I was listening to that. I grew up outside the GTA, and it is so true that in our large urban centres we are really facing a home care crisis. Partly it's aging, but the extraordinary diversity, certainly of the GTA community, is putting pressures on a system that simply has not been designed or adequately equipped to deal with the need of either providing support to all diversity families in their homes or providing institutional support.
It's interesting that, in terms of response, the beds in home care or nursing homes, for instance, actually might be arguably even less accessible today with the rising pressures on them than they were 20 years ago. We have not kept pace.
Investments here are critical, because certainly women's unpaid labour continues to be drawn upon. Caregivers are on the front lines of this crisis. Their own health suffers. That has certainly been my experience in my family.
To do nothing is to continue to exploit the labour of women. This is a very concrete, black-and-white example of where failures of public supports, and certainly of imagination and vision, leave families across the country hanging. It's acute in communities where institutionally or historically there have not been services to those communities that reflect cultural needs or their languages, particularly in seniors' care.
There is going to be a period of catch-up, but putting our heads in the sand is simply not the answer here. We have to really make a commitment to understanding the role of public supports and services to families as they go through this transition and try to enhance the quality of life of seniors. As Kiran was saying, Canada has fallen back and is behind.
It is complicated by the federal-provincial jurisdiction. Home care and many of these supports are clearly in the provincial domain, but certainly we have transfers here from the federal government.