I share that honour with you. I would go further to say as a comment—and I won't ask you to comment on it unless you so choose—that I have called on the government to consider the application of the Westray law where there are instances of criminal negligence that have led to workplace death through either negligence or just as you've identified. It seems like, time and time again, the stories that come back are about workers who were asking for safe work environments and who were denied, through financial pressures, their ability to withhold or to refuse work, although legally they are allowed to do that.
I hope to have another round, but I'll share with you now that the way the publicly traded, for-profit sector has taken wage subsidies and paid out in dividends rather than providing and doubling down on the living wage and on the fuller-time, more secure employment, I think is going to go down as part of this national scandal. I hope that legislatively, as lawmakers, we can have within our frameworks accountability—again, through the Westray law, but I would also go even further, to extend it to political decision-makers—people who might have interfered from province to province on evidence-based expert advice and withheld funding or additional aid in the course of this pandemic. I hope there is an accountability framework in place so that this never happens again.
Mr. Chair, I know my time is running out. I will come back with some questions in my second round, just about what the standards might look like in a non-profit, taking the profit out of long-term care.
Thank you.