Mr. Speaker, I am fully guilty. I did have my phone nearby. I apologize to those who are watching virtually, and I appreciate that they are paying attention. It is great to hear they are listening to my words. I was just ensuring they were on their toes and attentive to my words on this legislation.
As I was saying, there is a great cross-section of support from a wide variety of stakeholders, particularly people who deal with bereavement and illness. I want to go back and mention some others: the ALS Society of Canada and the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association. The reason I want to ensure they are on the record is to show the universal support we are hearing from Canadians wanting to address this expansion of compassionate care leave.
One other angle I want to address on the legislation is the business community. My father, Ed, owns a trucking business. As I mentioned, my family falls under the Canadian Labour Code in our work. In having conversations with some business owners on this, my message and my pitch to them is that it is not only in the best interests of the employee to have this compassionate care leave program in place; it is in the best interests of businesses as well. If an employee goes back to work mere days after the loss of a loved one, that person is probably not back to work at 100%.
In my pitch for support, I would say to those business owners that when they allowed that up to three weeks of bereavement or compassionate care leave, they would get back a better employee. They would get back somebody who would be ready to go back to work, maybe having struggled with grief and bereavement, the paper work we talked about, all that process. It may be a couple more weeks until they come back, but it would be a win for that person's mental health, for that business, the employee and the workplace.
As mentioned, this is not the end of the process; this is the next step on compassionate care leave. Many colleagues from different parties, including ours, have said that we need to go further and look at this when it comes to employment insurance and making this more universal across the country when it comes to all Canadians who pay into EI.
The support we have heard today for the bill demonstrates we are making progress and building support. We are hearing from a cross-section of political parties and Canadians from all walks of life who are on board with the bill. It is a tangible thing that we could do for people's mental health. We need to give them the time they need to grieve, the time to wrap things up, the time to go back to work when they are ready.
I want to wrap up my comments by saying a big thanks to caregivers in our country for what they do, outside of COVID. It is an emotional, difficult balancing act that many of them face with their mental health, their financial perspective and a wide variety of factors. We owe them a great deal of gratitude.
My message today is that the Conservatives understand the importance of caregivers. We understand the strain bereavement has on mental health, not just during the final days, or weeks or maybe months with a love ones, but in the days and weeks after in giving them closure. It is a time to heal and reflect. This is a great bill that deserves wide support, not only in the chamber but across the country. I look forward to playing my role in seeing it cross the finish line.