Bill C-295 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (neglect of vulnerable adults)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to create an offence for long-term care facilities, their owners and their officers to fail to ensure necessaries of life are provided to residents of the facilities.
The enactment also allows the court to make an order prohibiting the owners and the officers 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.

The House resumed from September 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-295, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (neglect of vulnerable adults), be read the third time and passed.

Criminal Code

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to give some of my thoughts on Bill C-295, which was introduced by the member for Vancouver Centre. It is an act that would amend the Criminal Code on the subject of neglect of vulnerable adults.

I am very pleased to be speaking to this subject, especially on behalf of all vulnerable seniors in my riding, but also their families. Families, as we have seen over the last three years, also suffered through the subject matter we will be discussing as part of the bill.

It is a fact the chronic neglect and abuse of older adults living in long-term care facilities is a long-standing problem. This is something that slipped under the radar for many years before COVID so frighteningly put it to light and exposed what was there all along.

Bill C-295 would specifically amend the Criminal Code to create a specific offence for long-term care facilities, their owners and officers when they fail to provide necessaries of life to residents of facilities. We would finally, this Parliament, be putting into the Criminal Code a specific offence when the people who run these facilities fail to uphold their part of the bargain.

It would also allow the court to make an order prohibiting any owner or officer of such a facility from being, through employment or volunteering, in charge or in a position of trust or authority toward vulnerable adults. Again, there will be consequences for people who are in those trust positions, but it will also allow courts to consider as an aggravating factor for the purpose of sentencing the fact that an organization failed to perform the legal duty it owed to a vulnerable adult.

We could rightly question why it has taken so long to even consider putting these things into the Criminal Code, but here we are, and it is about time we moved forward with the bill.

I want to also recognize that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights did its due consideration of the bill. During its review of the bill, 15 witnesses appeared before the committee, including the research chair on the mistreatment of older adults, from the University of Sherbrooke, the Canadian Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, Elder Abuse Prevention Ontario and the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. There were 15 witnesses in total over four meetings at that committee. The committee also had 26 briefs submitted to it as a part of its study.

Going to the committee report, I will direct members of the House to the fact that one of the big changes that was made was replacing the word “manager” with the word “officer” and specifically putting a new definition, so now the people who are covered by the word “officer” include the chair person of the board of directors, the president, vice-president, the secretary, the treasury, the comptroller, the general counsel and the general manager or managing director of a long-term care facility. Again, it goes after that top echelon of people who are responsible not only for the overall budget of a place but for how it directs its care levels, its staffing standards and the level of service that residents can expect at those facilities.

It is no secret that there has been a long history of neglect, and what the pandemic did was shine a very important light on that. However, it has often been called “hidden neglect” because many people who worked in the industry, worked at long-term care homes or even those who were responsible for reviewing their actions have known that unfortunately this has existed for quite some time.

It is also a fact that during the pandemic especially, there was a huge difference between the for-profit long-term care homes and the public or non-profit facilities. The for-profit facilities had a much worse patient outcome overall than not-for-profit homes in general.

In my home province of British Columbia, the Seniors Advocate recently reviewed the situation with for-profit long-term care homes. It has been noted that in British Columbia the cost of a publicly subsidized long-term care bed through a private operator has jumped 35% in the last five years. The Seniors Advocate found that not-for-profit facilities spent about 25% more per resident on direct care when compared with for-profit care.

When a review was conducted on the financial records from 2021 and 2022, it showed that long-term care facilities operated by for-profit companies delivered 500,000 fewer care hours than they were funded for by the province.

Again, it speaks to the larger theme, that when profit is introduced into the health care system, other considerations seem to make their way to the forefront rather than looking after the people for which the facility was designed.

I also want to point out that we are all very familiar with the time when the Canadian Armed Forces were deployed to some of the hardest hit long-term care homes, where they documented horrific accounts of inhumane treatment, abuse and substandard care.

According to the Canadian Armed Forces' reports, dozens of residents in two Ontario nursing homes died, not from COVID-19 but from dehydration and neglect.

I have looked at some of the short Coles Notes from those reports. I will read them out for the record: “conditions in two of the seniors homes...appeared to be nothing short of horrid and inhumane as ill-trained, burned-out and, in some cases, neglectful staff coped with the growing care needs of elderly residents”, residents faced “inadequate nutrition” because most of them were not getting three meals a day — and when they did, “underfeeding was reported.”; “Respecting the dignity of patients is not always a priority.”; Other patients were “left in beds soiled, in diapers, rather than being ambulated to the toilets.”; and “troops had to send a senior to hospital after the resident fractured a hip and was not cared for by staff.”

