New law won’t protect negligent care homes
‘They will be held accountable,’ Ford says
TORONTO — New COVID-19 liability legislation would not protect long-term-care providers from being sued, Premier Doug Ford said Wednesday, as he urged families to pursue legal action if they believe a loved one died in a seniors home due to negligence.
Ford said he initially shared the same concerns that critics of the new bill introduced this week have expressed, that it would protect bad actors in a sector that has seen more than 1,900 long-term-care home residents die during the pandemic.
However, the premier said that was not the intent of the proposed legislation, urging families to read the bill carefully with their lawyers.
“By no means are we going to protect the negligence of longterm-care providers. They will be held accountable,” he said. “If you feel they’ve been negligent, sue them.”
The government introduced the proposed legislation Tuesday saying it was designed to protect front-line workers and small businesses who are following public health rules and where COVID-19 exposure may occur inadvertently.
But it said the bill would not prevent lawsuits against those who wilfully or through “gross negligence” endangered others.
Ford said the government was advised that if it wanted to extend the protection to some workers and businesses that it would have to provide blanket coverage to everyone in the province.
Some businesses would go bankrupt if faced with a COVID-19 lawsuit, he added.
Critics have said the changes will make lawsuits against longterm-care providers more difficult by raising the legal standard when it comes to a finding of “gross negligence”.
Ford said he has been critical of many long-term-care providers during the pandemic and that he believes some have shown gross negligence.
“I’ve been out here just hammering the people that have been negligent in long-term care,” he said. “I’ve been on these guys like an 800-pound gorilla. I’m protecting the people who have lost loved ones.”
But the executive director of the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, a legal clinic that specializes in seniors’ legal issues, said this new bill will drag out lawsuits before the courts and dissuade some families from holding companies accountable.
“The barriers to bringing legal action are huge,” Graham Webb said. “The long-term-care home is usually a multimilliondollar business and ... the individual resident doesn’t usually have the resources to take on the home.”