Thank you, Chair, and thank you for acknowledging nurses week.
I'm Linda Silas, national president for the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. CFNU is the largest nursing organization in Canada—honestly, in North America—with 250,000 nurses and nursing students.
It's an honour to speak to you today, and thank you for the invitation.
I'll start off by acknowledging the important advocacy this bill is bringing through its sponsor, the honourable Dr. Hedy Fry, who put her conviction into action by advancing this bill through Parliament.
Like Dr. Fry, I too was mortified by what I saw unfolding in long-term care sectors in the months following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I also expressed deep concern about the quality of care provided in the sector long before COVID-19. In 2015, CFNU commissioned a report entitled “Before It's Too Late: a National Plan for Safe Seniors' Care”, because we knew that with our aging population and critically understaffed long-term care facilities, we needed to ensure seniors received the care they deserved. In 2015, we sounded the alarm bell.
Since that report was published, little has changed. The residents in these long-term facilities have suffered greatly. Nurses were pleased when the long-term care services standard was released earlier this year, but we know that much more needs to be done. The standards aren't mandatory, so without legislation requiring facilities to carry out the quality of care across the board, including a minimum of 4.1 hours of direct care per resident per day, seniors remain vulnerable.
Dr. Fry's bill allows us to continue shining a light on long-term care. I strongly support the intention of the bill to bring safety and well-being to residents.
I'm not going to quote the Criminal Code. However, nurses are very concerned with the definition of “manager” in the bill. It would create a situation in which workers within these facilities, who do not have senior decision-making responsibilities for the operation or make financial decisions, could be held criminally responsible for the quality of care residents receive.
Tasks associated with the definition of “manager” in the bill are reflective of tasks carried out by unionized nurses in these facilities. For instance, regulated nurses serve in leadership roles within long-term care facilities. They engage in activities such as training and supervising staff. They may be involved in hiring and scheduling of staff and lead the planning and coordination of provision of care to residents. These nurses are not responsible for determining the budget of the facility they work in, leading to how many staff are hired, the extent of the training they receive and other conditions within these facilities that have led to dire outcomes for residents. The actual owners of those facilities, the people who make key decisions around resourcing and quality of care, are often many levels above the nurses on the floor.
We know that in the for-profit long-term care home, the profit motive competed directly with the duty to provide optimal care. In Ontario, data shows that these homes, with significantly higher rates of COVID-19 deaths, employed an average of 17% fewer workers than not-for-profit municipality homes, but they could afford to pay dividends to their shareholders. At a time of an unprecedented shortage of nurses in all areas of nursing across the country, the current wording of this bill could push more nurses out of long-term care and act as an obstacle for recruiting in these especially challenging times.
On behalf of Canada's nurses, I call upon this committee to recommend changes to the definition of “manager” to mean any person who has senior decision-making responsibility for financial and other decisions regarding the fullness of responsibility under the definition of this bill.
Thank you, and I'll answer any question as needed.