These are just some of the alarming things that came out from the Canadian Armed Forces that were deployed to those homes. Again, for the people who are familiar with long-term care homes in Canada, this was nothing new. All COVID-19 did was to serve to shed a light on that.

On October 23, 2020, CBC posted a story to its website. I will quote from a part of its investigation:

CBC Marketplace reviewed 10,000 inspection reports and found over 30,000 "written notices," or violations of the Long-Term Care Homes Act and Regulations (LTCHA), between 2015 and 2019 inclusive. The LTCHA sets out minimum safety standards that every care home in Ontario must meet.

Marketplace isolated 21 violation codes for some of the most serious or dangerous offences, including abuse, inadequate infection control, unsafe medication storage, inadequate hydration, and poor skin and wound care, among others. The analysis found that of the 632 homes in the Ontario database, 538 — or 85 per cent — were repeat offenders.

I also want to recognize that women represent 65% of patients in Canadian residential continuing care facilities. This is absolutely a gendered issue to which we need to pay close attention.

In addition, the vast majority of care providers in supportive care are women, with a significant portion of these individuals being newcomers or immigrants, especially among personal support workers. Women account for the majority of the workers among both immigrants, which was 86%, and non-immigrants, 87%.

My NDP caucus believes that the victims of negligence in Canada's long-term care facilities deserve justice. Part of the confidence and supply agreement that we have with the Liberal government is the tabling of a safe long-term care act to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve, no matter where they live.

Although Bill C-295 is a step in the right direction, I do not believe it goes far enough in this regard. Rather than addressing this issue solely through a private members' bill, we expect that the government will follow through on this requirement and table legislation that puts these standards into more encompassing law, so that all Canadians, from coast to coast to coast, can not only ensure that their loved ones are getting the care that they deserve, but that our vulnerable seniors have the full force of law to ensure they are living with the dignity they deserve.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this morning, I am rising to speak to Bill C-295, an enactment that amends the Criminal Code to create an offence for long-term care facilities, their owners and their officers to fail to ensure necessaries of life are provided to residents of the facilities.

I have had a few opportunities to replace my colleague on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to study this bill a little more in my capacity as a former project manager responsible for raising awareness of elder abuse and intimidation.

To come back to the bill, it also “allows the court to make an order prohibiting the owners and the officers 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.”

The bill is perhaps a little opportunistic. It follows the abuse that occurred in seniors' residences during the pandemic. That is what it seeks to address, but the bill creates criminal offences in these cases. Liberal logic dictates that filling the Criminal Code with offences is a way of helping people.

I will explain the bill in a little more detail, along with progress made in Quebec and what remains to be done.

Bill C‑295 adds two definitions to the Criminal Code, long-term care facility and officer, with the goal of building criminal offences around them. I could list them. We seriously examined the bill. In particular my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord studied it in depth in committee. Upon reflection, the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of the bill at third reading, because the Bloc proposed two amendments that were adopted.

The first sought to replace the definition of “manager” by that of “officer”. We discussed this a great deal in committee. The notion of “manager” that previously appeared in the bill was much too broad. In the previous definition, an official responsible for purchasing or a nursing team leader would have been affected by the bill. Many witnesses said this went much too far. As for the notion of “officer”, it is well defined in the bill. It covers directors and senior members of the board such as the president and the vice-president. In short, the amendment places the responsibility on people in charge of the centres and not on the workers, who are already struggling to keep the health care system going.

The other amendment ensures that the judge will take into consideration penalties under the legislation of Quebec and of the provinces. Some provinces, like Quebec, have laws against abuse that force health care facilities to have policies and a complaint process. The judge will take that into account in imposing a prohibition order.

The Bloc Québécois believes that it is relevant to determine whether including criminal negligence of seniors in long-term accommodation in the Criminal Code will help them get the care and services to which they are entitled.

Seniors have been the biggest victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recognize that. They were overrepresented in the number of deaths. They are also the ones who suffered and continue to suffer the most from the aftershocks of the virus through isolation, anxiety and financial hardship.

I want to point out that Quebec already has legislation on elder abuse and the abuse of any vulnerable adult. This legislation provides for fines and protects informants who report mistreatment. That is what I was working on at the time. Community organizations and the health care network worked together on this new law.

