Mr. Speaker, in 1991 NDP MP Rod Murphy sponsored an act respecting a day of mourning for persons killed or injured in the workplace. It proclaimed April 28 as National Day of Mourning.
According to the Centre for the Study of Living Standards, Canada's rate of workplace fatalities is now among the worst in the industrialized world. Employers and governments are failing on this front and working people are paying for this failure with their health and their lives.
In 1984, when the National Day of Mourning was initiated, 744 workers were listed as having died from workplace injuries. Twenty years later, in 2004, that number stood at 928. In 2003 the Westray bill finally gave courts the right to hold corporations criminally responsible for unsafe working conditions.
Today, the NDP recommits our efforts to create safe workplaces where employers take full responsibility for the health and safety of their workers and where the government enforces the rules that are in place.