Thank you for your question, Mr. Garrison.
I would say that the whole question of private versus public long-term care homes has been problematic for several years now.
I'll be very careful in my answer, having encountered serious abuse incidents in public care homes as well. I wouldn't want abuse to always be associated with private care homes, and to lead people to believe that everything is fine in public long-term care homes.
Nevertheless, it's true that people in long-term care homes are less able to defend their rights, because they don't have full physical or cognitive autonomy.
That's why laws on mandatory reporting are important. Most provinces have such laws, but they don't all work the same way. As it is more often associated with health and social services, it doesn't come under the Criminal Code.
Mandatory reporting may or may not be accompanied by measures to protect those who do the reporting. I'd like to link this to what my colleague Mr. Webb said a short while ago. Currently, families habitually report instances of abuse. They are often not very familiar with the structures. They might wonder about committees of residents, or the local complaints commissioner, or quality of services. Things can be moved forward through such mechanisms, but will not necessarily get to the courtroom.
So here again, problems are dealt with in spheres other than the one you are particularly interested in, namely the Criminal Code.