The Bloc Québécois believes that the federal government is acting within its purview with this bill, which would add tools for investigators. We therefore took the time to study the bill in committee to assess its usefulness. Beyond prosecuting managers who commit crimes or who could do so, it is important to ensure that seniors receive services that improve their quality of life. In this regard, the Bloc Québécois would like to emphasize the other important role the federal government should play in health care, and that is to increase transfers so as to cover 35% of system costs. The Bloc Québécois also wishes to reiterate that the sad events that happened in residential and long-term care facilities, or CHSLDs, are no excuse for the federal government to impose national standards on these facilities.

Of course, we saw the critical situation in CHSLDs, which ultimately forced the government of Quebec to ask for military assistance on April 22, 2020, following a failed call to mobilize citizens to help with staff shortages in care facilities. In May 2020, negotiations between the Legault and Liberal governments were particularly tense because the federal government refused to extend the military assistance in Quebec. In a way, the federal government used Quebec’s need for military assistance in the throne speech to announce its intention to impose Canadian standards in CHSLDs.

This was a way for the federal government to impose its requirements when faced with the provinces and Quebec joining forces and calling for a 35% increase in health care transfers. Quebec reiterates that demand. The government is back on the attack, supported by the NDP, trying to impose its standards. The Liberals are still clinging to this idea. In the 2021 electoral campaign, they promised $6 billion for long-term care in exchange for imposing their standards.

I could list many events in Quebec politics that show how concerned Quebec is with what is happening in residential and long-term care facilities. I will remind members that sections 91 and 92 of the Constitutional Act, 1867, define the division of powers between the federal government and the provinces. They specify that health is the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec, except when it comes to the health of indigenous peoples, military hospitals, drug certification and quarantine. Let us keep this in mind, because it is important.

The Liberal Party of Canada and the NDP keep stubbornly trying to interfere in areas of provincial jurisdiction, especially health care, because it is so obviously important to people. The federalism they stand for, however, requires each level of government to operate within its areas of exclusive jurisdiction. We had this debate before the election. In 2021, the NDP introduced a motion to impose national standards on long-term care facilities. We had already spoken out against that back then. What we want is for the federal government to do its part, because of the staff shortage and, obviously, because we have to find ways to work on solving the many problems facing the health care system.

Thirdly, the Quebec government had to answer to the opposition in regard to its ministers’ decisions. As we know, the Quebec minister who was responsible for seniors and caregivers at the time moved a motion on December 2, 2020 denouncing the Liberals’ desire to impose Canadian standards on long-term care facilities, or CHSLDs. It was adopted in Quebec’s National Assembly. The Bloc Québécois supports the National Assembly of Quebec’s unanimous position and denounces the Liberals’ centralizing vision.

Since then, the Quebec ombudsman has released a report making recommendations to the government. A provincial plan for deploying emergency personnel, a protocol for deploying extra staff in exceptional circumstances, and a Quebec strategy to combat staff shortages are also in place, and our computer systems have been updated. In addition, Quebec’s department of health and social services presented a Quebec action plan to recognize the complexity of care and service provision in long-term care facilities. We also adopted legislative measures to define the guiding principles that must be followed regarding living environment quality and organization and established the procedure for applying them through regulatory means. In short, Quebec is taking action and already has ideas for fixing the situation. The federal government will not be able to any better, since it knows nothing about the situation on the ground in these particular hospitals.

We know that the Quebec government has presented its plan to reform the health care system. This plan includes a range of measures, including large-scale recruitment of workers, better access to data, the construction of new hospitals and more accountability for executives. In addition, the coroner is still investigating, and some people are calling for a public inquiry. In short, in every case, it is up to Quebeckers to take stock of the situation and fix their system; the federal government cannot just jump in and start doing the work Quebec is already doing.

As we know, these regulations are part of the Quebec Act respecting health services and social services. Most long-term care facilities, some 86%, are public, compared with only 46% in the rest of Canada. We said all this before, when we were debating national standards for long-term care facilities. Let us be clear, Quebec and the provinces have the expertise and experience needed to manage long-term care facilities. The federal government does not. For all of these reasons, Quebec opposed every one of these national standards.

If the federal government truly wants to help the provinces and Quebec emerge from the pandemic and provide better care to our seniors, it should stop being so paternalistic. It should forget about imposing federal nationwide standards that are not a good fit for a range of different social and institutional contexts. It should actually increase health transfers, which would enable Quebec and the provinces to attract and retain more health care workers.

