Ottawa Explores Penal Reform as Liberal MP Introduces Long-Term Care Neglect Bill

Cathy Legere saw firsthand the conditions older long-term care residents endured and the intense pressure personal care staff were under in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The retired infection control nurse volunteered her services at the Orchard Villa home where her father-in-law, Nick, resided in April 2020, saying she witnessed a deeply “broken” system before contracting the virus herself.

While isolating at home, she was horrified to learn that her father-in-law, Nick, was left in a room for nearly 24 hours with the corpse of a resident he had watched slowly succumb to the disease over two days. .

The dire stories emerging from long-term care facilities during the early pandemic, especially as reported by the Canadian military who were brought in to help, prompted the Liberal government to promise in its 2020 throne speech that it would work on amendments. to the Penal Code. to “explicitly penalize those who neglect the elderly in their care”.

Almost two years later, the government has not made any major moves.

That makes Legere, who is part of a major class action lawsuit against Ontario nursing homes, even more cynical about seeing any liability: “Is this something that’s going to do something, or is it just the liberals saying, ‘ Oh ‘yeah, we’ll do this,’ and will everyone slide again?”

Liberal Hedy Fry, the longest-serving MP in the House of Commons, is seeking to take matters into her own hands and propose changes that could form a roadmap for the government’s approach.

He introduced a private bill in late June, House Bill C-295, which would amend Section 215 of the Penal Code to specifically criminalize owners and managers of long-term care homes for failing to provide the “needs of the life” to vulnerable adults.

It would also give judges the ability to bar anyone convicted or paroled for that crime from volunteering or working in an environment “that involves being in charge or in a position of trust or authority toward an adult who is vulnerable by reason of age, illness, mental disorder, disability or frailty”.

Fry said his intention is to prevent long-term care failures during the pandemic from happening again.

“COVID exposed a lot of vulnerabilities that we smugly as governments and as caregivers and as a doctor always thought were being taken care of. It exposed that there were holes in the safety net,” he said in an interview. “The system was not up to par.”

Fry said Justice Minister David Lametti “doesn’t have a problem” with the bill, answering in the affirmative when asked if he thinks the government agrees with the approach.

A Justice Department spokesperson said only that officials are “exploring possible options for penal code reform to better address elder abuse and neglect.”

Experts say the bill is a step in the right direction, but risks being a public relations exercise and failing to bring about meaningful change if the government ends up supporting it in isolation.

The Penal Code amendments themselves seem “a very viable approach,” said Graham Webb, executive director of the Advocacy Center for the Elderly and previously its longtime staff attorney.

“I’m not really aware of a single charge being filed for the negligence of a long-term care resident,” Webb said. “I think it’s important that the criminal justice system is able to respond when we see such blatant cases of institutional abuse and neglect of older adults.”

He added that the definitions around “managers” and “owners” of the houses could be adjusted to ensure that the people at the top who control the money and resources available to the staff are liable for negligence, rather than the individuals that are in front. line workers.

But Krista James, national director of the Canadian Center for Elder Law, said prosecutions under Section 215 are already few and far between, and she is skeptical about the impact of amending it.

“Criminal law reform requires reform of the criminal law infrastructure to have an impact,” he said, explaining that police and prosecutors would need to be trained and offenses and standards of evidence would need to be widely promoted for it to work. “If only it were a matter of changing a law.”

When asked if he thought the bill could be a deterrent, James joked, “You would hope that people who provide long-term care would want to provide good care to the vulnerable older adults who live in their facility, whether it’s whether or not they have gone to jail if not.”

Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, said “there has been no consequence” for the abuse and neglect that was exposed during the pandemic, or for the needless deaths of residents due to poor infection control and reasons other than COVID. -19. such as dehydration and starvation.

Although provincial governments that oversee long-term care have much to do, Ottawa has a role to play in holding provinces accountable for better standards of care, Mehra said, by placing more conditions on federal health transfers.

That and finally delivering on the promise to hold bad actors criminally accountable.

“I think we need to search our conscience if the lives of the elderly are not worth a formal bill from the government,” he said, “and real change with the teeth.”

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on July 16, 2022.