Don’t accept the crocodile tears from @fordnation and @DrFullertonMPP. Patients, families, UNIFOR, and others have been raising this issue for years.
Long term care is a for-profit enterprise in Ontario, and properly caring for the very sick and elderly isn’t profitable.

The bipartisan consensus in Ontario — and indeed Canada — has been to privatize and contract-out residential care for my entire life. As a result, older adults and ppl with disabilities have endured untold suffering and early death. This isn’t news. This was a choice.

If @fordnation and @DrFullertonMPP are actually surprised, that’s even more damning. Anyone who has set foot in one of these facilities or who has spoken to a PSW or a patient in the last decade could have told you this.

Residential care doesn’t HAVE to be horrific! There are models throughout the world where older adults and adults w/disabilities are treated with compassion and care. There is nothing inherent to the residential care model that results in these atrocities.

By privatizing residential care, the government made it clear that profit was more important than the lives of older adults. Profit margins require cuts to care and PSWs working in multiple facilities. This nightmare was obvious to anyone who bothered to *look*.

I’m furious. People have died who didn’t need to. Workers, patients and families have been trying to blow the whistle on this FOR YEARS. It is ‘sickening’, @fordnation. But so is pretending you didn’t know.