Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm pleased to address you on this important bill, Mr. Minister. I thought it was interesting to hear you talk about your sense of urgency to get it passed so that we can provide this sick leave capacity for federally regulated workers.
Right away, I must say that I wish that sense of urgency had been there 12, 18 or 24 months ago when the pandemic was hitting full force. I feel that would have protected people and perhaps prevented the spread of infection and the overcrowding in our health care system. It is not as if the NDP didn't ask for it, because our leader has asked for it 22 times in the past year. It finally happened. We have talked about it before in the House. I understand that you are looking forward, but I feel this has dragged on a little over the past 18 months.
In your response to a question from Ms. Kusie, you opened the door for workers to have a few sick days already available. What Bill C‑3 is currently proposing is one day off per month, but it offers no leave bank to begin with. So to get two or three days of sick leave, it could take two or three months or maybe a little more if the employee was hired in the middle of the month, for example.
I'd like to hear your comments on that. Health experts tell us that people very rarely take only one day off when they are sick with something like the flu. Instead, they take two, three or four days off. Would you be open to the idea of setting up a bank of leave, maybe not all 10 days at once, but a small bank, so that the bill would be more realistic given how long people get sick for?