Madam Speaker, I know the government often says that we cannot move forward on anything unless the provinces and territories are also in agreement. Of course, if we actually lived with that kind of suggestion, we would never have had universal medicare.
I will just finish the quote by March Cohen, because it goes to the heart of the issue:
The setting of clear standards in health care as a condition of federal funding is not an attack on provincial jurisdiction—it is the only path forward to a universal public system of long-term and continuing care, the same path Canada took to universal hospital and physician care. Seniors and people with disabilities deserve nothing less.
This motion calls on us to do exactly that work to engage with provincial and territorial leaders, experts in the system, and health care workers to come up with those standards to put in place protection for seniors, so that what we saw happen in the pandemic, with the loss of lives, will never happen again.