Let me share my own little story. In December, I visited the Queensway Carleton Hospital, which is actually closer to my home than any pharmacy, and it was hell on earth. There were people sitting in every chair in the emergency room. There were people sitting on the floor. There were people lined up on the walls. There was a lineup of people outside the door. There were seven stretchers in hallways outside of the ER and there were six ambulances waiting to off-load patients. Nobody wants to be in the ER right now. That’s the crisis that your government has created. That’s the reason that people are not being able to get the health care that they need. What I want to see is investments in our public system, to see investments in preventative care, to see everyone have access to a family doctor so that people get incredibly quick, timely care when they need it.

In the midst of that incredibly hard and difficult work, this government capped their wages well below the rate of inflation. It’s incredibly disrespectful and, as nurses said, humiliating, and we absolutely need to do better.