Ontario LTC residents get one hour less care a day than rest of Canada

Health minister must act to increase personal care hours
March 28 2012

Families, long-term care staff at Queen’s Park rally today

TORONTO, ON – Following this month’s tragic homicide of a senior in a Toronto long-term care home, and “a decade-long string of unmet promises by successive Ontario health ministers to do better and make improvements to long-term care (LTC), the time to act to increase care hours and keep residents safer is now,” says Michael Hurley the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
For more than 10 years, CUPE/OCHU have called on the provincial government to increase personal care and staffing supports, for the nearly 80,000 long-term care residents.
Recent Statistics Canada data indicates that Ontario homes for the aged fall well short of staffing for homes for the aged in other provinces. On average, facilities for the elderly in Ontario provide almost one hour less care for each resident everyday compared with the Canada-wide level. That means there is 22.5 per cent more care Canada-wide than in Ontario where funding is $28.30 less per resident per day than the national average.
Hurley will be among several invited guest speakers at a Queen’s Park rally today organized by the Parent family whose 85-year-old mother – a resident in a Peterborough nursing home – was attacked by another resident this February and is now in a wheelchair. The Parents’ believe that understaffing at the facility was a contributing factor in the attack on their mother.
“Long-term care workers are doing all they can to provide quality care, to treat residents with dignity and keep them safe. But chronic under-staffing and a lack of a provincial staffing standard, is leaving people vulnerable. Many incidents of resident-on-resident violence are preventable,” says Hurley.
A recent W5 investigation found that resident-on-resident violence in nursing homes is prevalent and on the rise across Ontario and the rest of Canada. It’s estimated that up to 75 per cent of residents have behavioral problems or are cognitively impaired.
In 2005 a coroner's jury into the 2001 death of two residents at Casa Verde (a Toronto nursing home) who were killed by another resident made 85 recommendations – several of them focused on sweeping changes to improve resident safety including increasing staffing and care levels and locked units for residents with dementia. Few of the recommendations have been acted on.
“While we have no doubt, Ontario’s health minister takes her responsibility as the minister responsible for care in long-term care homes extremely seriously the lack of action to make homes safer is extremely worrisome,” says Hurley.


For more information please contact:

Michael Hurley
President Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU-CUPE) 416-884-0770

Stella Yeadon
CUPE Communications
416-559-9300

Excessive corporate rights in Canada-EU trade deal are unacceptable to broad section of European, Canadian and Quebec society

February 5 2013
Brussels, Ottawa and Montreal – Labour, environmental, Indigenous, women’s, academic, health sector and fair trade organizations from Europe, Canada and Quebec representing more than 65 million people are demanding that Canada and the EU stop negotiating an excessive and controversial investor rights chapter in the proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). The groups issued a joint statement today ahead of a two-day meeting in Ottawa between European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and Canadian International Trade Minister Ed Fast, where the two hope to move the CETA negotiations forward if not to conclude an agreement.

“We will vigorously oppose any transatlantic agreement that compromises our democracies, human and Indigenous rights, and our right to protect our health and the planet,” says the transatlantic statement, endorsed by more than 70 organizations. “We urge the EU and Canadian governments to follow the lead of the Australian government by stopping the practice of including investor-state dispute settlement in their trade and investment agreements, and to open the door to a broad re-writing of trade and investment policy to balance out corporate interests against the greater public interest.”

Investor-state dispute settlement is a process found in many Canadian and European trade and investment agreements, including NAFTA and the hundreds of bilateral investment treaties that EU members states have signed with developing countries and with each other. The process allows a firm in one country to sue the government of the other country if the firm feels its investor rights have been violated. In a very real sense, these investment rules create a parallel legal system for multinational corporations and private investors, who are using them increasingly to challenge environmental, public health and other government policies, decisions, laws and measures that interfere in some way with the “right” to make a profit.

Recent high-profile cases include the $250-million NAFTA lawsuit threatened by Lone Pine Resources against Quebec’s ban on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), a €3.7-billion claim by Swedish Energy firm Vattenfall against Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power, ExxonMobil and Murphy Oil’s successful case against provincial profit-sharing rules on offshore oil development, and U.S.-based Renco Group’s $800-million claim against a Peruvian requirement to clean up the extreme pollution caused by its smelter in La Oroya.

