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Liberal bill would crackdown on health-care worker harassment and boost sick leave

In addition to amending the Criminal Code, the bill would also mandate 10 days of paid sick leave for federally regulated workers

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OTTAWA — The Liberal government Friday introduced legislation to increase penalties for those who harass or intimidate health-care workers, including doubling the maximum prison term for intimidation to 10 years.

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Justice Minister David Lametti said at a press conference the bill would add a new intimidation offence, which would “make it illegal for anyone to deliberately make a health-care worker or someone assisting them so afraid that they cannot do their jobs.” It would also apply to those accessing health-care services.

The legislation would also add an aggravating factor at sentencing, which Lametti said would “require courts to consider the more serious penalties for anyone who commits any crime that targets an at-work health-care provider or that impedes others from accessing health-care services.” That would apply to any offences, including assault and uttering threats.

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It is already illegal to do either, but the Liberals want to up the maximum sentence to 10 years in prison from five, and let judges use a health-care setting or victim as a factor in sentencing.

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Lametti acknowledged that the Criminal Code already covers general offences like intimidation, threats and violence, but he said the new amendments “would give police and prosecutors additional tools to specifically protect our health-care workers and users.”

The legislation follows an election pledge to target those who harass health-care workers.

“This past year, there has been an unfortunate escalation of hate directed towards the medical profession and all health care workers,” Katharine Smart, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said at the press conference.

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She said the protests outside hospitals were not peaceful, but “were people getting in the face of vulnerable patients trying to access care, yelling and spitting on them, following health-care professionals to their cars, vandalizing their vehicles, people feeling threatened that people may be following them home.”

Smart added that she’s heard from many doctors who received multiple death threats.

In addition to amending the Criminal Code, the bill would also mandate 10 days of paid sick leave for federally regulated workers. Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan said the new rules would apply to workers in sectors including telecommunications, broadcasting and banking. The government decided on 10 days because that is enough to allow two weeks of quarantine, he added.

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Lametti said he was calling on the opposition party to pass the bill “without delay.” He declined to specify a timeline, though he did say he’s been in discussions with opposition parties. The minority Liberals need the support of one other party to pass the legislation.

Both measures are two of the four priorities the Liberals are aiming to pass through the House of Commons before it goes on break on Dec. 17. But with Parliamentary committees unlikely to reconvene until February, the bills won’t be able to go through the regular legislative process. Lametti declined to say whether the government is looking to get unanimous consent to pass the legislation.

“I’ll leave the strategy to our House leaders. But quite frankly, I would love to see that kind of support across the House,” he said.

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Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Union, said her organization has been working on addressing violence in the health-care sector with various parties for years.

“I would be stunned and very disappointed if there’s not unanimous consensus to protect health-care workers in this country with this bill,” she said. “We’re not playing politics here, we’re talking about the security of those who care for us.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said the government’s move to legislate paid sick leave — something the NDP has repeatedly called for — is long overdue.

“Justin Trudeau owes frontline workers an explanation about why he couldn’t help them when they needed this over a year ago. He needs to explain why he thought it was okay to force them to go to work because he wouldn’t put in place the sick leave they needed,” he said.

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In 2019, 63 per cent of workers in the federally regulated private sector, a total of 582,700 employees, had fewer than 10 days of paid sick leave, the government said in a technical briefing document.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said it was “concerned” by the sick leave provisions of the bill.

“CFIB urges the federal government and provincial governments to exercise extreme caution when imposing new costs on small businesses at a time when a majority are still not back to normal sales or out from under their COVID-related debt,” the group said in a press release.

It said the government shouldn’t impose the new measure, but if it goes ahead, “it must find other ways to cut costs for small business owners.”

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