Yesterday's the Ontario Nurses' Association won an injunction requiring several private care homes to provide legally-required PPE and implement infection control. The decision includes some unbelievable passages. Hard to believe this isn't criminal behaviour..../2

"Regina Borkovskaia, a nurse working at Eatonville, deposes that residents in a fourth Eatonville unit also showed COVID-19 symptoms, but were permitted to move about the residence freely .../3

"The facility early-on declared that the only staff who would be provided the most protective type of masks were those attending to residents with confirmed cases of COVID-19, not those attending to residents who were symptomatic but as yet unconfirmed." .../4

"even after confirmation of a COVID-19 diagnosis for patients at Eatonville, the nursing staff continued to be denied the fully protective masks.... staff were advised that there were not enough N95s to go around, and that in any case they were unnecessary" .../5

On April 14, 2020, Eatonville Care had 25 publicly confirmed deaths and 49 confirmed cases of COVID-19.... a {ONA] labour relations officer...has deposed that the Applicants believe that the number of deaths as of that date was actually in the range of 43 .../6

"Anson Place has provided only sporadic access to N95
respirators, and has prohibited nurses from donning N95s on the basis of a point-of-care risk assessment.... nurses were advised that N95s were unnecessary and would only be provided when a nurse was swabbing a patient .../7

"ward rooms are shared by four residents, and
the beds [are] not the required 2 metres apart.... residents diagnosed with COVID-19 have not been moved from shared rooms, and so remain in close proximity to, and are treated by the same nursing staff, as those who are not infected

"management at Anson Place did not put into effect its existing Pandemic Plan. Therefore, residents and staff were not separated, or cohorted, into contagious and non-contagious groupings" .../9

"It has also not even attempted to separate residents into segregated wards such that COVID-19 positive patients are not in the same room as those without the virus. Instead, it has opted to keep all residents in place and
hang a privacy curtain between beds." .../10

"Hawthrone Place has been chronically short-staffed, with the base staffing levels seldom being met and nurses compelled to care for a high number of patients in taxing work conditions." .../11

"staff in the convalescent unit... where there is an active outbreak of COVID-19, were apparently given no N95s at all. Then, according to Mr. Belford, during the weeks of April 6th and April 13th, protective masks were given out sporadically." .../12

"management, and not nursing staff, have taken over the allocation of PPE and the decision-making as to when N95s and other PPE are used" .../13

"residents who have become symptomatic have not been isolated from others while test results are pending, and
that no effective cohorting has been done at Hawthorne Place in order to separate the sick from the well" .../14

"upon being advised of the outbreak, the ONA requested that the Associate Director of Care for [Henley Place] provide N95 respirators to staff interacting with patients diagnosed with or suspected of having COVID-19. This request was denied... .../15

"and the facility’s nurses were advised that they would be limited to the use of surgical masks even when providing care to known COVID-19 patients" ...16

"there is a lengthy bureaucratic procedure involved in any staff member requesting an N95, which must go through several layers of management before being approved" ../17

"nurses work in intimate proximity to patients – including
performing aerosol-generating procedures in which there is a high risk of contagion – without adequate protective gear." .../18

These workers' union had to take on a legal fight to get their employers to obey the law. But this isn't just a failure of management. It's a failure of the government's enforcement agencies. Do workers without a union have no one fighting to protect them? ...19

This is also a good moment to remember that the Criminal Code of Canada -- due to union efforts -- now includes the crime of negligence in the duty of workplace supervision. Where there is orchestration of the negligent behaviour, employees up to the CEO can be charged. .../20

If convicted in a case causing death, the sentence is up to life imprisonment. But are police investigating? .../21