At least, there have been some amendments to this bill that the Bloc Québécois agreed with. We heard the testimony and followed the committee's work very closely and rigorously. That is why we will be voting in favour of the bill, with a view to focusing on the Criminal Code, which is under federal jurisdiction.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-295, an act to amend the Criminal Code on neglect of vulnerable adults.

COVID-19 brought to light issues in the long-term care industry. Canadians did not, and will not, accept the conditions that were on display during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in long-term care facilities. This bill was initiated in that global atmosphere, with the primary objective of better protecting vulnerable people living in these facilities. Seniors and persons with disabilities in long-term care deserve safe, quality health care.

Bill C-295 is one method of delivering this care. My colleague, the member for Vancouver Centre, who sponsored this bill, is proposing changes to the Criminal Code in three ways. First, this bill proposes to amend section 215 of the Criminal Code, which criminalizes the failure to provide the necessities of life for a dependent. The bill would give owners and officers of long-term care facilities a duty to residents that is similar to parents' duty to their children; it would criminalize failure to ensure that the necessities of life, such as food, lodging and care, are provided to residents.

Second, this amendment would be supplemented by a prohibition order against persons convicted of this new offence. This order is an accessory to the sentence that may be imposed. It is discretionary and would allow the court to prohibit, for a period of time that it determines, the convicted person from seeking, obtaining or continuing any employment, even voluntary employment, that would place that person in a position of authority towards a vulnerable adult.

The third and final change proposed by this bill is the addition of an aggravating factor at the sentencing stage, requiring the court to consider a heavier sentence for organizations that fail to meet their legal obligations to a vulnerable adult.

This bill was studied last spring by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I would like to focus my remarks on the work done by this committee and the results obtained.

Various witnesses were heard, several briefs were submitted and the majority shared the same concern, that the term “manager”, which was initially proposed in the bill, could result in the inclusion of frontline workers in this new offence. Given the critical shortage of staff in care facilities, according to the Canadian Association for Long Term Care, the proposed measure could “have a devastating impact on recruitment and retention by unintentionally creating undue risk and hardship for front-line staff. This will exacerbate an already emergency situation in many [group] homes” and facilities. LTC providers across the country provide an invaluable service to seniors and persons with disabilities.

Justice committee members from all parties welcomed amendments to this bill to carefully identify owners and officers as the responsible decision-makers, who are accountable for mismanagement. They are the ones holding senior management positions, such as those of CEO or chairperson.

The objective of the bill is laudable, but it should not interfere with the already precarious operation of LTC facilities. Officers are the individuals who make the key decisions on the care offered, the staff in place and the budget allocated to equipment, to name a few examples.

For vulnerable persons, their inability to care for themselves makes them completely dependent on the care provided by these people, who have committed to helping them by making these decisions with their best interests in mind. However, neither owners nor officers provide direct care to their residents; rather, they oversee the facility's operations, make key management decisions and ensure that the staff under their direction have all the tools they need to carry out their duties. Owners and officers who take all reasonable precautions and care in the performance of their duties would not be affected by this change in federal law.

With this amendment, the bill would specifically place responsibility on owners and officers of long-term care facilities who fail to ensure the necessities of life are provided to residents of the facility they manage, if this would result in causing or risking permanent harm to the health of the residents in their care.

Vulnerable adults in long-term care facilities depend on the good care of frontline workers and also on the thoughtful decisions of the management team. Frontline workers such as personal support workers, who provide direct care to LTC residents, would not be affected by this change in federal law. Sufficient staffing levels and adequate functional equipment, to name a few examples, come down to management decisions that can have an impact on the health of long-term care facility residents. Owners and officers therefore have a central role to play in the health of the adults entrusted to their care.

I am grateful for the work of the committee members who adopted the amendment to make the maximum sentence four years in this case, similar to the offence under section 161 of the Criminal Code, which deals with orders prohibiting persons convicted of offences against minors from working around them. The committee worked collaboratively to advance the cause of vulnerable people in long-term care facilities, and I remain convinced that we can continue to work in the same direction. Our seniors deserve better.

The current state of the bill is, in my opinion, improved and more in line with the principles of criminal law. We have all heard the difficult stories of people trapped in long-term care facilities at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, in many cases without food or water. The individuals at the helm of these facilities must be dissuaded from making decisions that risk jeopardizing the health of their residents. The bill would send a clear message: Vulnerable adults in long-term care facilities can rely on third parties to provide them with a decent life, and there is no justification for compromising their health and dignity. We remain committed to working with the provinces, the territories and the long-term care sector to ensure that seniors and persons with disabilities live and thrive with the highest standard of care.

