Senator Simons: This comes to the crux of how I’m going to vote on this amendment. I come from Alberta, where health workers have absolutely been intimidated in their homes, where they have received death threats, and where there have been disturbing and terrifying attacks, not just on health care workers but on our social fabric. At the same time, many of my legal and policing colleagues are telling me that we don’t need this change at all.

If it’s just a question of belts and braces, what is the impetus that we would need to vote for this amendment if you don’t think it is going to do anything?

Senator Campbell: Thank you for the question. Quite frankly, I don’t think I could be a health care worker. I don’t think I could do it.

That being said, the government has all the tools and should be telling these health care workers that we have the tools and we need to put them in place. We need to have the police and the Crown actually doing something under all of the different sections we have in the Criminal Code. I think it’s bad messaging on the part of the government that they haven’t been pushing to have charges laid every single time this happens — every single time. Because it’s happening in public. It’s not like this is being hidden. It is ongoing. From the point of view of a health care worker, I would be totally demoralized. I don’t know how they do it. I really don’t.