Thank you, Mr. Doherty.
I would like to clarify, first of all, that Michael Hurley is the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.
Initially, long-term care was sort of the long-forgotten cousin of other sectors within the health care sectors, primarily hospitals, so workers in the long-term care sector did not initially have adequate access to PPE. Some workers in some homes were outright denied access to PPE; in other cases, it was being locked up and very tightly rationed.
We believe that workers are now gaining access to more PPE, but early on, it was certainly a dire problem that we believe contributed to the spread of the virus throughout long-term care homes.