Be prepared to pay to help our elderly

If COVID-19 teaches Canadians anything, it’s that they must fight harder to protect the country’s most vulnerable population — the elderly residents of its nursing homes.

They have lived, and in disproportionately high numbers, they have died in the eye of this viral storm.

Considering that nearly 80 per cent of the pandemic’s deaths in Canada have been connected to its long-term care and seniors facilities, the statistics alone demand urgent action. Those figures are mirrored here in Waterloo Region, where a staggering 58 of the 72 pandemic-related deaths have occurred in long-term-care residences.

Of course, statistics alone cannot convey the human toll exacted by the coronavirus. Behind every nursing home number are human faces, fears, suffering and grief. And a reason for us to do better.

If there is any good coming out of such tragedy, it is the growing consensus that, as Ontario Premier Doug Ford insists, the system is broken and must be fixed. But whoever shares Ford’s concerns should be ready to ante up. The fix will cost us dearly.

It will cost us when public money is at a premium in Canada. It will cost us when our partially shutdown economy is in the worst shape it’s been in 60 years. It will cost us when unemployment is soaring, bankruptcies are on the rise and government revenue is cratering. One way or another, taxes will have to rise to help pay for the nursing-home fix. Are we still all-in to cover it?

Ontario already spends seven per cent of its annual health-care budget — more than $4.3 billion — on the province’s 626 long-term-care homes. That funding, as we now realize, is inadequate.

If a full, public inquiry into the state of Ontario’s nursing homes is not already on premier Ford’s agenda, it should be because it can outline exactly what we will need to do, and spend.

What would we discover, for instance, if we examined what went wrong at Kitchener’s Forest Heights Revera home, where 35 residents have died of COVID-19 — nearly half of this region’s fatalities? Might we conclude we should no longer permit four residents to have to share a single room, as often happens at Forest Heights? But that would carry a price tag.

Even without an official probe, it’s obvious more staff will be required at many homes, including cooks, cleaners and other support workers. More public money must flow to properly compensate staff who are currently underpaid, too.

The fact that many personal support workers cobble together a meagre income by working at several facilities in the same work week has helped turn some nursing homes into Petri dishes for growing the coronavirus.

If Ontarians don’t want to see this repeated, they must demand tighter regulations along with greater employment security for this essential group of workers.

Such improvements might sound like a slam-dunk today. But how soon will the residents of these nursing homes once again be out of sight and out of mind? We’ll soon hear choruses of vested interests clamouring for the funding taps to be turned on for hospitals, child care, enhanced income support and business bail-outs.

Yet, our nursing homes will still be there with all their needs. They must remain priority No. 1.

Many of the elderly residents of these homes are ailing and near the ends of their lives. But we stand on their fragile shoulders. They built the Canada we want to reclaim after the pandemic. It is a moral imperative for us to deliver for them now, and bear the cost.