Government Operations committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. Members of the committee, thank you for hearing from me today. More importantly, thank you for taking the opportunity to hear from SEIU. We represent over two million members across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada. I proudly serve as intern

Government Operations committee  Yes. Thank you very much for the question. It's an extremely important one. The statistics already show that the majority of senior care workers in home care and long-term retirement homes are marginalized people. They are predominantly women and, of course, women of colour. In

Government Operations committee  Thank you. That's a great question as well. There's definitely something broken in the system. We all know that front-line health care is managed and delivered by the provinces, but I think there is a role for government to play, to oversee what the governments are doing on the

Government Operations committee  An increase in money to the front line would definitely help secure the full-time employment of workers who need to be there. We need to address staffing levels in those homes, so any resources that can be put back in by the federal government would absolutely make a huge impact

Government Operations committee  Chartwell is a big company. It's a North American-wide company. In Canada it is definitely one of the for-profit homes. I can share some numbers with you. Chartwell is valued at over $2 billion a year, and last year it paid out almost $130 million in dividends to shareholders. T

Government Operations committee  It's because it's all in their best interests. Again, as I say, the lobbying is for their shareholders and certainly not for the seniors who are living in their homes in their dying years, or for those caregivers who can't seam together full-time work. Paid sick days are a dream.

Government Operations committee  Absolutely, and as I said in my opening statement, we have to be ready for the next wave and to make sure that there's proper personal protective equipment in these homes. We must have infection control measures. When we try to talk to these corporations, they're not talking to u

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. I want to start off by wishing every nurse in our country a happy National Nursing Week—registered practical nurses, RNs, all of them. They really carried us through a pretty traumatic year. Members of the committee, my name is Sharleen Stewart. Thank you f

Government Operations committee  First I want to thank, like I said, many of you with whom I had conversations, and I want to acknowledge that they were very collaborative conversations. We definitely did talk. May seems so long ago when we all look back at what we were identifying. Some of the conversations w

Government Operations committee  We had conversations with some of the federal employees, not so much the MPs, about how we start to collect that—

Government Operations committee  We have had them with staff from the government.

Government Operations committee  Again, the announcements are a start, but there is a lot of work to do. There's going to be a need to put a lot of dollars into stabilizing the sector. Again, you saw some improvements in Ontario where they legislated higher levels of care staff or hands-on care for hours, but th

Government Operations committee  It's now putting it into action, like transferring it into the provinces and having them be accountable to make sure the money goes where it's directed.

Government Operations committee  Yes, we did, just as recently as this week. There still remains some concern over N95 accessibility. The unions are trying to get the government to agree to making it mandatory that all frontline workers have access to and use the N95. In some of the long-term care facilities,

Government Operations committee  It's been varying between sectors. Long-term care obviously was the first to get it, and then hospitals are now getting their first vaccination. Today we had a good announcement that they're going to move them up to priority for the second one, so that they're fully vaccinated, b