Justice committee  I'll start. Thank your wife and give her hope, because I do have hope. I've been on many committees, on either violence or the nursing shortage, and we have a crisis in this country. The crisis goes further than nursing. It goes in all respects to our other health care workers.

Justice committee  Good afternoon. Sorry, Elizabeth. That bell is the worst part of the job. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, committee members, for the invitation. It's a privilege to be here. As you know, I would like to acknowledge that the land that we are sitting on is the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Justice committee  Thank you for the question. What we're working with is a death rate in for-profit homes that is twice as high as the other nursing homes that we see. I mentioned 17% higher in my presentation. Those are the numbers we're working with. We're hearing from those working at the base that there's a complete difference between a private, for-profit long-term care compared to a community-based or religious-based nursing home.

Justice committee  No. It was very difficult for health care workers who had to call on their owners and on their managers for dire help. When the report came out with the military—and I'm sure for Ms. Hall and Mr. Lake it was the same thing—we were all distraught. It was very difficult to read. We all committed as providers, as owners and as policy-makers that we would do better.

Justice committee  Your question is a heavy one, Ms. Larouche. I must start by saying that I do not represent Quebec nurses. The Quebec system is completely different from that in the rest of Canada, that's for sure. I am not qualified to answer those questions. What we do know, as I mentioned, is that long-term care, care for our seniors, is not a priority in any province or territory.

Justice committee  Ms. Hall is probably very right on the access to PPE, because, again, we've never put seniors' care as a priority in this country. Compared to an ICU, they were at the back of the bus to get any PPE, so I do agree there. I don't have the references. This was a last-minute thing, but in our brief, we will send the references on comparing the for-profit versus the community and not-for-profit long-term care, both on the deaths and on injuries to health care workers.

Justice committee  It's staffing, staffing, staffing. You know, if we want to put seniors at the middle of the equation and prevent neglect in elders' care, it will not be through the Criminal Code. Let's be honest. We have to put respecting seniors' care on the top of our list, and that is respecting the workforce, who just love their seniors.

Justice committee  They worked behind the curtains all the time. Nobody was taking care of it. As we said, in 2015 we came out with a report talking about the understaffing, the lack of training, the lack of personnel, etc., and no one was listening because it was a question of dollars and cents.

Justice committee  What we heard throughout the pandemic was that the for-profit homes were even more restrictive with regard to PPE, for example. That's when you saw the stories of PPE behind locked doors, because it was all addressed to an N95 respirator being a lot more expensive than a paper mask.

Justice committee  Yes. I'm sure Ms. Hall could explain to you every province's laws, but in most provincial laws for long-term care, there has to be an RN, a registered nurse, assigned on a 24-hour basis. However, sometimes that registered nurse is the director of nursing, and he or she is at home in the middle of the night.

Justice committee  Thank you. To add to Mr. Lake's presentation, let's be clear: We know what to do. We have occupational health and safety standards that are approved across this country. We have infection control standards that are approved and recognized across this country. We have staffing mechanisms that are approved across this country.

Justice committee  Thank you, Chair, and thank you for acknowledging nurses week. I'm Linda Silas, national president for the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. CFNU is the largest nursing organization in Canada—honestly, in North America—with 250,000 nurses and nursing students. It's an honour to speak to you today, and thank you for the invitation.

Human Resources committee  First, we need to turn the dial on their working conditions and the stories that are coming out. That's the number one reason they're not staying. We've seen federal government programs and provincial government programs to educate more personal care workers, and the last statistics I heard were that only 30% of them stayed after they entered.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. When you're in a crisis, paid education programs and paid preceptor programs are very important. Those programs that exist are in pockets here and there. They are pockets that exist if an employer has applied for it or a sector [Technical difficulty—Editor] has applied for it.

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Ms. Gladu. I hope your daughter is doing well in nursing. Right now, it's the understaffing. Among our members, 83% are telling us they are working understaffed every day. That means every day they go into work unable to provide great care—they're not able to do their job properly.