Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for this question because it gives us an opportunity to talk about the impact of decades of neglect of our health care system.
Decades of federal government cuts, Conservative or Liberal, to health care have resulted in provincial health care systems that have been starved of funding. The worst examples of this neglect, the horrible toll of this neglect, are the conditions in long-term care homes, where seniors who should be able to retire with dignity, safety and security, where family members should have confidence in knowing that their loved ones will be cared for are now, instead, seeing these as sites of some of the worst conditions. As the member pointed out, it is often and mostly the for-profit and privatized long-term care homes where we see some of the worst conditions.
More than ever, we need to commit to no longer allowing the for-profit model of health care, particularly for vulnerable people like seniors. We need to invest more in our health care system and make sure that workers at long-term care homes are paid a good salary so they do not need to work at multiple homes where there is an increased risk of the spread of an infection. We need to do a lot more to treat the people who have sacrificed so much, the seniors who have given their whole lives to this country. They should be able to retire with dignity, and long-term care homes should be places of security and safety, not what we have seen, places where COVID-19 has had the worst toll.