I want to thank both witnesses for their very compelling presentations on two topics that I find particularly relevant, as a critic for the status of women and the status of seniors.
We all know that the pandemic has disproportionately affected senior women. I want to take this opportunity to point out that we're currently celebrating National Caregiver Week. It's mainly women and senior women who take action and carry out this invisible work. I'm thinking of them this week. I hope that a day will be set aside for us to take into consideration their invisible work.
I now want to address the issue of long-term care facilities, or CHSLDs. To wrap up the topic of family caregivers in Quebec, I want to say that, once again, we have a great model. I witnessed the establishment of the first support home for caregivers. I want to highlight the work done by the Fondation Maison Gilles-Carle and by the staff at the Maison soutien aux aidants in Granby. They work very hard and support family caregivers.
Canadian health transfers dropped from 50% to less than 20%. To support our family caregivers and our CHSLDs, don't we urgently need to take action and increase this percentage to at least 35%? Wouldn't this be a way to give Quebec and the provinces the resources to provide better wages to these people and to improve the nurse-patient ratio?
I want to acknowledge the work carried out by the “guardian angels”, who worked very hard during the pandemic and who are often immigrant women. I think that it's high time to give Quebec back the resources to get things done. How could the federal government take steps to provide more personal protective equipment, or PPE, and more rapid testing? The federal government must work hard to improve care beyond the national standards for CHSLDs.
I want to hear Ms. van Beusekom's thoughts on this issue.