Human Resources Committee on March 28th, 2022

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with Mr. Coteau.

I have two brief questions. My first question is for Mr. Villeneuve.

Mr. Villeneuve, in January, not so long ago, your association made the following statement in a press release: “Governments must work together as a federation in crisis to immediately negotiate innovative strategies [...]”. This referred to challenges caused by labour shortages in the care economy. The statement was signed by two nursing associations.

Ms. Smart, you spoke earlier of a national strategy to integrate training. I'd like to hear more about this idea, about how we can deal with this on a national level.

What do you think those innovative strategies would be?

You mentioned some of them earlier.

I would like to hear briefly from Mr. Villeneuve and Ms. Smart about these innovative strategies.

[Michael Villeneuve]

My feed cut out a bit, but I think I got the gist of the question.

We have tabled a number of suggestions in our pre-budget submission, which I'll be happy to share with the committee. Things that tend to work for nurses are boosting the staffing, tax incentives and loan forgiveness.

The thing that is slightly longer-term, but that we think is very critical and gets somewhat to the other questions asked, is that we have to do some planning. With no disrespect to my great colleague, Katharine Smart, who's a famous pediatrician, you could trip over pediatricians in this country trying to find someone to care for your elderly parents. It's the same for nursing.

We don't operate in 13 silos. We're a fluid country. People are educated in one place and they practise in another. We think that a really deep dive into purposeful planning would make a big difference.

I don't want to use any more of your time.

Thank you.

[Dr. Katharine Smart]

I'll also comment.

From our perspective, in terms of innovative ideas, we've mentioned some of them today, such as national licensure and opportunities to create more mobility within the health workforce. They also create a lot more opportunities to scale and consider virtual care, and how it can be used to address access issues, particularly with things like rural and remote patients being able access specialist care.

The other piece is scaling integrated, team-based models within the primary care system. We are hearing over and over from our colleagues in family medicine that the old style of the fee-for-service siloed business model in family medicine is not attracting new doctors. They want to work in teams. They want to provide collaborative care to their patients.

Those two ideas, if implemented, would have quite profound impacts on access and sustainability.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have two more minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Could I jump in now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Go ahead, Mr. Coteau. You have two minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I have a question for Mr. James Janeiro, but first I want to thank Mr. Villeneuve for serving the community of Don Valley East. You mentioned Sunnybrook. I want to say thank you for all the work you've done. There's no such thing as retirement, so I'm sure we'll see you around sometime in the near future.

Mr. Janeiro, I have a quick question for you.

We always see posts up for jobs in the developmental sector, and they stay there for a long time. Can you talk a bit more about why it's so hard to find people, specifically in this sector?

[James Janeiro]

There are many factors that go into it, but the simple, boiled-down point, unfortunately, has to do with wages. Wages in this sector are simply too low, particularly for the work it entails. If you can imagine, it's supporting children and adults with intellectual disabilities, often in a congregate care setting like a group home, which means it's a lot of attending to daily care needs. There's some feeding, some toileting, lifting and that sort of thing. It's taxing work, it's difficult work and the wages, unfortunately, at the moment do not match up with the difficulty and the nature of the work.

I'll also say, though, that another part of it is the structure of the work. I alluded earlier in my comments to the ratio of part-time versus full-time work, though as time goes on—a lesson from the pandemic—there is a move towards full-time work, rather than part-time opportunities. We've seen, for example, that those full-time opportunities tend to be scooped up a lot more quickly than part-time opportunities, which I think is a reasonable expectation.

The last thing I'll put on the table here is that the developmental services sector, like the personal support worker sector and other parts of caregiving, is often a first job for newcomers to Canada. One of the realities of the pandemic over the last couple of years is that fewer newcomers are coming to Canada and needing that first job. We have felt that pinch across the care network, the care economy, such that we're seeing fewer and fewer new people come up. We're seeing repetition, where somebody was in the sector, left the sector, and is now back again for one reason or another, but we're seeing fewer entrants into the sector, we think in part, because the pipeline of people interested in these jobs coming from abroad has been narrowed by the pandemic.

Hopefully, as we get to a postpandemic stage of COVID, we look forward to newcomers coming back to Canada in large numbers and welcoming them into our sector as a great first job, and maybe a second and third job as they get used to life in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Janeiro.

Mr. Coteau, your time is up.

We started a bit late, so to be fair, I'm going to go to Madame Chabot, and then Madam Zarrillo, for one short question to finish out this round. I see no objections.

Madame Chabot, you have a short question.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

We know that, in the context of the labour shortage, there is a tendency to recall people who have retired, be they doctors or nurses. This was the case in Quebec, at least, where the right tax conditions were created to avoid penalizing them.

Could the federal government find tax solutions to encourage retired workers to return to work?

[Michael Villeneuve]

Mr. Chair, I would be pleased to take a short crack at that.

I think that's a reasonable solution. What we must be careful about is where we have really major shortages. For example, we're very pressed in critical care. The kinds of people coming out of retirement may want to step back in and do.... For example, we saw a lot doing vaccine clinics and so on, but they may not be as easy to move right into critical care, acute care, operating rooms and so on, unless they are very, very current. Yes, it will attract some people, but whether it attracts the calibre—I mean that in the sense of safety—of the kinds of people we want, I'm not so sure.

We'd have to look at that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madam Chabot.

Madam Zarrillo, one final question.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

I'll direct this question to Dr. Smart.

This is around ancillary economy-driven aspects of the care economy. We've talked a lot about care work itself. I'm just wondering if Dr. Smart has any comments about what ancillary businesses will also grow and that we need to invest in within Canada. I'm thinking about PPE. I'm thinking about anything, such as infrastructure, lifts and things like that.

I would love to hear some thoughts as to how this will all swing around to other areas of the economy.

[Dr. Katharine Smart]

There are definitely opportunities for Canada to grow its economy in terms of things like providing PPE. Also, vaccine production, I think, is going to be critical. If we're learning anything from COVID, it's that the playing field keeps changing. There's still lots of innovation coming with vaccines. Our ability to produce and scale those up within the country I think would be quite meaningful.

The other area is pharmaceutical production. There's an increase in global drug shortages. The ability to produce and provide pharmaceuticals within Canada would also be a benefit. I think there are many potential aspects of our economy that would be related to health where we could be producing things that we would need in the health care sector that would also be an economic benefit to Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, witnesses, for your very valuable input into this study and your testimony today before the committee.

With that, I will adjourn the meeting for today.