Governments have done little to fix long-term-care home problems
I am concerned that the Ontario and federal governments seem to have shown little, if any, interest in correcting long-standing issues of senior’s abuse and neglect in Ontario’s for-profit long-term care and nursing homes.
Advocates for change have encouraged governments since the early 1980s, when the large chains bought out the “mom and pop” ownership of these homes, and the warehousing of seniors became the reality. How can the multitude of issues prevalent, and exposed as obvious during COVID-19, be ignored by all the agencies entrusted to provide safeguards for seniors and the disabled in these facilities?
Why did the Doug Ford government shield the LTC operators by raising the bar of lawsuits to gross negligence, making it more difficult for families to sue them? Why did the government continue to fund operators for empty beds, left by those who had died? Did not many of these same operators receive public funds to renovate, build facilities and expand beds, even after high death rates, and failures to install air conditioning over a few decades?
I am reminded of the many years it took for Canadian governments to acknowledge that deaths had occurred in Residential Schools despite the pleas of parents and relatives. Isn’t this similar to the pleas for action in LTC facilities?
It took 150 years for governments to accept the truth; will they also take as many years to address the problems in our long-term care homes?
When will our governments listen to the people, and not to the multitude of LTC lobbyists who are so close to this government?
Stan Marshall, Brockville