“Qualitative research suggests that the treaties are not a decisive factor in whether investors go abroad... Based on a lack of economic benefits, and evidence that investment treaties do pose risks to environmental measures, a Sustainability Impact Assessment of CETA urged the European Union not to include [investor-state dispute settlement] in the agreement. Like the European Parliament, this independent report for the European Commission suggested a state-to-state dispute process is more appropriate in the EU-Canada context,” says the joint statement issued today by transatlantic civil society groups.

The Australian government decided in 2011 it would stop including these rights and investor-state dispute settlement in its trade and investment agreements. Many countries, including South Africa and India, are rethinking their investment treaties because of the way corporations and law firms have abused them to undermine democracy and public policies globally. Several Latin American countries are cancelling their investment treaties for the same reason.

In 1998, European and Canadian opposition to investor-state dispute settlement put an end to the planned Multilateral Investment Agreement, which would have extended these extreme investor protections to the entire OECD region. In the same spirit and in light of the rebirth of this failed corporate project in the Canada-EU trade deal, the European, Canadian and Quebec groups listed below “demand that the EU and Canada cease negotiating investor rights and an investor-state dispute settlement process into the CETA.”

To read the full statement: http://tradejustice.ca

Endorsed in Europe: 11.11.11 (Belgium), AITEC (France), ACV-CSC (Belgium), Attac Austria (Austria), Attac-France (France), Attac Liège (Belgium), ATTAC VLAANDEREN (Belgium), Both Ends (Netherlands), Center for Research and Documentation Chile-Latin America (Germany), CFTC, Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens (France), CNCD – 11.11.11 (Belgium), Corporate Europe Observatory (Belgium), Ecologistas en Aciòn (Spain), European Federation of Public Services Unions (EPSU), European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), Fairwatch (Italy), Food & Water Europe, Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII – Germany), FTM-CGT (France), Global Social Justice (Belgium), International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Labour, Health and Human Rights Development Centre (Nigeria), PowerShift (Germany), Stichting Vrijschrift (Netherlands), SOMO (Netherlands), Transnational Institute (Netherlands), World Economy, Ecology & Development (Germany), Zukunftskonvent (Germany)

Endorsed in Canada: Canadian Association of University Teachers, Canadian Auto Workers, Canadian Environmental Law Association, Canadian Federation of Students (CFS-FCEE), Canadian Health Coalition, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Common Frontiers, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), Council of Canadians, Greenpeace Canada, Hupacasath First Nation, National Farmers Union, National Union of Public and General Employees, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, Polaris Institute, Public Service Alliance of Canada, Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, Sierra Club Canada, (Tsalalh) Seton Lake Indian Band, Trade Justice Network, United Steelworkers

Endorsed in Quebec: Réseau québécois sur l’intégration continentale (RQIC), Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux (APTS), Alternatives, Association canadienne des avocats du mouvement syndical (ACAMS-CALL), Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale (AQOCI), Attac-Québec, Centrale des Syndicats démocratiques (CSD), Centrale des Syndicats du Québec (CSQ), Confédération des Syndicats nationaux (CSN), Conseil central du Montréal métropolitain (CCMM-CSN), Eau Secours!, Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ), Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ), Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ), Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ), Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ), Ligue des droits et libertés, Mouvement d’éducation populaire et d’action communautaire du Québec (MÉPACQ), Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE), Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique section Québec (SCFP-Québec), Syndicat de professionnelles et professionnels du gouvernement du Québec (SPGQ), Union des consommateurs

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For more information: http://tradejustice.ca

Bruno Ciccaglione, Seattle to Brussels network: bruno.ciccaglione@alice.it
Pierre-Yves Serinet, Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale (RQIC): +1 (514) 276-1075; rqic@ciso.qc.ca
Stuart Trew, Trade Justice Network: +1 (647) 222-9782; TJN.RCJ@gmail.com

What have Ontario seniors done to earn the wrath of the Ontario government?