I would like to conclude by saying that I am confident that Bill C-295 will be passed quickly by this chamber so it can be studied by the other place. The revised version would more specifically place the responsibility on the people whom, as a society, we trust to make sound decisions with respect to the care of our seniors so they can live out their final years in peace. Canadians should have access to safe and quality health care at all stages of their life.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand and to speak to Bill C-295, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to neglect of vulnerable adults.

The reason I want to speak to the bill is that my grandmother passed away in September. In fact, December 9, this Saturday, would have been her 96th birthday. I call my grandmother “Oma” because we are of Dutch heritage. In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, I remember my oma being pretty lively. She still had her wits about her; she could sing songs in Dutch and English, and she really participated in our family life. We very much enjoyed and cherished her, like many other families do across Canada with their elders.

However, when the pandemic came, I, along with my cousins, aunts and uncles, had to make some hard decisions regarding the treatment of my grandmother in our family home, where she resided. For a period of time, to protect her, she was isolated from the broader community that had sustained her life in such a positive way since she immigrated to Canada in the 1950s. To make a long story short, like with members of many families across Canada, my grandmother's dementia accelerated at a very quick rate once she was isolated from those she loved. When I first got elected to Parliament, we heard at the HUMA committee from experts in geriatric care that one of the biggest mistakes we might have made during the pandemic was separating seniors from those they loved. My grandmother was isolated in her home, and her mental health deteriorated very quickly. My aunts and uncles and my mother, who was her primary caregiver, had to make the difficult choice to put her into an assisted living facility, one that would have been covered under Bill C-295.

I have to say that I was very pleased with the quality of care my grandmother received at the Chartwell facility in Mission. Staff were loving and conscientious, and they did everything to protect my grandmother. That was positive. However, while she was there, her dementia continued to accelerate; it got worse and worse, and she could no longer stay in an independent living facility with her meals provided. Family members had to make the very difficult decision to put her into a long-term care facility. What I am about to say now is a little brash, but it is a fact. When children make a decision to put their parents into a long-term care facility, it is almost like a death sentence. They know that it is the last place they are going to go. For children to make that decision for their parents is one of the hardest things they are going to have to do throughout their life.

Canadians believe in the health care workers at our long-term health care facilities. They believe that those people have the best interests of vulnerable Canadians at heart. They believe and trust that our systems are going to work, to make sure that the quality of life for those they are responsible for is upheld in a dignified way, one that respects the human dignity of the individual. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all long-term care facilities across Canada. All of us read, heard and experienced the horror stories that people talked about during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when loved ones were separated from their seniors. I will be very clear that this was not the case with my family, but like many other MPs across this country, I heard from families who had negative experiences. For that reason, I am supporting the intention of the bill before us because it gets to the essence of a very big fear that many children have for their parents: Will they be protected? Will their human dignity be upheld when they cannot be with them and they have to entrust the care of their parent to a stranger at a medical facility?

The amendment to the bill, made to paragraph 215(2)(b), reads, “with respect to a duty imposed by paragraph (1)(b.1) or (c), 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.” It goes on under the prohibition order to outline, as the member of Parliament referred to before, that an owner or officer would be responsible in those conditions. The bill would send out a signal to long-term care facilities that maybe have not got it right, that not getting it right is not good enough. We always need to ensure that our most vulnerable citizens, our seniors who have devoted their lives to this country, receive the type of care they need.

For me and my children, it was a daunting experience when we went into some of those facilities. Many seniors, unlike my grandmother, unfortunately, do not have a large support system to protect them. They do not come from a large family like mine, where there are 20 grandchildren, another 20 great-grandchildren and six siblings to spread out the work and make sure someone is there every day to watch out. Not every family has that. Not every senior is blessed with a large family like that. That is why the bill is important. Sometimes seniors may have only one advocate, and that person may still be working a full-time job or have other responsibilities and cannot be there every day. When they do show up and see that something is wrong, they would know that laws in Canada are there both federally and provincially, as outlined in the legislation, to ensure that, in the case of abuse or neglect, there would be a mechanism to protect the senior, and laws to safeguard them if a horrible situation does occur.

