Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Ken Neumann, the national director of the Steelworkers. With me is Dominic Lemieux, our Quebec director. We will take five minutes each.
I want to thank the committee for the invitation to speak with you today. We have spoken to the finance committee on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and we are happy to deliver a message to this committee as well.
Like so many Canadians, our members are deeply impacted by the current situation. Steelworker members work in every sector of the economy. They are front-line health care workers, industrial, forestry and manufacturing workers, miners, security guards and university workers. Each of these sectors has been affected in different ways, from mass layoffs for some, to the desperate scramble for PPE by our members on the front line, to say nothing of the horrors faced by our members who work in long-term care.
The medieval conditions our elders have been subjected to are nothing new. COVID-19 merely exposed what happens when long-term care is left out of the country's strategy for universal health care. We believe this situation has to change and the federal government should take charge by including long-term care in the Canada Health Act.
Just last week our members of the basic steel production met via Zoom to focus on what must happen to ensure a secure future for an industry that was once owned in Canada by Canadian companies but now is entirely foreign-owned. Some of our steel plants are shuttered or close to it while infrastructure like bridges is being built—