Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, in particular for indicating that he would be supporting the bill. I am grateful for that.
I had the privilege of working on a cross-party group that studied the issue of palliative care. The Parliamentary Committee on Palliative and Compassionate Care heard from hundreds of Canadians on this issue. I would like to read into the record one the comments we heard. This lady said:
Governments must support and invest in families during these tragically difficult times. The long term socio-economic benefits and returns of supporting families are far greater than the supposed cost savings that result from a politics of inertia. Doing nothing simply raises the toll of broken individuals and families. Colleen [her daughter] is living proof that there are gaps in our social and support systems that need to be updated. I am asking you [the committee] to extend compassionate leave benefits to at least 26 weeks in a 52 week period. I am also asking that you change the qualifying criteria to “gravely ill” as opposed to “significant risk of death”.
Both of these requests were granted. In fact, we went further than that by granting 35 weeks of benefits. Does my colleague not agree that this is a great step forward on something that has not been addressed by many governments for so long?