We have so much to do, mostly at the provincial level, in this country to uphold the dignity of seniors at the vulnerable stages of their life that they encounter upon entering an assisted-living facility or a long-term care facility that the bill before us would address. I do acknowledge certain apprehensions that came forward in witness testimony. I believe in the essence of the bill and its use of a collaborative approach, which I have heard about from my colleagues. The bill is worth supporting in order to send a signal that we need to do more to protect our vulnerable seniors to ensure their quality of life at the end.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of Bill C-295, I assume I am not the only one here today to be overcome by sad memories of the COVID-19 pandemic.

My thoughts go out to everyone who lost friends and family during the pandemic, one of the most difficult times we ever experienced as a society. There were 14,000 deaths in Quebec. It would be an understatement to say that the pandemic has had a lasting impact.

On that note, I will now address Bill C-295 in greater detail and share what the Bloc Québécois thinks of it.

The Liberal Party of Canada is suffering from a worrying bout of amnesia, since, in March 2021, the NDP moved a motion to nationalize and impose standards on long-term care facilities. All of the other parties voted against the motion. Why then are the Liberals introducing this bill today? Have they forgotten that that is an NDP position and not a Liberal one? Who knows? I must say, since the emergence of the NDP-Liberal government, the two parties seem to share some of the same positions. At least the bill introduced today is slightly different from the motion moved by the NDP in March 2021.

The Bloc Québécois proposed two amendments to Bill C-295 that were accepted. The first aimed to replace the concept of manager with that of officer. In an earlier version of the bill, the concept of manager was far too broad. As my colleague from Shefford so eloquently put it, if the concept of manager had been retained, the bill could have applied to a public servant responsible for procurement or to a nurse team leader. This is absurd, considering that the bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code to make it an offence for long-term care facilities, their owners and their officers to fail to provide the necessaries of life to the residents of facilities. The concept of officer is well established, since, in the bill, it applies to directors and senior administrators, including the president, vice-president, and so on. In short, the amendment puts the responsibility squarely on the people who run the homes, and not the workers who are already doing all the work.

The second amendment proposed by the Bloc Québécois requires judges to take the laws of Quebec and the provinces into account. It seems to me that members here in the House of Commons often need to be reminded that health care falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the other provinces. While successive Liberal and Conservative governments have repeatedly tried to interfere in this provincial jurisdiction, nothing will magically change that fact.

Several provinces, including Quebec, already have legislation in place to tackle elder abuse and require care facilities to have policies and processes for handling complaints. It is therefore important that judges take these laws into account before imposing any prohibition orders.

Lucien Bouchard, one of the founders of the Bloc Québécois, said the following:

The government has neither the intent nor the mandate to abandon any part of Québec's constitutional jurisdictions...

Successive governments in Québec, regardless of their political option [as to the status of Quebec], have always worked to reaffirm its jurisdiction in order to foster its people's [Quebeckers'] control over its economic, social and cultural development....

This quotation is timeless, as enduring as Canada's resolve to make decisions for Quebec.

I campaigned for the “yes” side during the referendums of 1980 and 1995. I distinctly remember the federalists' fear campaign. They still make similar arguments today.

When Quebec stands up to Canada and stands up for its interests, threats to freeze funding that Quebec is entitled to usually follow. It is funny. Ottawa pulls out this argument as though it were pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Just two weeks ago, here in the House, Ottawa threatened Quebec with lower health transfers if we refused to exchange our francophone workers for unilingual anglophone doctors.

During the pandemic, in May 2020, the negotiations between the Premier of Quebec, François Legault, and the federal government were particularly tense, including about the need to call in the army to help with the long-term care facilities. In his Speech from the Throne, the Prime Minister of Canada used Quebec's need for military assistance to announce his intention to impose Canadian standards in long-term care facilities. It was also a Liberal campaign promise in 2021. The Liberals promised a hefty $6 billion for long-term care facilities provided their standards were imposed.

This bill raises a question. If the federal government is now going to be interfering in Quebec's long-term care facilities and private seniors' residences, will the government threaten to freeze or reduce Quebec's health transfers? That is an issue that needs to be considered. Do we also need to reiterate that, in December 2020, the Quebec National Assembly unanimously adopted a motion denouncing the implementation of pan-Canadians standards for long-term care and demanding an increase in health transfers?

This paternalism must stop. Not only does Quebec already have standards to prevent neglect and abuse, but it also has solutions on how it can improve in this area. Earlier, my colleague from Shefford listed a set of standards that Quebec is implementing to try to ensure that what happened during the pandemic never happens again. We are talking here about prevention, rather than criminalization, in order to protect the most vulnerable members of our society.

