|
QUEEN’S PARK — Interim Ontario NDP Leader Peter Tabuns released the following statement in response to the passage of Bill 7, Doug Ford’s cruel legislation forcing people waiting in hospitals to move to a long-term care home they don’t want to go to:
“It’s a devastating day for thousands of Ontarians and their loved ones. Think of how helpless the families sitting at dad or grandma’s hospital bedside are feeling. Think of how scary it is, bracing for a call that will send your loved one to a long-term care home they don’t want to go to. I shudder at the thought of people being coerced into the kind of for-profit long-term care homes where the military found cockroaches and seniors stranded in soiled diapers.
What Doug Ford is doing is despicable. Mr. Ford is playing a cruel shell game, shunting people from a badly understaffed hospital system into a badly understaffed long-term care system against their wishes. Mr. Ford admits he is bringing down a financial hammer on families if they won’t move when and where they’re told to — the only thing he won’t say is how big that hammer be. Is he planning to crush families with an unacceptable, $1,800-a-day fee?
The NDP will keep fighting Mr. Ford’s cruel scheme to bill and bully people into long-term care homes they don’t want to go to.
It’s inhumane, and it does nothing to stop ER closures. It’s never too late to rip up this legislation and save families the pain of having their loved ones forced into long-term care homes they don’t want to go to. If we want to stop the ER closures, what we need to do is tackle the worsening health care staffing crisis. That means scrapping Ford’s wage-capping legislation, so we can attract, hire, train, retain and return nurses, and speeding up the recognition of internationally trained professionals.”
|