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Join us and the Ottawa Health Coalition on September 17 at 7 p.m. in a live town hall to talk about how we can make for-profit long-term care public! Register here!
Ottawa (14 Sept. 2020) — The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed grave problems with Canada’s long-term care. Over 6,000 people in long-term care died due to the virus. The majority of people who died lived in private care residences.
For-profit long-term care homes need to be made public
The virus exposed in real ways the dangers of private for-profit ownership of long-term care homes. Low pay, lack of benefits, high turnover, and fewer resources in order to ensure shareholders make a profit are just a few of the issues that came to light.
The National Union is not the only organization to call for long-term care services to be made public. The labour movement and civil society advocates have joined the chorus.
The Ottawa Health Coalition has organized an open, virtual town hall on September 16 to discuss the issue, and to call for Revera — the owner of Canada’s second-largest chain of for-profit long term-care facilities — to be brought under public ownership and control. The town hall will include a short panel of speakers who will share their expertise on the ownership structure of Revera Inc., and how it might be made public. This will be a key first step in bringing all of the privately owned for-profit long-term care facilities under public ownership.
The public is on our side
We know that the effort to bring Revera and other for-profit long-term care operators into the public sector will require an ambitious movement, one able to bring strong political pressure to bear on the federal government (Public Sector Pension Investment Board, a federal crown corporation, is invested in Revera) and provincial governments themselves. It is those governments that share primary responsibility for the serious policy failures that allowed this key component of our health system to be so extensively privatized in the first place.
But we know that the public is on our side. In April 2020, the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) called on the federal government to move long-term care under the Canada Heath Act to ensure proper care and funding for seniors' care. Our national survey showed that Canadians support this move forward and support investing further in our social programs after all the years of cuts.
Get involved!
Speaking on the panel will be
- Anil Naidoo, NUPGE National Representative, Co-chair of the Canadian Health Professionals Secretariat and board member of the Canadian Health Coalition
- James Infantino, PSAC National Pensions and Disability Insurance Officer and Member of Canadian Capital Stewardship Network
- Amanda Vyce, CUPE National Health Care Researcher and former Long-term Care worker
- Kevin Skerrett, CUPE Senior Research Office – Pensions, Visiting Professor, Carleton University’s Institute of Political Economy and Co-editor of the The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism
Join us on September 16, at 7:00 p.m. EDT, via Zoom! Register here! Once you register you will be sent the Zoom information. Simultaneous interpretation will be provided
If you cannot attend the town hall meeting, please let your MP and MPP that you support making long-term care public!