Justice Campbell was clear: We had never put occupational health and safety, the safety of workers, in our health care system. And we didn't. I was educated as a nurse. For a lot of doctors, it was always, “Put patients first.” Today, since SARS, we've been faced with the reality that we have to put workers on an equal footing. You heard the example from Sandy about a firefighter going into a fire without his or her equipment. We don't do that in health care.
What the Public Health Agency of Canada needs to do is separate completely public health, public security and occupational health and safety. Occupational health and safety is under provincial and federal laws. It's an employer's responsibility to provide the training and equipment that workers need, and health care is no exception.
That's what we're trying to drive here. We are not respecting the health care workplace as a workplace. It is not an area where things will just go well if we pray enough. It is a workplace that can be very dangerous, and we need to protect our workers.