January 18, 2013

TORONTO, ON – “While talking a good line” on providing care for Ontario’s legion of growing seniors, Ontario’s health minister “continues to short-change health care access for older Ontarians and fudge the facts of her government’s go-forward plan to replace universal and comprehensive hospital services and long-term care with limited home care supports,” charges Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario president Fred Hahn in response to a series of recent Liberal government announcements.

“Platitudes from the health minister and a couple of hours a week of home care aren’t going to provide a senior with multiple chronic conditions and little mobility with the 24-hour care and the quality of life they deserve,” says Hahn.

Last month’s Ontario auditor’s report tells the real story about seniors’ care. He found that 15 per cent of the nearly 20,000 people waiting for a long-term care (LTC) bed die while on the wait list for a bed. According to the auditor, since 2004/05 the number of people waiting for a bed has increased 85 per cent, despite stricter eligibility requirements coming into force in 2010. Over the same period the number of LTC beds in Ontario has increased by just 3 per cent.

Another 10,000 Ontarians are waiting for care at home. But funding for home care - home support and nursing - are set at levels “far too low to meet the existing waiting lists and new need from hospital offloading of more complex patients,” says Michael Hurley, the president of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU). Already Ontario has among the lowest per person health care funding in Canada. Over the next few years when Ontario’s population is ageing at unprecedented rate, the Liberals intend to cut billions of dollars more from health services.

What’s clear, Hurley says, is that hospital beds providing services to seniors in hospital are aggressively being cut across Ontario. Also being cut, are in-hospital physiotherapy and speech therapy programs, many serving seniors, which are being privatized in the community. “We also have a means-tested drug plan for seniors coming. It begs the question what have Ontario seniors done to earn the wrath of the Ontario government?” Asks Hurley.

As part of a “new” seniors’ health strategy, the government is looking at means-tested co-payments for the provision of home care and community support services.

Hahn says that “there appears a willful blindness on the part of the health minister, her government and those charged with developing a plan for seniors’ care, that verges on disrespect for the people who have built this province. What would be genuine and respectful is, the new Liberal premier stopping the billions of dollars in health service cost-cutting at the expense of care for seniors.”


For more information please contact:
Fred Hahn
President, CUPE Ontario
416-540-3979

Michael Hurley President,
Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU/CUPE)
416-559-9300

Stella Yeadon
CUPE Communications
416-559-9300

St. Joe’s health care workers urge chief coroner attending Hamilton dinner today for inquest into beating death of psychiatric patient

January 15 2013
HAMILTON, ON – Ontario’s chief coroner Dr. Andrew McCallum is the guest speaker at a Hamilton Medical-Legal Society fund raising dinner today, January 15 where he will focus on inquest and death review leading to changes. While St. Joseph’s health care workers are not attending the event tonight, they are hopeful Dr. McCallum will revisit initiating an inquest into the tragic May 2012 beating death of Michael Brewer, a forensic psychiatric patient at the hands of another patient at the facility.

Following Brewer’s death the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 786 representing 350 registered practical nurses and nearly 700 other support staff at St. Joe’s, wrote Dr. McCallum requesting that the coroner’s office immediately initiate an inquest similar to what occurs following a death in a corrections facility. OCHU/CUPE drew attention to workplace conditions, specifically the lack of security, understaffing and overcrowding that may be contributing factors in this death.

In an officious response, the regional supervising coroner for the Hamilton region wrote that a decision regarding the necessity of a “discretionary inquest into the circumstances of this death will be made at the completion of the investigation and, should an inquest be called, it cannot proceed until criminal matters are complete and the appeal process is finished.”

While the hospital administration has improved some aspects of security, little has changed, says CUPE 786 president Domenic DiPasquale.

“It was very disappointing to receive a response from the coroner’s office that an inquest in this case was discretionary and that it would not happen until all the legal proceedings were done. That could take years. In the meantime little is done to prevent a similar incidence from happening again,” says DiPasquale, who points out that several years ago a nurse was severely beaten by a patient and the hospital continues to report monthly first aid incidents involving nurses.

Although Dr. McCallum is moving on from the coroner’s office to head up Ontario’s scandal-plagued air ambulance service, DiPasquale says, “in light of the topic of his speech tonight,
we think his office should reconsider our request for an inquest.”

