Obviously, you raise something that is a very hot topic of debate at the moment. That's in part because of The Star's investigation. This weekend we saw that for-profit nursing homes have four times as many COVID deaths as city-run homes do. In many ways this isn't a surprise. There have been numerous studies around the world comparing for-profit and not-for-profit homes and municipally run homes. Generally the trend is that for-profit homes tend to have poorer performance. You can see why this might be the case given the increased pressure, obviously, to turn a profit. One of the biggest budget line items is staffing. In the absence of clear ratios or number of hours per resident, this is often the first thing that does get cut. Food budgets are another thing we know are absolutely deplorable in these long-term care settings.
However, we do know there are both good and bad examples in private, as well as public, long-term care homes, which speaks to your comment about a national standard. At a minimum, I think part of the go-forward is that we have to ensure that all provincial and territorial jurisdictions align their health workforce in these facilities to be consistent in terms of qualifications, credentials, specialization, and even staff ratios.
Then even when you reflect back on how some of the homes performed, why was it that in B.C., care workers stopped working at multiple homes two weeks before care workers in Ontario and in Quebec did? These are some of the questions that I think really need answering. It's possible that had the federal government stepped in with greater leadership.... I understand the provincial and federal jurisdictional challenges, but had there been some sort of standard in place that ensured best practices, we might have seen a better performance.