In closing, the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of Bill C‑295, so that it can be improved in committee. We need to ensure that, with this bill, we are actually helping the provinces and Quebec to protect their seniors, rather than just quickly adding criminal offences to the Criminal Code without thinking about the long-term consequences.

I will end my speech on a more personal note. My mother lived in a long-term care facility from January 2020 to November 2020 and passed away there. She did not die from COVID‑19 necessarily, but she did experience it. She received remarkable care. When talking about this bill, I want members to keep in mind that there are people in our health care system who do an amazing job. It is not the workers themselves who are targeted by this bill, but the officers.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-295, an act to amend the Criminal Code, to make sure it is a criminal offence when owners and managers of long-term care facilities fail to provide the necessities of life to residents within them.

We have an aging population. One is six in Canada will be one in four in just a couple of years. We all have members in our families, such as mothers and fathers, who are aging. I am aging. We are all going to need long-term care. The Conservative Party absolutely agrees that we have to protect the most vulnerable, and this bill is a good start. It would make sure the necessities of life are provided. However, the bill does not necessarily go far enough.

I am going to take up the theme of the pyramid of needs. We know that in the pyramid of needs, food, shelter, clothing and security are at the bottom, and this bill would address those necessities. We all heard stories of people who were left in their own excrement, did not have enough water or were dehydrated and of the lack of food during the pandemic, but what about their emotional and mental well-being? More needs to be done there.

My mother died in long-term care, and the children had to choose who would go in. That is not fair or compassionate, so there is more to be done with the bill. We also saw, even after science showed that those who were vaccinated could get and transmit COVID the same as the unvaccinated, that people were discriminated against and not allowed to visit their loved ones, even with reasonable accommodation.

Let us think about what happened during the pandemic. I received so many calls at my office from people who were trapped on one side of the border and could not visit their loved ones who were dying in long-term care facilities. There was no compassionate exemption made. I applied many times, but usually the length of time it took to get approval meant the person had already died. It is tragic when somebody is alone and vulnerable without even one family member there.

I can remember that when my mother died in long-term care, I had to hold up an iPad so that my brother, sister and all the people who were not able to see her could say goodbye. After 95 years of a well-lived life, it was very sad. Then there was the whole issue of funerals. The number of people was limited and people were not allowed to go to them. That was also very sad. The bill takes a good first step to address some of these things.

At committee, I was pleased to see that some amendments were accepted, one being that the definition of “managers” was not specific enough. We want to make sure that all facilities, whether private or public, have standards of care. That is another issue that was not addressed. There are differences in the standards of care across provinces and types of facilities. I was lucky that my mother was at Albany Retirement Village in Petrolia. It did a wonderful job of taking care of her, although many times I had to stand at the window to say hello to her during the pandemic.

The other thing this bill would allow is for judges to consider this an aggravating factor in offences involving volunteer activities or somebody in a position of trust or authority. That is a good thing.

I thank the member for Vancouver Centre, who is a doctor herself. We are all aging, and she has brought these concerns before the House. It sounds to me like this is the moment when all parties are agreeing that, yes, we need to do something and it needs to be an enforceable criminal offence. We have a lot of laws in the country, but we do not necessarily spend a lot of time enforcing those laws. In this case, it is so important. These are vulnerable people who, in many cases, like if they have dementia, do not have the acumen to fight for themselves. We need to be the ones to put measures in place so those looking out for them are dealt with.

I would say, as a woman, this is also a gendered issue. We know that 85% of the people who are in long-term care facilities are women. We also know that 86% of the workers and volunteers in these facilities are women. We need to provide protections for those who give care and for those who are being cared for. We need to make sure that we are not just meeting the base level of the pyramid when it comes to their emotional and mental health needs.

We know that isolation caused huge issues during the pandemic not just among people in long-term care facilities, but even in the general populace. One in five people ended up with mental health issues coming out of the pandemic. The suicide rate was up immensely. Violence was up immensely, at 32% for the people in this age demographic of long-term care. Of course, we have seen a huge rise in crime across the country, a 39% increase. Therefore, addressing all levels of people's well-being will be important and this bill does not go that far.

I would argue that, in the future, people need to remember the lessons learned from the pandemic. It did not really help when we kept individuals away from seeing their loved ones and let others in because, at the end of the day, we let 90% of the people do what they wanted and the 10% who were unvaccinated could not, yet the science showed that both could transmit COVID. I think the reasonable accommodations of masking and personal protective equipment would have really addressed a lot of the loneliness, the agony of watching loved ones die, or not being able to get to loved ones who were dying, which was very serious.

