Good evening. Bonsoir. On behalf of the more than 150,000 registered nurses for whom the Canadian Nurses Association represents, thank you for inviting me to join you today.
You've convened this panel to address helping vulnerable Canadians. These are people who are marginalized from society because of their income, age, or because they are newcomers to this country. These are people who are living with mental illness or struggling with substance abuse. They are people who deserve respect, dignity, and compassion, not labels. Stripping away the labels will help foster honest and productive conversations to properly examine the issue and advance real solutions.
Our first recommendation is that the federal government ensure Canadians have access to affordable adequate and safe housing by renewing federal funding for the $2.7 billion in expiring annual operating funds for social housing providers. There are very real consequences when a person's housing situation is unsafe or unstable. Recent outbreaks of tuberculosis in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been linked to poor ventilation and mould. As nurses who see the consequences first hand, we stress how important it is for government to maintain investment in the construction and operation of affordable housing, a major determining factor in a person's good health. Adequate housing can lead to better health status, both mental and physical, and reduce the effect of poverty on Canadians and Canada's resources.
Our second recommendation is a specific intervention: authorizing nurse practitioners to provide drug samples and to be signatories on federal forms. Take the experience of one of our members in Manitoba as a nurse practitioner working in the community clinic. She had a patient who needed to complete a disability tax credit form, but since CRA does not recognize NPs as signatories, that patient had to search for a physician to complete the form, even though the nurse practitioner is the patient's primary care provider.
The other recommendation is on the Food and Drugs Act, which prohibits nurse practitioners from distributing samples of drugs, even though provincial, territorial and federal laws allow nurse practitioners to prescribe these drugs. If you're wondering how important samples are, they are very important. A person with diabetes, for example, often must try different medications to find which one works best for them. Those trials become expensive quickly, if they do not have a drug plan. Both of these measures, providing drug samples and signing federal forms, effectively improve a patient's access to care, especially for those Canadians in financial difficulty, seniors and people with disabilities.
Our final recommendation calls for a comprehensive policy development, ongoing commitment, and immediate action. We recommend a consolidation of national efforts by creating an aging and senior care commission of Canada. By establishing this commission, the federal government could promote and safeguard the health, engagement, and productivity of Canadians as they age, which would in turn create savings across the health care system and improve sustainability for generations to come.
This commission would be funded for 10 years and would be responsible for developing and implementing a senior strategy that focuses on the following pillars: promoting the health and well-being of Canadians as they age; bolstering supportive chronic disease prevention and management through caregiver resources and community-based primary health care; and increasing system capacity around issues such as dementia and end of life.
Central to this is the recommendation that the federal government invest in a health innovation fund that could immediately support pan-Canadian aging for the care priorities of seniors. This fund would support infrastructure and drive implementation of the commission's recommendations. While this represents a large investment, it is in line with the scope and magnitude of the demographic shift we are facing. It is what we need to enable Canadians to age with dignity and receive care in familiar surroundings.
Thank you for your time today. I look forward to answering questions.