Thank you for your efforts in getting national standards and dealing with the terrible situation in the long-term care homes.
I've read those reports as I'm sure you have. It's hard to read what members of the armed forces were confronted with when they went into those facilities to see the level of care. Basically, of the thousands of people who died in long-term care, some of them didn't die of COVID. They died of starvation, dehydration, whatever else—just a simple lack of care.
My heart goes out to many of the workers in those places who were confronted with a lack of PPE and had to make a choice between the safety of their own families and the people they were caring for every day in the workplace. Many of those people were in the lowest part of our economy. It was a terrible situation and underscores the need.
As you know, there are three forms of long-term care. There are the ones that are run by the government, mostly municipal governments. Then there are non-profit private care facilities. I lived across from one that served the Korean community. It was a charitable organization that was run privately. Finally, there are the for-profits, the ones that are run by big investment firms that have a profit motive in the care of these people.
There was a terrible situation in all of those forms, but we know that the for-profits were much worse. I don't know the specifics of your situation in Etobicoke Centre, but my guess is that it may have been one of these for-profit firms. We need national standards.
We have participated in an exercise funded by the federal government, by the health standards organization led by Dr. Samir Sinha, who came out with a report. We should see something in the fall.
Were his recommendations good? Yes. Were they an improvement on what was there before? Yes. Are they good enough? We're not convinced. There were some gaps there.
We do think there needs to be a minimum number of hours of direct care, and the standard discussion number is four hours at least—sometimes you see higher ones—of direct care for patients by nurses and other caregivers. We think that's very important to put in there, and that would be something the federal government could do through the safe long-term care act, which it committed to.