The other thing I would say is that long-term care facilities have been studied over and again. There was a report at the health committee in 2018, when I was there, that talked about standards of care and the number of individuals needed per resident, which is not the same for all residents, for example, those who have dementia compared to those who are at a high-functioning level. Therefore, we certainly need to look at best practices in the country and adopt some kind of minimum standard of care with respect to the number of caregivers and the amount of time provided. We hear a lot about how many minutes of care residents will get a day. Clearly, we cannot tell human beings that they have had their seven minutes for the day and that is it, that is all; we need to be more compassionate than that.

While I am happy to see this bill and think it is a great first step, I would like to see us go further. I think the government has a huge opportunity, as it reflects on what happened during the pandemic with the violation of people's rights and freedoms, not just for those in long-term care facilities, but also the seven million Canadians who were prevented from leaving their country for three years, to do a thorough review and come back with policies that will address not only the basic needs of people, but their mental health needs and the emotional supports they need. Obviously, it is one step at a time.

I am happy to say that we will support this legislation and look forward to doing more things to protect our seniors, who are the most vulnerable in society.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today. I very enjoyed my talks with the member for Vancouver Centre. We have had a number of great conversations about various issues, including seniors issues. I have found her to be an outspoken supporter and critic when it comes to seniors issues. It is an absolute privilege to be standing here on legislation she has no doubt proudly brought forward.

This is an act that would amend the Criminal Code to create an offence for long-term care facilities, their owners or their managers who fail to provide necessities of life to residents of the facilities.

I believe it was Rawls who said that if we could go back to what he called the “original position”, meaning if we knew we were entering society but did not know how we were going to enter society, it would make sense that, if we knew one of the outcomes was to be in one of the more difficult positions in our society, we would want to do everything we could for such individuals.

For example, one could be sitting outside the world, and one could come into this world not knowing where one was going to come in, whether one was going to come in as Bill Gates, a billionaire, or whether one was going to come in as someone at the other end of the economic spectrum. If coming in as Bill Gates, one would probably be fine. One's concern would probably be if one came into a more challenging place in our society. For example, on the challenges an individual who faces a disability may have, one would want to make sure society was innately fair to persons with disabilities.

I believe this is a little analogous here. If in fact we knew we might have the lottery and might end up as an individual without any sort of control over our life whatsoever, with perhaps reduced faculties going forward, we would want to make sure this society, this country, was fair to those individuals. Unfortunately, that is not always the case today.

I, of course, as everyone else in here, will be in that situation hopefully at some point in my life. That is a little different than the original position, in that most of us will be in the position where we will be coming toward the winter of life, and perhaps facing reduced faculties and having our complete life, from food to recreation or even just to seeing daylight, completely at the control of someone else. What a difficult position to be in.

I revel in the wisdom of folks who are a couple of years my senior, and so I have often had conversations with individuals. It can be a very challenging time for individuals who have had very high-functioning lives or have been in charge of the destiny of many others in life. These are people who have been surgeons and doctors, or people who have had other lives under their control and who had control over everything in their life and have been successful in life. They find themselves now in a state where they are completely reliant on others. What a sacrosanct responsibility for those individuals who are now in charge of these individuals who have given so much to society and who have built the greatest country in the world.

We have such an incredible responsibility to make sure those people who built our country are taken care of. Unfortunately, we heard through the pandemic and before the pandemic that oftentimes people just did not get fair treatment in their life. That is why this legislation is a step in the right direction. We, as a society, have to make sure those individuals who have given their entire lives to building this country, building the best country in the world, are protected. If others are in fact letting them down, there must be consequences for not providing these people the care when they need it most. Individuals in some cases are completely and utterly reliant on those individuals, so if there is neglect or, worse, willful neglect or even purposeful harm, these individuals must be held accountable.

That is why I will be proudly voting for Bill C-295. I thank the sponsors of this bill for bringing it forward.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

It being 12:07, the time provided for debate has expired. Accordingly, the question is on the motion.

If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we request a recorded vote.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Pursuant to Standing Order 98, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, December 6, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

The House resumed from December 4 consideration of the motion that Bill C‑295, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, be read the third time and passed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at third reading stage of Bill C‑295 under Private Members' Business.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #479

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I declare the motion carried.

(Bill read the third time and passed)