Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today and for the importance of their testimony.
I just want to start off by saying that I agree that this is an issue of ageism. It is absolutely appalling to me that we don't have a meaningful national seniors strategy in Canada. I think of all of the work that has happened in terms of workforce development and a plan to replace our aging population in the workforce, but there has not been a plan put together about how we're going to support seniors as they age in our country. I want to thank everybody for this important testimony.
I will go to you first, Ms. Estabrooks. You talked about the fact that we're not seeing the very important skilled workers in this sector being respected, especially with the appropriate pay. One of the things that I saw in my province of British Columbia as well as across Canada was that a lot of those care workers were working two or three jobs at two, three or four different long-term care facilities, and as soon as the pandemic happened, some of them lost their employment at other places and were trying to manage their everyday life just doing one part-time job. I'm wondering if you could talk about how that has an impact on the services to our seniors.