Thank you.
I'm Ian DaSilva, director of operations for the Canadian Support Workers Association. We represent 50,000-plus to 60,000 PSWs right across Canada. I would like to thank you for having us here today.
Governments, health human resource strategists, labour leaders and advocacy groups have long held that the simple reason for significant staff shortages is low wages. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current staffing crisis must force us to reconsider our decades-long fixation on wages as the principal driver behind any health care shortages and challenges, as this is simply false and the reason that we are all here today.
The reason is simple: It is the absence of basic professional respect and, most importantly, dignity. PSWs and frontline health care workers deserve a guarantee that their title of personal support worker or other [Technical difficulty—Editor] cannot simply be stolen from them at any given time. In short, title protection provides the professional framework from which professional dignity arises.
Unfortunately, for many Canadian frontline health care workers, this is simply not the case. Sadly, their dedicated time in these roles is increasingly perceived as having been a bad investment, especially as governments and employers refer to them with several different titles. In other words, why hire a PSW when one can hire someone else, calling them something else, to do the job of a PSW for less money?
PSWs across Canada serve as the backbone of the entire Canadian health care system. Personal support workers spend more time with patients. The shortage in our numbers is felt many times over by senior members of the health care team. Consequently, Canada's health care workforce is completely exhausted, creating a vicious domino effect that our health care system may not survive. To reverse this exodus and ultimately stop the cycle, we ask this committee for what we have always asked for and what our members continue to demonstrate to Canada—respect.
Ending this title flexibility will establish the necessary foundation to end the perceived replaceability of these workers. Human resource leaders across Canada remain incorrectly convinced that the solution can be found by simply opening the floodgates to fill these vacancies, but what impact does this have on those who have already paid for their education? Who are these people? Most importantly, what about the patient? At the end of day, it must be remembered that the PSW and the patient are cut from the same cloth. They are the guardians and protectors, and they are the real face of the Canadian health care system.
Patients across Canada in both home and long-term care facilities need to become the focus of government policy in coming years. Governments and advocates regularly tout the need for patient-centred care. This is the concept that our system was originally built upon, but over time it has become hijacked to focus on the needs of the system and its players, effectively making patients the last priority of government and industry planning.
For the past decade, the Canadian Support Workers Association has fielded concerns from families and caregivers expressing dismay at the turnover rates in all settings. The exhaustion of having to explain a health condition in detail, often several times within a 24-hour period, to new PSWs or other workers with another title and less training, becomes an overwhelming experience on its own. This situation is often worse for the sizable population of those with dementia, whose needs for continuity of care are becoming unachievable.
Patients are further disadvantaged by the significant disconnect in policy planning, in that the decision-makers remain very far removed from frontline health care activities. The disconnect only serves to fuel feelings of dissatisfaction from PSWs and those performing the duties of PSWs.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Canadian Support Workers Association and its provincial chapters formally recommend that the Minister of Health support the ending of unregulated health care provision in Canada and the recognition of the title of personal support worker. This would be an important first step in ending the constant devaluation of PSW education and in encouraging future Canadians to enter this field.
Most importantly, a professional framework will provide a permanent mechanism to conduit the concerns of patients to the health care system and, most importantly, vice versa. We ask that this government help us make the patient the priority again by making the PSW a profession of choice for Canadians.
Thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions.