Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the witnesses for being with us today. I know that for many of them it was short notice to appear, so I appreciate their being here.
I want to start by saying that with all due respect to my colleagues on the committee and our witnesses, it seems to me that this bill did not arise out of the larger questions about care of seniors in this country or elder abuse; it arose out of a crisis during COVID, when we saw Canada having to send its military in to provide assistance in long-term care homes. Not to disparage or diminish any of those other concerns, I think it was pretty clear in our discussion with Dr. Fry at the last meeting that this is what she was really aiming at in this bill.
I think two things are clear about that. One is that workers in long-term care struggled heroically through the crisis to try to provide the necessary care, but despite that struggle, we ended up with one of the worst records among wealthy countries for deaths from COVID in our long-term care.
That leads us to the question of why that happened. It's been phrased or framed a couple of ways. Quite often, it's asked, “Why didn't workers do their jobs?” However, I think an alternative frame is, “Why were they not able to provide that care?”
I'd like to ask Ms. Silas to address that question. Why did we end up with such a poor record during COVID? Can you speak to the framing of that question?