What to Expect for Canada’s Long Term Care Reform
ERIC WYNNE/HERALD CHRONICLE
COVID-19 has significantly strained Canada’s health care system, highlighting several structural concerns that experts say need to be addressed. Long-term care was discussed heavily in the recent federal election due to the increased physical and psychological burden that was observed on Canada’s senior population, their family, friends, and caretakers.
Advocates say issues in long-term care institutions, including low staffing levels and unsatisfactory care quality, have recently received overdue attention.
Long-term care is intended to be a variety of services designed to meet a person’s needs to live as independently and safely as possible. When they are no longer able to perform everyday activities by themselves, it is a problem when insufficient levels of care are available in a facility such as a nursing home.
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, residents of nursing and senior homes accounted for over 80 per cent of all documented COVID-19 deaths in Canada during the first wave of the pandemic. From March 2021, these long-term care facilities continued to account for the greatest proportion of outbreak-related cases and deaths, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Coroner Gehane Kamel, who investigated deaths at six long-term care homes, said that residents also died of dehydration, malnourishment and neglected hygiene. During the pandemic, care workers became sick and some were forced to look after entire floors of patients. Many of them were barely paid above minimum wage.
Before these issues were highlighted by the pandemic, there was little information collected nationally on care facilities despite approximately 500,000 Canadians living in them, according to Statistics Canada in 2016. Canada’s failure to protect the residents and workers in long-term care was addressed heavily in the latest federal election, where several political parties promised to improve the quality of the facilities.
Before the election, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole promised to create a Canada Senior Care tax credit, which would pay $200 each month to anyone who lives and takes care of a parent above the age of 70 to keep seniors out of care homes. The Conservatives also proposed $3 billion to be spent on renovating long-term care homes over the next three years and to prioritize immigration requests for caretakers who can provide long-term or at-home care.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau promised that the re-elected Liberal government would devote $9 billion over five years to improve living conditions, train 50,000 personal support workers, and guarantee a $25 per hour minimum wage for long-term caretakers.
The recent awareness brought to the issues concerning long term-care is a good start, but solving them will require effort over multiple years. It will be interesting to see how the minority Liberal government will proceed with this reform and whether or not the Conservative’s proposals will be included.