Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on the importance of establishing a national palliative care strategy. Every one of us here will die, and all of our families have faced the loss of a loved one or will face that loss. These traumatic moments are made much more difficult when there is a lack of access to quality palliative care.
Many jurisdictions have no 24/7 home support for dying patients or access to hospice care. It means that patients end up in emergency wards or overcrowded hospitals, with unnecessary cost to the health care system and unnecessary stress to the patients and their families.
Palliative care is home-centred. It is family-centred. It is community-centred. That is why the New Democratic Party is saying it is time we worked together, as all parliamentarians, on a national palliative care strategy, working with the provinces and territories and first nations and Inuit people to set the benchmarks.
I am calling on my colleagues to work with us on Motion No. 456 to establish a national palliative care strategy.