What happened (is happening) with the level of neglect in LTC isn't necessarily just the government not caring for the elderly. It's endemic of society's inability to care for people who no longer are productively providing to the economy.

Neoliberalism, meaning the ideology of using policy models that best support economic growth, has been incorporated into the Canadian healthcare system since the mid 1990's.

This means that health care reform has been guided by a model prioritizing profits and efficiency. It has been about applying market-based solutions to social problems. Not community and care. It hasn't been about prioritizing human dignity.

When you tie this into the fact that late-stage capitalism only values people based on the capital their bodies can create, you see why we got where we are.

Our systems produce, exploit and discard the elderly and those with disabilities. Capitalism requires maximum output with minimum supports. Neoliberalism throws the responsibility of support on the individual regardless of economic stressors and barriers.

Combine all of this together, and the dire situation in the LTC system in Canada, and you see that it has been about decades of intentional economic exploitation of a isolated and often helpless population.