To the Premier: The long-term-care homes with the most available beds are the ones with the worst records of caring for seniors.

Orchard Villa is a private, for-profit long-term-care facility in Pickering where the Armed Forces found residents living in horrifying conditions. Durham police have not ruled out criminal charges. It’s no surprise that their wait-lists are short—literally 42 times shorter than not-for-profit homes of comparable size.

My question is, if a patient doesn’t want to be moved to a private facility like this, why would the government force them?

Again to the Premier: Let’s be clear, 70 people died in this facility, over 100 staff got sick—soiled diapers, dehydration, cockroaches and flies everywhere.

Time and time again, the government has bent over backwards to support for-profit long-term care. They exempted them from legal liability, ignored their own commission’s call to eliminate profit in long-term care, and granted facilities like Orchard Villa licence renewals of 30 years, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Now they are literally threatening seniors with massive fees if they refuse to move to these homes. Does this government truly believe that this is fair to seniors and their families—as 5,000 people died under your watch in the last four years?