- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I am glad my colleague from North Okanagan—Shuswap brought up the example of the long-term care homes that have been so problematic in our valley and in our province of British Columbia. The company Anbang, through Cedar Tree and others, perpetuated a situation of very poor care for our seniors: mothers, fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers. The NDP put forward an amendment to make it such that, if a foreign government took over a company after a foreign company had been cleared, as was the case with Anbang Insurance, Canada should act. When the NDP amendment was put forward for this bill, the government members said we could already do that.
Could the member comment on that and whether the government should take immediate steps to take over the company that is taking care of our seniors, since we really do not trust it to do that?
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- Apr/25/22 11:34:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very happy to rise here this morning to speak to Motion No. 47 on improvements to long-term care, put forward by the member for Avalon. This motion points out that the COVID pandemic has exposed long-standing issues affecting long-term care, and it asks the federal government to:
...work with the provinces and territories to (i) improve the quality and availability of long-term care homes and beds, (ii) implement strict infection prevention and control measures...(iii) develop a safe long-term care act...to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve....
I am also happy to say that I will be supporting this motion. As a New Democrat, I am very proud to say that we have used our power in the current minority government to secure a commitment from the federal government in our confidence and supply agreement to bring in a safe long-term care act to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve, no matter where they live. This long-overdue legislation must be implemented without delay, and I thank the member for Avalon for introducing this motion, which adds further impetus to this necessary action.
I would first like to thank all the workers in long-term care across Canada. They have been at the front lines of the pandemic for the past two years and more. This is hard work. It is stressful work, and it is done by people who truly care for the people whom they care for. I want to make it completely clear that these workers are not the problem in the long-term care crisis.
As the motion points out, COVID-19 has exposed a fragmented and under-resourced long-term care system across Canada, and this has been a problem for many years. I remember speaking here just over a year ago to an NDP motion that called for significant changes to make sure our seniors are cared for properly and with dignity. In that speech, I mentioned a couple of stories that illustrated how long-standing this problem is. I would like to briefly reiterate those points today.
In 2013, nine years ago, I met with a family who had lost both their mother and their father to substandard care at a privately owned care home in Summerland, British Columbia. The province investigated the family's concerns and found that the staffing levels of the facility were far too low. Months later, the company that owned the facility, Retirement Concepts, reported that it was trying to hire more staff but was having trouble filling the new positions. As Mike Old of the Hospital Employees' Union said, Retirement Concepts is well known for paying low wages, and that has resulted in chronic understaffing at many of its facilities.
Retirement Concepts operates 20 facilities in Canada, most of them in British Columbia. In 2016, Retirement Concepts was sold to Anbang Insurance Group of China for more than $1 billion. Since then, problems at Retirement Concepts homes seem only to have gotten worse. As of last year, the operation of its properties in Summerland, Courtenay, Nanaimo and Victoria had been taken over by the provincial health authority, all because care levels were inadequate due to understaffing.
Retirement Concepts is not alone in its understaffing problems. I remember visiting another facility in Penticton in 2015, seven years ago, and talking to the staff about working conditions there. I was shocked to find out that some of the staff who had worked there for 20 years were making less money in 2015 than when they had started in 1995. No wonder they were tempted to leave whenever they could. A friend whose mother was in that facility recently told me that the staff was hard-working and attentive but completely overwhelmed. There was always a “now hiring” sign out front. Apparently, the home could not afford to pay workers as much as the local hospital, so it was constantly losing the most experienced staff whenever a job opened up at the hospital.
Experts have been issuing dire warnings for years about this crisis, but successive federal governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have failed to act. Then the pandemic hit. Hundreds died needlessly in care homes during the pandemic, sometimes in horrific conditions. The armed forces had to be called in because staff was overwhelmed in many places. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, more than 840 outbreaks were reported in long-term care facilities and retirement homes during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This accounted for 80% of all COVID deaths in Canada during that wave, representing the worst record among comparable countries and double the OECD average.
