Madam Speaker, Canada failed to protect long-term care residents from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 840 outbreaks were reported in long-term care facilities and retirement homes across Canada, accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 deaths in the country. This represents the worst record of all comparable countries.
The situation was so dire that Canadian Forces had to be called in to long-term care facilities in Quebec and Ontario. Residents there were found underfed, abandoned and afraid. In some cases, they had been left to die alone in bed covered in their own urine and feces. These stories shocked our conscience and challenged our self-image as a compassionate and humane society. However, they were entirely foreseeable and avoidable.
Experts and advocates have been raising an alarm over the state of Canada's long-term care sector for many years, but successive federal governments have failed to act. Indeed, decades of research have demonstrated that insufficient staff-to-resident ratios and the reliance on precarious working conditions have led to hurried, dehumanizing care, high staff turnover and workforce instability in the Canadian long-term care sector.
British Columbia's long-term care system entered the pandemic with several advantages because the NDP provincial government had made progress on these issues prior to the outbreak despite the void of federal leadership. This included implementing measures to promote better coordination between long-term care, public health and hospitals; increased funding for long-term care; fewer shared rooms; and more comprehensive inspections.
Moreover, Premier Horgan acted early in the pandemic to limit long-term care workers to a single facility to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Before the pandemic, workers were forced to pick up shifts at multiple facilities that paid differing and insufficient wages. However, the B.C. government has spent more than $10 million a month to level up the wages and benefits of long-term care workers so that they earn a standard income no matter where they work. Premier Horgan has pledged to make this increase permanent.
As Canada sits on the crest of a second wave of COVID-19 and outbreaks in long-term care facilities are flaring up once again, residents remain at extreme risk due to continued federal inaction. In order to prevent another catastrophe, Canada's leading scientists and scholars are calling on the government to act immediately to implement binding national standards of care tied to new federal funding.
In its recent throne speech, the government did pledge to “work with the provinces and territories to set new, national standards for long-term care”. However, it failed to provide a timeline for action or a commitment to new federal funding.
Can the Liberal government confirm whether binding national standards and funding tied to meeting these standards for long-term care will be in place in time to protect vulnerable residents from the second wave of COVID-19?