A Progressive Conservative bill to reshape elements of Ontario's long-term care system was passed by MPPs on Tuesday.

Premier Doug Ford's government promised to pass legislation to improve the lives of nursing home residents after Ontario's long-term care (LTC) homes were devastated early on in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Changes made by Bill 37 include:

Ontario's minister for long-term care (LTC) must set annual targets working toward every resident receiving an average of four hours of personal care per day by 2024-25.
Provincial inspectors and directors are given increased powers.
Operators of unsafe or neglectful homes can now be fined up to $1 million, and banned from providing LTC.

The legislation, which passed 46-24 in the legislature, was viewed divisively.

Proponents of the bill — including the Ontario Long-Term Care Association, which represents about 70 per cent of the province's LTC homes — say it empowers nursing home residents, and will bring homes to a higher standard.

Its critics — including those in the elected opposition, and the Ontario Health Coalition, which advocates for improvements to publicly funded health care — have said it's toothless, will allow private operators to grow their presence in the sector, and that it introduces an act that's little more than a rehash of the one it's replacing.

Fixing Ontario's LTC system

The foundation of Ontario's current long-term care system can be traced back about two-and-a-half decades, when former PC premier Mike Harris' government made the sector friendlier to private operators.

Under Harris' government, his PC successor Ernie Eves, and successive Liberal governments, issues like growing wait times, inadequate care, staffing problems and insufficient accountability increasingly burdened Ontario's LTC system.

The pandemic was a breaking point — and one the Ford government was unprepared for.

Just over one month after the World Health Organization declared COVID a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, the Ontario government called for the Canadian Armed Forces' help in LTC. Military personnel would eventually arrive to help out seven Ontario nursing homes that had been pushed to their brink in April 2020.

Disturbed by what they witnessed in Ontario's nursing homes, the military relayed details about the homes' horrifying shortcomings to the federal government in reports that were later published.

Since COVID was first detected in Ontario, 4,430 long-term care residents have died after falling ill with the disease — equating to 44 per cent of the 10,036 deaths caused by the virus in the province, even as LTC residents make up just 0.5 per cent of Ontario's population.

Ford has said he takes "responsibility" for the long-term care disaster and has promised to fix the system.

Along with passing Bill 37, the PC government has also announced major investments to grow Ontario's long-term care capacity, and to address the sector's staffing shortage.

It's already dedicated $2.7 billion to the goal of adding 30,000 new nursing home beds in Ontario by 2028, and to upgrade another 28,000, and says that if they remain in government they'll commit another $3.7 billion to the cause beginning in 2024-25.

It's also pledged $4.9 billion to the cause of hiring 27,000 full-time LTC staff — including nurses, personal support workers (PSWs), and other support staff — over the next four years.

Ontario's New Democrats' plan, if they're elected in the spring, is to spend $3.75 billion per year until the end of the decade to convert the province's long-term care system into being entirely publicly operated. The party also says it would build 50,000 new long-term care beds, and create more — and better paid — full-time positions using this money.

The Ontario Liberal Party hasn't yet released the LTC plan that'll be a part of its platform for the June 2022 election.

The Green Party of Ontario has also not yet released its plan for the sector, but says on its website that the system "must be overhauled to put care and compassion over profit," that residents must be given four hours of personal care per day, and PSWs' wages must be increased.

Ontario’s PCs pass bill remodelling the province’s long-term care

Read this for free.