The Ford Conservatives passed Bill 7, forcing seniors and people with disabilities to be moved without their consent from hospitals to long-term care homes up to 150 kilometres away in the north and up to 70 kilometres away in the rest of the province.

This does nothing to address the healthcare crisis. It doesn’t add more long-term care or hospital beds, nor does it provide better care for Ontarians.

What Bill 7 does do is strip patients of their rights by authorizing their transfer to a long-term care (LTC) home without their consent, potentially hours away from the support of family and friends. It wrongly blames the most vulnerable people for a healthcare crisis that is not their fault.

Bill 7 also fails to make the proper investment needed in the province’s overburdened and understaffed hospitals, home care, rehabilitative care, and LTC homes to ensure the support people need.

Before even more families are devastated by this bill, we are calling on Minister Calandra and the Ford Conservatives to do the right thing and protect the dignity of Ontarians needing ongoing medical care and ensure they are not forced, against their will, into a LTC facility that is ill-equipped to provide them with the proper care.

Have your voice heard. Act NOW to send a message and say NO to Bill 7.

PROTECT PATIENTS:STOP FORD FROM FORCING PEOPLE INTO LONG-TERM CARE

Dear Minister Calandra,

Bill 7 is an afront to the human rights of all Ontarians needing ongoing medical care. The legislation will neither add more beds nor provide better care for Ontarians. Instead, it will strip the basic rights of patients and permit the authorization of someone’s admission to a long-term care (LTC) home without their consent and their relocation to a community, hours away from family and friends. This is cruel, traumatic, and does not ensure that people are placed in a health care setting that can provide proper medical care and that is most conducive to their ongoing medical needs.

Our health care sector is already overworked and understaffed, and all your Bill will accomplish is to shift people who need convalescent care from hospitals, where they are already receiving care and close to their families and loved ones, into an already overburdened and understaffed LTC sector, where there is a waiting list of 38,000 people for beds. Forcing more people away from their family and community supports will worsen outcomes and increase the workload in long-term care homes where staff are already stretched to the breaking point.

Bill 7 will not do anything to fix our health crisis and will only further privatize healthcare by forcing seniors and other patients into the empty beds in undesirable private long-term care facilities.

It is shameful that your legislative solution to the very real hospital staffing crisis will simply ensure that the unfilled beds in private sector long term care facilities are fully occupied. No one wants to go to these facilities given their tragic record during the pandemic.

Minister Calandra, I am calling on you to commit to protecting the dignity of patients by repealing Bill 7 and making real investments in Ontario’s beleaguered health care sector to ensure that patients receive the proper level of care in an appropriate facility.

 

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