, the former chief executive officer of the Canadian Nurses Association, who said:
Canada needs targeted federal funding to help health care systems train, retain, recruit and improve education and working conditions...The federal government has an important convenor and coordinator role to play. It needs to work together with provinces and territories on both short- and long-term strategies. Maintaining the status quo cannot be an option.
In closing, at the same time that the Canada health system is on the verge of collapse, workers are burning out, fatigued and taking early retirement. More federal investments are needed.
As economist Armine Yalnizyan has been saying loudly, labour needs are set to rise due to an aging population. She says, “...there is no more pressing labour market issue than how we prepare the Care Economy for the decades of population aging ahead...”
The federal government needs to take on this challenge and stop wasting time on for-profit corporations and privatization-hungry premiers trying to breach the Canada Health Act that belongs to all Canadians.
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- Feb/16/23 10:45:25 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would first like to commend the hon. member for Port Moody—Coquitlam for her work on labour shortages in the care economy. I appreciated all the quotes she used to re-emphasize what I believe are common characteristics and shared priorities with respect to these investments in the health care system going forward.
I would also like to share a quote from Dr. Alika Lafontaine from the Canadian Medical Association:
Today’s commitment by the federal government to significantly increase health transfers to provincial and territorial governments is an important step to stabilize and transform our health care systems. The emphasis being placed on primary care, health workers’ support and the modernization of health care is welcomed.
I would ask my hon. colleague, who has done considerable work on this, how she would react to all the positive quotes that I have here from SEIU, the Canadian Nurses Association and the CMA? They all seem very pleased. Why is the hon. member not pleased?
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- Feb/16/23 10:47:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a daughter who is interested in becoming a surgeon, and she is pursuing that as we speak. However, I have heard many stories. Even 20 or 25 years ago, friends of mine tried to get into medical school in Canada and simply could not, yet they found places somewhere else outside our very own country of Canada or outside our province of B.C.
I have not heard this member talk once either about facilities to train doctors and nurses or about the gatekeepers who are controlling the applicants getting into our current system to become students and then to become doctors and nurses in our very own country. I am kind of curious whether she has a solution or has talked to those entities about possible solutions to fix that problem.
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- Feb/16/23 12:00:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I understand the difficulties my colleague has experienced in the health care system, but the major issue is one of funding and imbalance.
To fix that, the government should have listened to the provinces when they asked for an additional $28 billion to increase health transfers from 22% to 35%. That is what needed to be done, and the NDP still has an opportunity to do it. The budget will contain measures that the government proposes for health care, and the NDP just has to oppose them. We can re-establish a balance of power and force this government to invest in health care to meet the provinces' expectations, to meet the expectations of patients who are on waiting lists, and to meet the expectations of nurses, who are at the end of their rope. The NDP can still make a difference. They just need to grow a backbone and stand up to the Liberal government.
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- Feb/16/23 1:51:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for the member, but she is wrong. For the NDP, people come first. Nurses come first. Doctors come first. Health care systems come first, whether in Quebec, in British Columbia or elsewhere. We fought to have those systems properly funded and to create our universal health care system.
We have always pushed for a Canada Health Act that protects our universal public health care system.
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- Feb/16/23 3:22:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I find it interesting. The government has failed over the last eight years, and certainly we have heard multiple times about provincial jurisdiction.
We also heard the Liberal Prime Minister talk very clearly in the House about the 7,500 doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners he was going to hire for Canada. I heard the member mention again today the federal support for doctors. I was in that sector for a very long time. Where are the 7,500 doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners? How many have the Liberals actually hired and when is this going to happen?
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- Feb/16/23 4:23:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member referenced in her speech the importance of getting more health care workers into our system. In immigration, in fact, there are a number of nurses who have come to Canada, many of them as caregivers. They have written all the exams and passed them to become health care workers, for example nurses, in the system. The only thing preventing them from doing that job is their immigration status. They are only afforded a limited, employer-specific work permit, so they cannot work for anyone else, even though there are health clinics and hospitals lined up wanting to hire them.
First, does the member think that the Minister of Immigration should change the system to enable these caregivers to engage in their profession, which they have been trained for? Second, does she support the call for the government to regularize workers so they can get into the system and fill the job—
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