{"id":19383,"date":"2022-09-07T16:39:04","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T20:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/?p=19383"},"modified":"2022-09-17T16:42:59","modified_gmt":"2022-09-17T20:42:59","slug":"letter-ontarios-bill-7-smacks-of-ageism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/index.php\/letter-ontarios-bill-7-smacks-of-ageism\/","title":{"rendered":"LETTER: Ontario\u2019s Bill 7 \u2018smacks of ageism\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(September 6, 2022)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By: Marie DellaVedova in the Sault Star<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Facing a long-foreseen crisis in Ontario\u2019s hospital care, the Ford government has recently announced a plan which it says will free up much-needed beds in hospitals across the province.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bill 7, the\u00a0\u2018More Beds, Better Care Act,\u2019\u00a0will\u00a0allow the forcing of elderly patients into long term care facilities not of their choosing. This\u00a0legislation\u00a0will have implications and consequences well beyond what most Ontarians, particularly seniors, consider acceptable for themselves or their loved ones.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Samir Sinha is the director of Geriatrics at Sinai Hospital and University Health Network. He is also the director of Health Policy Research at the National institute on Ageing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Dr. Sinha, \u201cThis really can hasten people\u2019s demise when you send them to a place they don\u2019t want to be. It may not be a place that can meet their needs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This\u00a0new long-term care plan will allow patients to be sent\u00a0far\u00a0from their\u00a0home and their loved ones.\u00a0These loved ones often include substitute decision makers who have power of authority. Being close to the long-term care resident is important for monitoring a resident\u2019s well-being.\u00a0Due to the long distances between\u00a0communities, patients in\u00a0northern\u00a0Ontario\u00a0especially risk being sent hundreds of kilometres from home.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jane\u00a0E.\u00a0Meadus\u00a0is a lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly\u00a0who fights for the rights of those in long-term care homes, hospitals, and psychiatric facilities.\u00a0She joins many seniors and long-term care advocates who are outraged at the government\u2019s announcement that disrespects the needs of patients.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhat this also does is take away the fundamental cornerstone of consent, which is built into our legislation, which has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, that certain things require consent, especially in the medical context, and this is no different,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is a breach of fundamental justice and fundamental rights of people, specifically the elderly and people who are disabled.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meadus said the only appeal process mentioned in the bill is if a patient is deemed ineligible for long-term care. \u201cThere\u2019s no way to appeal if you are being forced into a home that you don\u2019t want to go to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The long-term care system, like the hospital sector in Ontario, is\u00a0in\u00a0crisis. Staffing levels are unsafe and well below acceptable levels.\u00a0Multiple\u00a0long-term care homes in Ontario are still without air conditioning. Many are presently in COVID outbreak. Many homes are the same long-term care homes, under private for-profit ownership, where thousands of long-term care residents died of neglect over the last few years. None of them were ever fined. None of them lost their license.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Surely no one should be forced to take up residence in any of these homes. While the government promises that this legislation will allow hospital patients awaiting a bed to be transferred to a \u201ctemporary\u201d home while they await space in their preferred home, temporary is not defined.\u00a0 It could mean days, weeks, months, years. And in all likelihood, people at this stage in life could die alone and far from their families.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Legislation that deprives a senior of\u00a0informed consent to health care\u00a0smacks of ageism. Sacrificing the\u00a0vulnerable\u00a0once again is a cruel and ineffective way to solve a health care crisis. This is a crisis whose growth has been documented over many years while\u00a0successive governments\u00a0have failed miserably to address it.\u00a0It has not been caused by\u00a0our hospitals\u2019 ALC\u00a0patients\u00a0and their rights and well-being\u00a0should not be sacrificed\u00a0in a\u00a0futile\u00a0attempt to\u00a0solve it.\u00a0The right to health care does not diminish with age.\u00a0 And putting pressure on one part of the health care sector already in crisis in order to help another will not work either.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Surely,\u00a0we can do better by the generation that built our society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Ontario government decided to forego the usual legislative process of sending the bill to public hearings, in effect denying the public the opportunity to examine the bill, ask questions and provide input.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Ontario, frail seniors and the disabled\u00a0are being treated like\u00a0criminals, in that they\u00a0have lost the right to choose where to live and receive medical care. And it is\u00a0according to government plan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Marie DellaVedova<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Political advocacy representative ,<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">District 3 Algoma, RTOERO<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.saultstar.com\/opinion\/letter-ontarios-bill-7-smacks-of-ageism\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Click here for original article<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(September 6, 2022) By: Marie DellaVedova in the Sault Star Facing a long-foreseen crisis in Ontario\u2019s hospital care, the Ford government has recently announced a plan which it says will free up much-needed beds in hospitals across the province. Bill 7, the\u00a0\u2018More Beds, Better Care Act,\u2019\u00a0will\u00a0allow the forcing of elderly patients into long term care [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ohc-in-the-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>LETTER: Ontario\u2019s Bill 7 \u2018smacks of ageism\u2019 - Ontario Health Coalition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(September 6, 2022) By: Marie DellaVedova in the Sault Star Facing a long-foreseen crisis in Ontario\u2019s hospital care, the Ford government has recently\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/index.php\/letter-ontarios-bill-7-smacks-of-ageism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LETTER: Ontario\u2019s Bill 7 \u2018smacks of ageism\u2019 - 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