Thank you. Good afternoon.
Members of the committee, thank you for hearing from me today. More importantly, thank you for taking the opportunity to hear from SEIU.
We represent over two million members across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada. I proudly serve as international vice-president of our union and as president of SEIU Healthcare, which represents over 60,000 front-line health care workers in the province of Ontario.
Many of these members are employed in the long-term care facilities that have become an epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic. The crushing impact on these homes, their staff and the residents they care for cannot be overstated. Simply put, our system of care has failed.
We knew two things about this virus early on: one, that this was severely contagious; and two, that the elderly were especially susceptible to illness and death. You would think that subnational governments responsible for congregate care settings of the elderly would immediately recognize the risk of inaction around the long-term care sector. But provinces like Ontario overlooked the privately run long-term care sector and the inherent vulnerabilities that underpin those facilities.
Please note that I want to highlight the role of provincial governments only to stimulate discussion about what role the federal government could have in the future as we overhaul the long-term care sectors across Canada.
In black and white, the data tells us that these outbreaks and the resulting death toll seem to be concentrated in for-profit facilities. Deaths in for-profit homes are 50% higher than in non-profit homes. The rate of death is nearly double in for-profit homes.
Behind each COVID-19 number is a tragic story. Christine Mandegarian, Arlene Reid, Sharon Roberts: each a woman, each in her 50s, each a person of colour and each a personal support worker. If you are now willing to recognize them as health care heroes, then I submit to you that it will be an injustice to the families in mourning if we do not reveal the failings of our system.
First, Canada must maintain an ongoing supply of personal protective equipment. This is our number one concern. There is a chorus of cries from our nurses, personal support workers, dietary aides and cleaners. You name the job classification; they will tell you that there is rationing of PPE. Workers who should have been supplied much earlier continue to be left without the appropriate masks, shields and gowns, leaving them to wear garbage bags instead.
Second, out of concern for public health, employment in long-term care facilities should require full-time jobs with such benefits as paid sick time and a pension. Then workers would not be labelled as “wrongdoing pollinators” and be restricted to only one facility, as if they had done something wrong other than seek a living wage paycheque.
Third, mandate higher staffing levels to improve quality of care for residents and seniors. Providing higher levels of front-line staff would ensure that we have the human resources available to bathe, change, feed and care for our elderly, not just during a pandemic but always.
The failings we experience today were made worse because of the competing self-interest at the core of for-profit long-term care corporations—namely, the fiduciary duty to their shareholders. The failed experiment of for-profit operators in our long-term care system must come to an end.
Members of the committee, whatever form an overhaul might take, the federal government can and should play a role in supporting these precariously employed women who deliver our care. We are calling on the federal government to strengthen the retirement security of precariously employed, low- to modestly paid care workers without access to workplace pensions. After a career of serving our communities, they deserve to retire with the economic dignity they have earned. Without the support, the home care and long-term care sectors will leave behind workers incentivized to seek employment in other parts of our health care system that provide a more secure retirement.
Before I end, I want to point out the big elephant in the room. Each member of this committee, and your colleagues in Parliament and across government, are going to be heavily lobbied by massive for-profit long-term care corporations and their industry associations.
Are companies like Chartwell, Revera, Sienna and Extendicare going to lobby for higher standards for senior care with mandated staff-to-resident ratios, for transparency into transfer payment agreements for government contracts, or for full-time jobs for the women who deliver the care? Instead they will push to reduce regulations or for the government to pay for expenses the company itself should be paying.
When the lobbyists of the for-profit providers knock on your door, I want you to remember all those who have died and ask yourselves whose side you will be on: the side of shareholders profiting from our care system, or the side of the elderly and the women who care for them, too many of whom we have already lost.
Thank you.