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. I'm a proud New Brunswicker from the beautiful land of the Mi'kmaq people.

I'm here as president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and on behalf of my 250,000 members. I'm proud that Danette, one of our leaders in British Columbia, will be presenting soon.

We're the working nurses. Like the paramedics, we're there 24-7, taking care of the sick.

Canada's nurses believe that the language in Bill C-321 complements the existing protections and Criminal Code changes outlined in Bill C-3, which is now two years old. I'll get to that soon.

The Criminal Code changes found in Bill C-3 aimed to ensure better safeguards for health care workers, including nurses. Now Bill C-321 proposes expanding the language to include first responders. We welcome this proposed change to the Criminal Code. We recognize that violence against any health worker or first responder when they are performing their duties is an aggravating factor to sentences.

The facts are shocking. You heard Elizabeth talk about the paramedic field. In 2023, a pan-Canadian survey of nurses was done. Two-thirds reported incidents of physical assaults over the past year and 40% of those nurses reported physical abuse more than once a month while engaged in their duties.

All workers deserve a workplace free of violence and abuse. It should not be tolerated. Sadly, nurses and health care workers experience it routinely. We have to look at these. We have to bring in new measures, such as changing the Criminal Code, but we will also talk about prevention modes.

Many people in Canada are aware that public safety personnel—peace officers, police officers, firefighters and corrections officers—have high-risk jobs and often face violence. Most would be surprised that the same ratios exist in the health care field. Our health care facilities and our health care system are not safe places to work.

In addition to physical injury, workplace violence is strongly correlated with negative impacts on workers' mental health and has been seen as an issue facing nurses for many years. Exposure to violence predicts negative mental health outcomes, including PTSD. From our survey of working nurses, three in four, or 78.5%, report symptoms of burnout. Similar data is seen with public safety personnel.

A similar study was done by CFNU in 2019. Nearly one in four nurses screened positive for PTSD symptoms. MP Doherty will remember all the work we did in 2019 on a federal framework on PTSD, which included health care workers, such as nurses and paramedics.

Sadly, violence and abuse are normal in the health care system. Such a high rate of violence would be unthinkable in any other profession. It needs to be stopped. The health care risks are often accepted.

The House of Commons committee on health, HESA, tackled the challenge of rampant violence against nurses for the first time in a 2019 study. Bill C-3 came out of this and came into law in 2021, as one of HESA's recommendations. Bill C-321 will expand these protections.

Nurses are in solidarity with paramedics on this, but we need to go further than this. We need to be clear that this is not enough. We have to make the public and lawmakers aware of the changes in the Criminal Code and work on better protection for our health care workforce in order to work safely in our health care facilities and in our community. Thank you so much.

While we're encouraged by all this work, we know that many more recommendations of the HESA committee have to be done there.

We support this piece of legislation, but we encourage all MPs and all committees to look further to make our health care and our community safer for those who take care of the sick and the injured in their work.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll answer your questions.

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