Evidence of meeting #150 for Health in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was system.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Robert-Falcon Ouellette Liberal Winnipeg Centre, MB
How much of this technology is currently being used? Is anyone using any of this technology in any health care setting in Canada? Do people actually have buttons they push for assistance in home care or any other situation?
Chief Executive Officer, Liberty Defense Holdings Ltd
From my experience, at this point a lot of this is due to the gun violence that has occurred in the U.S. For example, at the Mayo Clinic last month the CEO reported that 30,000 weapons had been identified within facilities in the U.S. Those are actively captured weapons that were prevented from being introduced into facilities.
An approach has to be able to account for, number one, a staff member alerting that they need help, and, number two, enabling them to have the training to be able to respond to that scenario. Of course, number three is really preventing anything from getting inside the facility. There should be no reason for any type of threat article to make its way into a facility.
Liberal
Robert-Falcon Ouellette Liberal Winnipeg Centre, MB
Do a lot of employees have access to buttons they can push if they are in home care settings, for instance? Will you talk about that a little bit? Obviously, we're spending $5 billon on home care, $200 million of that in Manitoba. We often think those are very safe environments, but when you're dealing with people, sometimes issues do arise. Do people have the proper security devices to alert others that there is a problem?
Health and Safety Representative, Canadian Union of Public Employees
We are starting to see some technological solutions being integrated into home care, particularly with smart phones and devices being provided by employers. The problem is that they don't give any ready access to help in an urgent situation. Even if the care worker has the ability to call for help, it could be 10 to 20 minutes, or maybe even up to an hour, before the closest colleague could get to them to provide help. The response system ends up becoming the police for the home support workers. Really, we've missed an opportunity there to assess the risk they're being exposed to prior to putting them in there with that button.
The use of panic buttons and alarms is more widespread in the acute care sector. In late 2016 in Nova Scotia, we had someone enter a rural hospital with a firearm. Luckily, nobody was injured in that incident, but it was a bit of a wake-up call for the system.
I had the opportunity to participate on a task force that was making recommendations to the premier of Nova Scotia to improve health and safety and security in the acute care sector. One thing we found out very quickly was that some hospitals had such a system, where there was someone on the front desk who could press a button so that the police knew there was an emergency, and some did not. Some hospitals had systems whereby nurses who might be in a patient's room alone wore a button to hang around their neck in order to be able to call for help when something went wrong, and some did not. One of our recommendations was for standardization of that across our acute care sector.
Liberal
Robert-Falcon Ouellette Liberal Winnipeg Centre, MB
Was that in the acute care sector across Canada or just within the province?
Health and Safety Representative, Canadian Union of Public Employees
That task force was just mandated to make recommendations to the health minister in Nova Scotia. I know there is a bit of a patchwork across the country. No province that I know of has a standardized application of that kind of technology right across the province.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Okay. The time is up.
I want to thank the witnesses for their contributions.
We heard testimony that some home care workers had to leave their phones in their car when they went to a home. Does that sound safe?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
I live in rural Nova Scotia. It's all rural, and I know that the home care workers go to little places such as Advocate Harbour all by themselves. It just strikes me that it's not right.
Mr. Riker, would your equipment help an LPN in a car 100 kilometres away from anyplace else?
Chief Executive Officer, Liberty Defense Holdings Ltd
No, not necessarily, Mr. Chairman. The key thing is that our system is based on an approach of proactive prevention of a weapon coming into a facility, not in a car or something like that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
All right.
I'm going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes because we have to do clause-by-clause on Bill S-248, but I want to thank the witnesses again for their contribution.
You have a very strong message, and we thank all of you for that message.
We'll suspend for two minutes.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bill Casey
Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, we are going to do clause-by-clause of Bill S-248. I believe everybody has the bill.
We're going to move right to clause 2. It's very complicated—it's one sentence. Are there any issues with clause 2? Shall clause 2 carry?
(Clause 2 agreed to)
Now we're going to move to clause 3. It's another sentence. Shall clause 3 carry?
(Clause 3 agreed to)
