Official Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath said the government\u2019s move to take over the management of long-term care homes in Ontario is welcome, but should have come much sooner, and the government needs to take action on it quickly. The NDP has been calling on the government to do this for weeks, as Ontarians watched in horror as COVID-19 swept through long-term care facilities, infecting vulnerable seniors and staff.<\/p>\n
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Ontario\u2019s first COVID-19 death in long-term care dates back to March 24. By March 31, British Columbia\u2019s chief medical officer of health had assumed responsibility for nursing care staff in the Vancouver region, and by April 5, this authority was in effect province wide. Quebec was taking similar steps to help homes that were struggling by mid-April. In mid-April, in response to calls from the NDP, health unions and health care staff to take over homes, Ontario\u2019s Long Term Care Minister Merillee Fullerton refused, saying: \u201cOther provinces do things differently than Ontario.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cFamilies who have a parent or grandparent in long-term care in Ontario will no doubt be relieved to learn the government is finally using its power to take over management in these facilities, but many will wonder why their loved ones were left so vulnerable for so long,\u201d said Horwath. \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to lose any more days or weeks in the middle of a pandemic when seniors\u2019 and workers\u2019 lives are on the line. Now that we\u2019re moving in the right direction, we need to see swift action to get new leadership into those nursing homes in crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Horwath added that it\u2019s troubling to see language suggesting that \u2018corporations\u2019 could be put in charge of these facilities, despite higher death rates in privately run long-term care homes. According to a Toronto Star<\/em> report, the risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19 in a long-term care outbreak is four times higher in for-profit homes compared to municipally run public homes and double compared to non-profit homes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSeniors in Ontario and their loved ones deserve to know that when the government says it\u2019s stepping in to take over the management of long-term care homes, it\u2019s not just handing the reins from one private operator to another,\u201d said Horwath. \u201cWe owe it to families across the province to get this right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Official Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath said the government\u2019s move to take over the management of long-term care homes in Ontario is welcome, but should have come much sooner, and the government needs to take action on it quickly. The NDP has been calling on the government to do this for weeks, as Ontarians watched in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":6313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[2445],"class_list":["post-31738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-covid-19-action-plan-for-long-term-care-homes"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 10:13:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31739,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31738\/revisions\/31739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wawa-news.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}