Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to stand in this House of Commons in the 44th Parliament to deliver my speech. To begin, I would really like to thank all of the constituents of Elgin—Middlesex—London who re-elected me to come and be their voice here in Ottawa.
I am going to switch right into the debate today because it is a very important debate that we are having. Bill C-3 has been introduced. It has a lot of merit when it comes to some of the important efforts that we are trying to make. I will start by reading a quote that I read on Facebook. This quote is from September 13 and was posted by the London Health Sciences Centre.
“We are the people who deliver your babies. We are the people who heal your injuries. We are the people who help you live with chronic diseases. We have worked tirelessly through the pandemic to keep you safe.
The vast majority of Londoners have shown appreciation for our work and respect for our people. But a small minority has taken its protests to our hospitals, putting our patients, staff and physicians at risk.
While everyone has the right to free speech, our patients, staff and physicians have an equal right to seek and provide health care without harassment. We have important work to do to care for our patients. We have therefore enhanced security and are working with London Police Service to keep patients, visitors and staff and physicians safe during today's planned protests. We are closely monitoring this situation to ensure the continuity of patient care.”
I bring this forward because occurred in my region back on September 13, just days before the federal election. As COVID continued to grow, we continued to see these types of things. In Ontario, there were protests at 10 different hospitals that day.
The post was brought to my attention by Jason DeSilva, a friend of my husband. He was diagnosed with cancer, and thought, “What am I going to do?” When we see places like this and we are in pain and suffering and in critical illness, it is important to know that there is access to those types of buildings.
It was brought to my attention, and all I could think of were the people being impacted. I continued to read through all of the different comments. There were something like 968 comments, and I cannot even imagine the number of retweets. People were talking about this. Following that, there was a comment made by one of the patients, who said:
“Never ever protest at a hospital.
I've lived out the worst days of my entire life inside of a hospital when I needed health care workers the most.
I've had my insides cut apart, ovarian cancer painstakingly scraped out of my abdomen, multiple organs cut apart and stitched back together, a crushed femoral nerve as I took each step in agony to make it into the car for my long ride home after cancer surgery, all while wearing a diaper as my insides continued to bleed and leak.
Never ever protest at a hospital no matter how you feel about things right now. People going through the hardest days of their lives, and the staff that care for them, shouldn't have to deal with you. (There are other places to go if you feel you need to do that.)”
With this, it had “#beatcancer” and “#beagoodhuman”.
Another message that came from the post was this:
“Thankfully, my husband's appointment at the London cancer clinic was the next day.... Please know that the majority of people were appalled that such a protest would be carried out at any hospital...and we all know that the very people that showed up at this protest would be welcomed and treated with compassionate care in their time of any medical need at the very place where they protested...that's what makes it even more sad.... I hope they realize that this was a mistake and will never do this again....hank you to all our London hospitals for being there for us all.”
This has been a very trying time. When we talk about things like protests at hospitals, we all can agree that when someone is going to the hospital, in many cases it is their family and the individual who are driving. There is a great concern as they are driving there. Who knows what type of treatment they are going for? Maybe they are going to speak to a doctor to get a treatment plan, looking forward. Maybe it is cancer. Maybe they are having a new baby. Who knows what it may be? We recognize that this time is extremely stressful. Not being able to get into that type of facility is extremely concerning for so many people.
We can thank our health care providers. Throughout this pandemic and the last 20 months, we have seen the finest of the finest really step up. I think of the health care workers at the St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital; I think of the people at the London Health Sciences Centre and all across this great country, all of those people who stepped forward.
They heard there was a virus and a potential of being killed, and we saw health care workers put extra gear on and take extra caution. They served at the time when people needed them the most, when there was so much unknown and so much angst. Those people stepped up for us.
This is why I am so passionate in ensuring that those health care workers, who during the last 22 months have been there on the front line helping us, are not put in this situation. It is not fair to the health care workers, it is not fair to the staff who work there and it definitely is not fair to the patients and their families.
I also want to say it is not just those people who have helped us out. Across this country we have seen volunteers and organizations that have really stepped up. Because it is my first time being able to really talk about this, I want to thank my staff: Cathy, Jena, Scott, Jillian, Charli and Raghed. We really believe in service over self, and that is exactly what we see here. We see, in our Parliament, in our health care fields and in anybody who has stepped up during this pandemic, this service over self.
Returning to the debate on Bill C-3, I want to talk about a rational discussion, where we can recognize that we can have peaceful protests, but never lose critical services. The protests in London took place on September 13. I was going through the newspapers looking at those days and I was reminded of something. This is a quote from a London Free Press article on September 13, written by James Chaarani, “When asked why they chose to protest at a hospital,...the executive director of the London chapter of Vaccine Choice Canada, said it was a busy intersection and the group wanted to show support for health care workers. 'It's an opportunity for people of London to drive by this intersection and see that not everybody agrees with what the government is doing, and often our voice is not heard'”.
I am not here to try to debate whether they are right or wrong; that is not my choice for today. I recognize we have to look at the big picture. We have to look at what happens when this is critical infrastructure and what happens when this is going to have an impact on our people.
I would like to inform the House that I will be splitting with the member for Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte.
These are ultimately critical times for families. I think about myself, because following this protest my mom fell ill. She fell ill two days before the election. It is very personal, because when I talk about the health of my mother, that is what always comes first to me. I apologize to my mom because I know she is watching today. When I went to see her that day, I thought she was dead. I walked in there and kept rubbing her to get her awake. When I finally got her awake, I called my sister who said to take her temperature. I called the MPP Jeff Yurek, who said to take her temperature. However, what I needed to do, ultimately, was get her to the hospital.
I wonder what it would have been like. I know what I am like. Anyone in this chamber, as well as anyone at home, knows the passion I have for my loved ones. I think about what would have happened to me personally and what would have happened to others, and I cannot even imagine being in that type of situation.
These are feelings that are very strong. I know that throughout Canada, protests continue to happen. It is important to have the right to protest, but there is a time and place, and when it comes to projects and people's health and safety, that is not the time to put people at risk.
I am going to quickly switch gears and talk about the other part of this, about extending health benefits for sick days to federally regulated employees. Here in Canada we have approximately 910,000 federally regulated employees, and the majority of them are here in our government. We know that there are 18,000 employers whose labour rights and responsibilities are defined by the Canada Labour Code, and these types of organizations include our Crown corporations, Canada Post operations, port service, marine shipping, ferries, tunnels, canals, bridges and pipelines.
I think it is very important, as we saw through this pandemic, that when we are sick we have the ability to take time off. It is very important that when we are looking at this we understand that, if somebody is sick, they do not go to work. We do need to have some sort of backup plan. I know in many of the federal government policies that there is time and space for that, but for others, not so much. I think it is a great opportunity to have this discussion.