Quebec tables bill to fight elder abuse
Quebec may soon adopt its very first law to fight elder abuse.
On Wednesday, the minister responsible for seniors and antibullying, Francine Charbonneau, tabled Bill 115 — an Act to combat maltreatment of seniors and other persons of full age in vulnerable situations.
She said a law is necessary because too many seniors still fall victim to physical, psychological, sexual, and financial abuse.
According to Pierre Blain of Regroupement provincial des comités des usagers, a seniors’ help group based in Montreal, about 60 people complain about elder abuse every day in Quebec, either through his organization or the province’s existing elder abuse help line.
“Stealing is part of the abuse but there’s also violence,” Blain said, adding seniors are mistreated by staff in residences and long-term care facilities, but more often than not, by members of their own families.
The myriad services for victims that already exist — police, help line, elder law clinic, crime victims’ assistance centres — have not stemmed the flow of abuse, Blain said.
“What we’re seeing is that sometimes it’s not enough,” Charbonneau told a news conference. “For a grandma, to say that her son is an abuser is something that she won’t do ... so we’re there to put the tools around the elderly to make sure that it’s easy for the person to do what they have to do.
“And we go a step further. Now, we say ... that if the elderly (person) doesn’t say it, if he doesn’t go that step across the fact that he wants to denounce someone, a professional can say it. A professional can step up and say: I think something is wrong with my patient,” Charbonneau said.
Under Bill 115, whistleblowers would be “protected against reprisals and granted immunity from proceedings after making a report in good faith” to local complaints commissioners. Plainly put, no one could be fired, suspended or taken to court as a result of flagging abusive situations.
The government also intends to regulate the use of cameras in seniors’ rooms, which are currently accepted or not, depending on the residence.
Every single seniors’ home in the province (public and private) would be required to adopt and implement a policy to fight elder abuse, the bill says.
Bill 115 has passed first reading in the house almost exactly three years after former Liberal MNA Marguerite Blais tabled her own version, Bill 399, making denunciations of elder abuse mandatory. The PQ government at the time chose not to proceed with the bill.
Charbonneau defended her decision to drop the main element from Blais’s bill. She said to imagine an employee coming across a man pulling out $20 in birthday money from his grandfather’s bag. “What does the employee do? Does he denounce? He feels he’s obligated, and so we launch an investigation into something that’s insignificant,” the minister said.
Opposition parties called Bill 115 a step in the right direction, but PQ MNA Harold LeBel urged the government to look at the larger problem of seniors being forced to “eat powdered potatoes and bathe only once a week” in some longterm care facilities.