We must never allow this to happen again. Federal leadership is urgently needed to protect vulnerable Canadians living in long-term care, both throughout the pandemic and in the years to come.
In these debates, we have heard a lot of calls for national standards of care. Yes, we need those national standards, but the fact is that no provincial standards are being met now. The benchmark for quality long-term care is 4.1 hours of hands-on care per resident per day; no province or territory currently meets this standard of care.
There is a lack of accountability for long-term care facility operators due to lax enforcement of standards and regulations. For example, a recent CBC investigation revealed that 85% of long-term care homes in Ontario have routinely violated health care standards for decades, with near total impunity.
The problem is funding. Lack of funding results in short-staffed institutions and underpaid workers. Underpaid workers are forced to work two or three care homes at once, and we saw how that spread the virus during the early stages of the COVID pandemic.
At the heart of the funding problem are the for-profit long-term care homes. Among care home residents, 80% have underlying medical issues that have meant they have had to move into those care homes. Long-term care is medical care, but it is not covered under our universal, not-for-profit health care system in Canada, and because long-term care lies outside the health care covered by the Canada Health Act, many care homes are run first and foremost for profit.
This means Canadians often pay substantial out-of-pocket costs for long-term care, which can vary significantly depending on the region and whether it is a private or public facility. Service quality varies widely depending on ability to pay, and service quality can have a significant impact on the health of care home residents, especially during a pandemic. Residents and workers in for-profit centres have faced a higher risk of COVID-19 infection and death than those in non-profit and publicly operated homes.
Decades of research have demonstrated that long-term care homes run on a for-profit basis tend to have lower staffing levels, more verified complaints and more transfers to hospitals, as well as higher rates of both ulcers and morbidity. On top of that, during the pandemic, many for-profit operators have been paying out millions in CEO bonuses and dividends while accepting public subsidies and neglecting the residents under their care.
The NDP is proud to have used its power to secure a promise from the government to advance a safe long-term care act through the confidence and supply agreement, and I will add that this agreement also includes dental care and pharmacare, so that we can have a truly universal health care system in Canada.
We must continue to work collaboratively with patients, caregivers and provincial and territorial governments to develop national standards for long-term care and other continuing care, which would include accountability mechanisms and data collection and be tied to sustainable, long-term funding. The standards are not enough by themselves.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to improve standards of long-term care, because they have embraced a profit-driven model for the sector. The NDP will work relentlessly to change that. Profit has no place in the care of our seniors, just as it has no place elsewhere in our primary health care system.
Our seniors deserve to live in dignity and comfort, so in conclusion, I will be supporting this motion. I urge the government to live up to its promises and act quickly and boldly to fix the long-term care crisis in Canada.
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- Apr/25/22 11:09:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Avalon for bringing this motion forward. He talked about standards of care. There are provincial standards of care across Canada. The trouble is that none of those standards are being met in any province, and the problem is both funding and the model of delivering long-term care in Canada, which to a large extent is a for-profit model.
I am wondering how his motion would help this. If we do not get the profit out of long-term care in Canada, how can we put strings on any funding we might provide to make sure these long-term care homes provide a dignified place to live for seniors?
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made a comment wondering why the NDP is always running around fixing Liberal mistakes. Well, it is because the NDP is focused on one thing, and that is helping Canadians. When the pandemic first hit, people were suffering. It was the NDP that pushed for supports for seniors and people with disabilities. The Liberals were not there and the Conservatives were not there. It was the NDP that was pushing for that.
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we have the ability in the House to make decisions to help Canadians, and we have the capacity to do that. One thing that would really accomplish that, which would go a long way to help seniors and people with disabilities, is a guaranteed livable basic income. We have a private member's bill on that, Bill C-223, which is on the docket.
I am wondering, if Conservatives care about seniors, if they will support that bill.
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