LILLEY: Action needed on long-term care — not bickering over review
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If we are going to have change come to long-term care in Ontario, it will only happen because the public demands action, not because we have an official public inquiry or less formal commission study the events of the past few months.
On Tuesday, the Ford government announced that it would not call a public inquiry but instead will strike an independent commission to study the effects of COVID-19 in long-term care homes.
That’s good news for anyone who wants timely answers and action on an issue that has festered for far too long.
“We need answers now, and it’s going to be fully transparent,” Premier Doug Ford said, noting that past inquiries have taken years to deliver their reports.
The commission is the better way to go for anyone who wants answers now instead of years from now, despite protests from NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.
“A government-controlled commission is just a review — a back-room process,” Horwath said after the commission was announced.
Here’s the thing she and others claiming the government will have too much control over a commission seem to forget, the government sets the rules, issues the mandate and picks the person to head any public inquiry.
They can make the inquiry as narrow or as wide open as they want.
Public inquiries, be they provincial or federal, are often long, expensive and ignored. The way it normally happens follows a well-worn pattern.
An incident happens and the opposition demands an inquiry. When the government gives in and calls the inquiry, the media interest is high for a few days just as it becomes quite high when the inquiry starts.
With most inquiries, the media and public interest then wanes until the report is issued and the government of the day says they accept the inquiry and all recommendations.
After that, the report is shelved and collects dust in a corner.
That won’t fix long-term care in Ontario, which recently went through a two-year inquiry into the system to look at how Elizabeth Wettlauffer was able to became a mass murderer in several homes.
Over the past 20 years, the system has been studied to death, and promises have been made. Rarely have they been delivered.
A recent study from the Financial Accountability Office noted that between 2011 and 2018, demand for long-term care beds increased by 78% while the number of beds increased by 0.8%.
In 2007, then-Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty promised to build 35,000 new long-term care beds. By the end of the Liberal’s time in office, only 2,789 beds new had materialized.
We know the problem in long-term care during COVID-19 was mostly centred in older homes with ward rooms and people living is closer settings. How many governments have promised to fix this and haven’t?
What we must demand from the Ford government is that we see action from this report to fix long term care. Action matters far more to me than the type of review we have.
“We’re arguing about semantics when we really need to be getting into action, and we can’t afford to wait longer,” said Dr. Merrilee Fullerton, Ford’s minister of long-term care.
I agree with her but I can’t just accept the words; I want and need to see that action and unless enough voters feel like I do, then nothing will change.
For more than 20 years, governments have been promising to fix long-term care and have failed and the public has let them get away with it. That is what really needs to change.
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