Call an inquiry. Now
Premier Doug Ford must call a public inquiry into the state of Ontario’s long- term care homes. That wasn’t true even a week ago, when Ford announced an independent commission, but not a public inquiry ( a defensible position, I argued in a column at the time). But the details in Tuesday’s report into the horrific conditions at five nursing homes in the Toronto area are so spectacularly awful that the premier has no choice. He’s going to get pushed into an inquiry eventually. Delaying it will only compound the damage. He should announce one at once. Today. Right now.
It’s hard to find the words to describe how bad the report is. Military personnel, called in to provide extra manpower at LTC homes that have been reeling under the impact of the pandemic, filed urgent reports back up the chain of command to Ottawa, describing conditions beyond what they expected. They knew it was going to be bad. So did the public. You don’t call in the army to take care of vulnerable seniors if things are going well.
COVID-19’S particular lethality among seniors and the immunocompromised, combined with long-unaddressed understaffing issues in Ontario’s LTC homes, were a recipe for disaster.
But what the troops saw went beyond even how bad one might expect things to be when calling in the army to aid people being ravaged by a deadly plague. As terrible as that was going to be, what they found was worse.
The troops found expired medications still being used. They saw obvious failures in basic infection control in these facilities, even as the pandemic spread. The conditions went beyond neglect or the terrible but foreseeable consequences of an institution that breaks under the pressure of a global catastrophe. What they saw, they told their superiors, was abuse of the elderly. Senior management at the homes was unavailable. Residents languished in soiled diapers for hours. Calls for help were ignored. Soldiers observed insect infestations, rough physical handling and “degrading and inappropriate comments” directed at residents by staff members.
It is the stuff of nightmares, and it was happening right in our midst. Mercedes Stephenson, Global News’s excellent Ottawa bureau chief and one of the best reporters on the military beat in Canada, tweeted that her sources have told her that the scenes in the LTC homes were so appalling that troops are concerned that the personnel exposed to them might be at risk of PTSD.
Again, the fact that Ontario’s LTC system was overcrowded and underfunded, with massive wait- lists for beds ( a major contributor to overcrowding in hospitals) was well known. But it wasn’t until the military went in that reports were made about just how bad things were. Premier Ford, pressed on this point on Tuesday, said that home inspections — which his government had cut back in its first year in office, a decision he’ll undoubtedly come to regret — can only go so far. The 24/ 7 presence of troops in the homes allowed for insights that inspectors can’t glean during a site visit.
This is, simply put, a disaster. It’s a disaster in the truest sense — people have suffered and died because of this broken system, and that was no doubt the case even before the pandemic. And it’s a disaster for Ford, who has received generally high marks, even from critics, for his performance thus far (though that’s been waning of late as Ontario reopens, even as cases climb). Whatever goodwill Ford had accumulated could easily evaporate if this appalling report comes to define Ontario’s experience during the pandemic.
Ford’s response to the report on Tuesday was mostly good. He had the military’s report released to the public at once — a refreshing moment of transparency in a country where those are few and far between. He said he was ordering immediate, thorough inspections of all care homes, stating that he doubted
fix a broken system that has been broken for decades.
the problems observed by the military were confined to the five where military aid was first needed. He insisted that, despite having inherited a broken system, he was responsible for this situation in the here and now, and intended to fix it.
“My job is to fix a broken system that has been broken for decades,” Ford said, which sounds like a dodge, but is objectively true, as far as it goes. “I’m going to move heaven and earth that we leave no stone unturned.”
Strong words. Probably sincere, too. But words won’t do. Yes, order the inspections. Call in more help, including from the military, if needed. Put care homes under the direct control of hospitals, if warranted. Do everything that can be done.
But also accept the inevitable. As recently as a week ago, Ford could probably have gotten away without a full public inquiry into this disaster — a properly constituted independent commission would have sufficed. But not now. Call the inquiry, Premier Ford. Do it now.