NDP wants long term solutions for women working in healthcare and child care

Women in care-based professions have been working to exhaustion to take care of us and our loved ones, NDP MP says they deserve government support

PORT MOODY – As International Women’s Day is celebrated across the country, NDP MP Bonita Zarrillo has initiated a study into how the government can better support workers in healthcare and child care who are predominantly women. Thanks to Zarrillo’s work, a Parliamentary committee has begun studying the labour shortages and workers' conditions for healthcare workers, personal support workers, and childcare workers among others who have been on the frontlines of COVID-19.

“Women make up a disproportionate number of front-line health care workers, personal support workers and those delivering childcare. Without their work, Canadians would not have gotten through the pandemic as well as we did,” said Zarrillo. “During the pandemic, the government said these workers were ‘heroes.’ Yet these heroes—particularly women of colour and new immigrants— have been persistently under-valued, under-paid, and over-burdened. We need to stand with them all the time, not just in times of crisis. This study will look at how the Liberals’ policy and investments match their words when it comes to helping these workers. New Democrats know we have to invest in the people who take care of us when we’re sick. We have to support the people who take care of our loved ones. And these people are predominantly women.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the NDP has been calling for an increase to health care transfers to address the staffing shortages of nurses and other essential health care workers. New Democrats have also repeatedly called for the government to ensure more internationally accredited health care professionals can join the Canadian work force to help address the labour shortages.

NDP MPs have long been urging the government to bring in national standards of care for long-term care facilities to protect our loved ones and to make sure the workers we rely on to take care of our loved ones have the tools they need and are paid a decent wage.

“On International Women’s Day, it isn’t good enough to say ‘we recognize the contributions that women are making.’ We need the federal government to back up that talk with action. Women shouldn’t be working themselves into exhaustion taking care of our loved ones because the government won’t address labour shortages,” added Zarrillo. “Women deserve better and New Democrats will keep pushing the government to collaborate with the provinces and territories and implement long-term investments in women, and in health care and childcare.”