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Shocking data from a recent CBC Marketplace investigation revealed that Ontario’s long-term care homes have been breaking the law at alarming rates.
Order of Canada recipient, wife of the late Herb Gray, Mrs. Sholzberg-Gray told Top Class Actions that “Long-term care was always the poor orphan of the healthcare system.”
The Order of Canada nominee partially blamed Ontario’s long-term care home crisis due to privatization, where “money comes first, before care.”
Indeed, according to 2019 data, 626 long-term care homes are licensed and approved to operate in Ontario. Of those 626 homes, 58% of them are privately owned, 24% are non-profit/charitable and 16% are municipal.
85% of Ontario Long-Term Care Homes Repeatedly Break The Law
According to a CBC data analysis of the most serious breaches of Ontario’s long-term care home safety legislation reveals that every six in seven nursing homes are repeat offenders, and there are virtually no consequences for such repeat offenders.
CBC Marketplace reviewed 10,000 long-term care inspection reports and found over 30,000 “written notices,” or violations of the Long-Term Care Homes Act and Regulations, between 2015 and 2019.
The investigation isolated 21 violation codes for some of the most serious offences, including abuse, inadequate infection control, unsafe medication storage, inadequate hydration and poor skin and wound care, among others. The analysis reportedly revealed that of the 632 homes in the Ontario database, 85% were repeat offenders.
Rampant Negligence in Ontario’s Long-Term Care Homes
Joshua Matchett’s father is just one recent example of long-term care negligence fatalities. Matchett, reports CBC News, felt something wasn’t right with his father when he couldn’t reach him on April 11. He allegedly called his father repeatedly and checked the video camera that was set up in the 92-year-old’s long-term care room, but his 
father was never visible.
Later, Matchett got a call from his brother informing him of his father’s death. The Extendicare Halton Hills resident had died in the bathroom of his room.
A report by an inspector with the Ontario Ministry of Long-term Care into the death of the deceased Traven Matchett found Extendicare Halton Hills “failed to protect [Traven Matchett] from neglect by staff.”
The report also revealed that despite staff documenting that Matchett had been visited hourly that day — and even fed lunch — video evidence from the camera in his room showed that he had not been seen for six hours.
As a result, Extendicare Halton Hills received three written notices of non-compliance with Ontario’s Long-term Care Homes Act, which establishes minimum safety standards that every long-term care home in the province must meet.
According to CBC News, the home was issued 125 written notices for violations between 2015 and 2019.
Some families of elder abuse victims in Ontario long-term care homes are currently fighting to hold the nursing homes criminally responsible for the deaths of their loved ones. These outcries for justice come at a pivotal time, when Ontario’s long-term care homes have suffered devastatingly high numbers of COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths among their residents.
Ontario Care Homes Investigated Amid COVID-19
In August, as several class action lawsuits were filed against the province’s long-term care homes, the Ontario government established an independent Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission. The Commission’s role is to investigate how COVID-19 spread within long-term care homes, how residents, staff, and families were impacted, and the adequacy of measures taken by the province and other parties to prevent, isolate and contain the virus.
“The province cut long-term care inspections to only seven per year for the entire province to save money, and this contributed to COVID-19 outbreaks,” Mrs. Sholzberg-Gray noted in reference to Ontario’s excessively high long-term care COVID-19 infection rates. “It’s not a place to save money, because people die.”
After the national shockwave hit Canada’s long-term care homes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finally released long-awaited plans to impose national standards for long-term care homes.
After many outcries among Canada’s long-term care advocates and families of victims of negligence, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in October that long-awaited plans to impose national standards for long-term care homes will finally become a reality.
“We should not see seniors who are better protected or worse protected in one part of the country than another. It’s up to all of us to work together to ensure quality care for all seniors and I will certainly discuss this with the provinces,” said Trudeau.
Do you have a loved one who suffered as a result of long-term care negligence? Share your story with us in the comments below!
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One thought on Investigation Reveals 85% of Ontario Care Homes Broke The Law
My grandfather would sit for hours in a dirty diaper. His clothes would be soiled from sitting in the diaper. They wouldn’t shave his face as requested even though that was part of their work. They didn’t care if he ate all his meals they allowed him to not eat, or if he couldn’t feed himself they didn’t care. They didn’t care that he should have his dentures in, they allowed his gums to shrink due to this. His glasses were lost, as well as his dentures. I feel horrible for anyone who is in a long term home. It wasn’t just him that had these issues it seemed like it was all the patients. My mother in law was in a different home. She suffered from Dementia they allowed her to escape even with her wrist band that set of alarms. They would belt her in a wheelchair for hours a day because they didn’t want to keep a eye on her. It just got worse and worse