The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) is the professional association representing registered nurses (RNs), nurse practitioners (NPs), and nursing students in all roles and sectors across Ontario. Since 1925, RNAO has advocated for healthy public policy, promoted excellence in nursing practice, increased nurses' contributions to shaping the health-care system, and influenced decisions that affect nurses and the public they serve. RNAO appreciates this opportunity to provide feedback to the Standing Committee on Social Policy on Bill 21, An Act to safeguard health care integrity by enacting the Voluntary Blood Donations Act, 2014 and by amending certain statutes with respect to the regulation of pharmacies and other matters concerning regulated health professions or the Safeguarding Health Care Integrity Act, 2014 for short.

The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) is the professional association representing registered nurses (RNs), nurse practitioners (NPs) and nursing students in all roles and sectors within Ontario. Our mandate is to foster knowledge-based nursing practice, promote quality work environments, deliver excellence in professional development, and advance healthy public policy. We promote the full participation of present and future RNs and NPs in improving health, and shaping and delivering health-care services. Given our mandate, we are pleased to provide this submission to Health Canada’s Advisory Panel on Healthcare Innovation.

Introduction:

The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) is the professional association representing registered nurses (RNs), nurse practitioners (NPs) and nursing students in all roles and sectors within Ontario. Our mandate is to foster knowledge-based nursing practice, promote quality work environments, deliver excellence in professional development, and advance healthy public policy. We promote the full participation of present and future RNs and NPs in improving health, and shaping and delivering health-care services. With this mandate in mind, we are pleased to provide this submission to the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care’s Home and Community Care Review Expert Group.

The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) is the professional association representing nurses, in all settings and roles across Ontario. It is the strong credible voice leading the nursing profession to influence and promote healthy public policy.

As RNAO outlined in Creating Vibrant Communities: RNAO’s Challenge to Ontario’s Political Parties, there is both a strong human rights rationale and compelling public health evidence that demands collective action on the social inequities that drive health inequities. It is completely unacceptable that in a province as affluent as Ontario that there could be a twenty-one year difference in life expectancy in the five kilometer distance between a high-income and a low-income neighbourhood in Hamilton. Just as we now strive to base decisions on how best to improve an individual’s health condition based on evidence and how to improve health-care services based on evidence, it is imperative that the Government of Ontario use clear evidence to reduce the avoidable and unnecessary premature deaths due to poverty and income inequality. This international multi-disciplinary evidence been compiled by the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. There is an international consensus that “governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples, which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures.”