NDP’s long-term care plan needed now, say advocate groups
While encouraged by a New Democratic Party plan to fix Ontario’s long-term care homes, Niagara-based advocacy groups say seniors can’t wait until after the 2022 election for changes to be made.
With about two years left before the next provincial election in 2022, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath announced her party’s first major election platform, focusing on fixing Ontario’s long-term care home system “disaster.”
Despite the hard work of frontline caregivers, Horwath said “the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a disaster behind the walls of Ontario’s long-term care homes.”
The full plan is available on the ontariondp.ca website.
Carol Dueck, chair of Network 4 Family Council Advocacy Committee, said she was pleased to see a call for a minimum standard of at least four hours of daily care for long-term care home residents within the platform.
“They have to enact that,” she said, adding seniors should not have to wait for an election to be implemented before they get the care they need.
She said the current Progressive Conservative government has a majority, and “they could do it now.”
“What are they waiting for? Yeah, I know it’s going to cost them one big boatload of money, but they’ve already spent a boatload. … Just pay it and get over with it.”
Guardian Angels program chair Betty Miller said she, too, is aware of a few well-run private homes, but agrees with the need for publicly run facilities.
“Some of the nursing homes that are for-profit, I’m sure there are some that are doing a much better job, but it’s just that the majority are lining their own pockets and not providing proper care,” she said.
Miller said she would have liked to see the NDP plan provide funding directly to seniors and their families, rather than the long-term care homes.
Although the NDP’s plan would also eventually make all homes in the province public and not-for-profit, Dueck said some of those homes are “really well run.”
“The problem is, they’ve all been swept by the same brush,” she said.
But the NDP plan says existing longterm care funding, totalling about $9 billion a year, “can be better spent.”
Dueck, however, questioned the financial feasibility of the plan.
“They can’t just buy up all the private homes and take over. They can’t afford it,” she said.
Niagara Centre NDP MPP Jeff Burch said the costs involved are a direct result of years of neglect by previous governments.
“They’ve left it for so long, and things have gotten so bad that the costs pile up,” he said. “It’s more expensive to fix it than it is to just have a system that isn’t meeting the needs of seniors.”
St. Catharines NDP MPP Jennie Stevens, too, shared the hopes of advocacy groups that aspects of the plan might be implemented immediately by the existing government, so seniors could begin benefiting from enhanced care now.
“The PSWs (personal support workers), I’ve spoken with them. They are run off their feet,” she said. “With this plan, it’s going to better-paid, full-time jobs.”
Niagara Falls NDP MPP Wayne Gates said minimum care standards for longterm care homes have been needed for a long time, adding it has been brought forward in the provincial legislature numerous times over the past decade but never implemented.
“It’s disgraceful, quite frankly,” he said. “Everybody knew it.”
Instead of addressing the needs, Gates said, past governments chose to allow more private-sector involvement in the industry.
Messages left with the office of Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff were not immediately returned.