moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
Madam Speaker, for those who do not remember, I just want to quickly refresh them. This bill seeks to amend the Criminal Code under section 215, to ensure that there is a clear duty of the persons responsible for providing the necessaries of life to vulnerable adults to do so. It is very clear.
I want to thank the House. All of the parties have supported this bill because, I think, we saw what happened during COVID, the fact that many units and institutions responsible for caring for vulnerable adults did not follow protocol, did not do all of the things that they needed to do to ensure the safety of vulnerable adults. The bill is very clear, and I want to thank those who saw it and who spoke to it at the committee stage. There were some excellent amendments made that were accepted unanimously by the committee and are incorporated now into the bill.
I just want to remind everyone that it must be made clear that when we refer to people who are taking care of the necessaries of life for vulnerable adults, we do not include in that group people who are family or blood relatives who are looking after anyone. They are out of this equation. The ones we are talking about are people who are looking after three or more vulnerable adults and who are not actually bound by blood or family ties.
We have seen what happened. As a result, I brought this bill forward because, as we well know, the federal government has no responsibility, really, for long-term care facilities because they are actually under provincial jurisdiction. However, we do have some ability to look, as we did, at child abuse and to look at the fact that anyone who is not caring for and bringing the necessaries of life to vulnerable adults should be held responsible.
I must say that about four or five days ago, a report came out in my province of British Columbia that showed that, actually, for-profit agencies were not using all of the money they were given to care for vulnerable adults. They were not actually providing the hours of service. However, non-profit societies were providing more than the hours of service they were being paid for. Therefore, I think it is really important for us to recognize that this tells us that there need to be some regulations, some ability to enforce this ability to take care of vulnerable adults. By “vulnerable adults”, I want to remind the House, we do not just mean seniors. We mean any adult who is vulnerable because of age, disability, mental illness, or any other inability to take care of themselves personally. This is the definition of a vulnerable adult; it is not only our seniors.
I want to thank everybody in the House. I could speak and speak, but members have heard me speak about this. I know that most of us in the House actually support this bill, and I want to thank everyone for their support. I am hoping we can get this bill passed so we can protect the vulnerable adults in our society, especially now that we know there is evidence that COVID is on the rise again. The respiratory syncytial virus is on the rise again. Influenza is on the rise again this fall. I just want to let members know that we do not want a replication of what happened during COVID.