Funeral director says claims of price-gouging unfounded

Industry upset after MPPs said firms have been adding COVID-19 fee to cost of service

Angry funeral directors are firing back after a pair of Liberal MPPs said a report from the province’s funeral industry regulator shows there has been price-gouging in the industry during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

In a press release this week, Don Valley East MPP Michael Coteau and Orléans MPP Stephen Blais cited an April 30 memo by the Bereavement Authority of Ontario (BAO) that said “some firms are improperly assessing a COVID-19 fee when their costs are less.”

“This is an alarming admission from the head of a delegated administrative Authority of the Province of Ontario,” Blais said in the press release.

“Worse still, the CEO of the BAO, Carey Smith, appeared to justify passing the costs of basic protective equipment onto bereaved families in an official April 30th notice to the profession. This laissez-faire approach to consumer protection is shocking, especially when the premier has been so clear that price gouging is intolerable.”

In an interview with the Star, Coteau said his beef isn’t with funeral homes; instead, it’s with the transfer companies hired by funeral homes to pick bodies up from hospitals or long-term care homes.

Coteau said he has a lot of respect for people working at funeral homes, and that he just wants to make sure the BAO and provincial government aren’t letting grieving families and funeral industry workers get taken advantage of.

“I’m not picking a fight with funeral directors. People are working incredibly hard, and people in that industry are front-line workers in this pandemic. It’s the BAO’s words, not mine,” Coteau said.

That’s not good enough for Michael Sargent, a fourth-generation funeral director based in Thunder Bay, who’s also president of the Ontario Funeral Service Association, an umbrella organization representing independentlyowned funeral homes in the province. Sargent called the press release “very disappointing,” and said it felt like an attack on the entire industry, including funeral home workers dealing with a deadly disease on a daily basis.

“We’re not hospitals or firefighters or paramedics, but we’re dealing with deceased people who’ve had COVID-19. The reality of this virus is that we have to treat every single deceased person as though they may have had COVID. My staff are front-line workers. We’re all proud of what we do,” he said.

Sargent said the suggestion that funeral operators are hiking their prices and raking in money couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Sargent said, most funeral homes are busier than ever but are making a lot less money than usual.

Social distancing means no big funeral or wakes, no big processions to

gravesites, and other things which are the industry’s bread and butter.

“People think this industry must be doing great during COVID-19. We’re not. There are so many services we normally offer that we just can’t do right now. I’m probably at less than 50 per cent of my usual revenue for a funeral,” said Sargent.

While a typical funeral might run between $6,000 and $10,000, Sargent said it now brings in more like $3,000 to $4,000. That cut in revenue is also coming at a time when there are increased expenses ranging from overtime pay for pickups in the middle of the night, to increased use of body bags, higher prices for personal protective equipment, and increased cleaning. Those extra costs might add up to $300 or $400 at most per funeral, Sargent said.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s simply the cost of doing business.

“I’m certainly not passing it along, and I don’t know of anyone who is,” said Sargent. The BAO issued a memo to industry members April 30, saying that higher costs due to COVID-19 could be passed on to consumers, as long as they were itemized. A blanket “COVID-19” fee is too vague, BAO spokesperson David Brazeau said. The quote in the BAO report Coteau and Blais were responding to wasn’t written in response to consumer complaints about being gouged, Brazeau insisted.

“That relates to funeral home and transfer services who had been using a general ‘COVID fee’ line item in their billings to consumers. As the regulator, we’ve said that a blanket ‘COVID fee’ is improper because it’s too generic. Use of PPE or any other COVID fee must be itemized for families to see and understand,” said Brazeau.

“Funeral homes and transfer services did not previously have a standard way of showing this in contracts with consumers. The notice we issued provides them with a standard way of doing this.”

Aspokesperson for Consumer Affairs Minister Lisa Thompson said the ministry hadn’t received any complaints about price-gouging, but has been in touch with the BAO to make sure no one’s taking advantage of grieving families.

While funeral homes have been busy since the outbreak of the pandemic, they’ve been particularly stretched since the provincial government issued

“expedited death response” regulations April 14.

The new regulations were designed partly to avoid mass storage of bodies seen in other jurisdictions hit hard by COVID-19, but also to clear muchneeded bed space in hospitals during the outbreak.

During normal times, when at a hospital patient dies overnight, a funeral home will collect the body the next morning. Now, the body must be collected within one hour.

For deaths in long-term-care homes, it’s a three-hour time limit. That means having staff on call all hours of the day, Sargent said.

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