Doug Ford must come clean about the state of Ontario long-term care

QUEEN’S PARK – NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is demanding that Doug Ford come clean about the increasingly dangerous state of our long-term care homes and his disastrous approach to managing outbreaks.

The Ford government has spent weeks minimizing the dangers in long-term care, even telling the legislature last week that “only two homes in Ottawa have any resident cases” and were “being well taken care of.”

Yet, yesterday the Ford government announced that new management had been ordered at Simcoe Manor Home in Beeton, Ontario.

Meanwhile, news that the Red Cross will be deployed to support several long-term care homes has reportedly come as a surprise to some of the operators of these homes, as Ford withholds the actual list of homes at risk or in crisis.

The Ottawa Citizen reports that the administrator at St. Jacques Nursing Home in Embrun was “surprised to learn it was on a reported list of homes where the Red Cross was to be deployed.” When asking for more information, another Ottawa area long-term care operator was told the provincial list was a “mix-up.”

“The government spent last week trying to gloss over devastating outbreaks, because they don’t want to invest in better care. Mr. Ford is still refusing to release the list of “red zone” homes,” Horwath said. “Families need to know if their loved ones are at risk, and how we can fix the government’s complete failure to prepare for the second wave of COVID-19.”