Tonight’s Hamilton Medical-Legal Society dinner begins at 7 p.m. at Spencer’s at the Waterfront, 1340 Lakeshore Road, Burlington.

For more information please contact:

Stella Yeadon
CUPE Communications
416-559-9300

Perth, Smiths Falls residents urged to attend community meetings to stop hospital cuts

JANUARY 11, 2013
PERTH, ON – Following several weeks of community outreach providing Perth and Smiths Falls residents with details of big cuts to surgery and other service at the district hospitals, area health care workers and other local activists are urging area residents to attend one of two community meetings this coming Monday and Tuesday in Perth and Smiths Falls, respectively.
With an ageing and growing population, the Perth and Smiths Falls communities deserve more access to a full range of health services at the district hospital – not less – say meeting organizers; the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) and the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU).
The proposed cuts amounting to $4 million that include the closure of 12 beds are not a done deal, says OCHU president, Michael Hurley. He’s urging area residents to attend one of the two important community meetings planned for this Monday, January 14 at 7 p.m. at the Perth Civitan Club, and
on Tuesday, January 15 at 7 p.m. at the Smiths Falls Legion Hall.
After many years of defending access to public health care across Ontario, OHC chair Natalie Mehra believes community mobilizing is key to keeping local hospital services. She says, because the provincial government intends to decrease health care funding over the next five years, the community’s ability to mobilize to maintain access to surgeries and other services at the Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital today “is a litmus test” for what may happen to hospital services in the future. Mehra is encouraging area residents to attend next week’s meetings and “help stop the cuts”.
OCHU is the hospital division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario. CUPE represents nearly 70,000 health care workers province-wide.

For more information please contact:

Michael Hurley
President, Ontario Council of Hospital Unions 416-884-0770

Natalie Mehra
Chair, Ontario Health Coalition
416-230-6402

Stella Yeadon
CUPE Communications
416-559-9300

“Protect Ontarians, tell us who they are.”

Health minister urged to name clinics providing subpar, inferior care

TORONTO, ON – Today’s report – the first of its kind – that found nine private medical procedures clinics are providing subpar, inferior care and that over a quarter of them are deficient in some way, should be a wake-up for Ontario’s Liberal government poised to aggressively expand the private clinic model, says Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU).

To better protect Ontarians the health minister must first “tell us who they are.” While letting the public know the names of the clinics providing “slip-shod, unsafe procedures is a first step,” Hurley says the provincial government must do more, including making the now voluntary inspections, compulsory.

“The inspection report raises many questions about the health and safety risks for patients accessing medical procedures like colonoscopies outside of hospital at private clinics. Ontarians should be greatly concerned that the health minister is effusive about closing hospital clinics while opening new shopping mall-based clinics like kidney dialysis centers. Low-rent, cut-rate health services at the local mall may not be the best way to deliver quality care and protect patients from risks,” says Hurley. Research clearly shows that death rates are higher at private, for-profit dialysis clinics, he adds.

Ontario’s public hospitals are subject to intense scrutiny, and regulatory and inspection processes intended to keep patients safe. Hospitals must now report the rates of hospital acquired infections (HAIs). There is no similar reporting required for private clinics. “A patient going in to have cataract surgery at one of these private clinics – which do receive public health care money – has no idea what the clinic’s rate of infection is or how many surgeries go awry. There is simply no transparency,” says Hurley.

Increasing provincial regulatory oversight would better protect Ontarians from unsafe practices at existing private medical procedure clinics, Hurley says. Inspections should also be done by a provincial ministry or agency, not a regulatory college for doctors, since doctors are often the primary owner-operators of these private clinics. “The inspection system we have now is akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house,” says Hurley.

OCHU has, for many years campaigned for lower HAI death rates and advocated for increased hospital transparency and accountability in the reporting of HAI rates.

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For more information please contact:

Michael Hurley President,
Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) 416-884-0770

Stella Yeadon
CUPE Communications 416-559-9300

Toronto health care workers rally in Toronto

Wednesday, November 28 to defend impartial arbitration
Urge those running for Liberal leadership to move away from failed policies attacking workers’ rights

TORONTO, Ont. – Busloads of health care workers from across Ontario will converge for a rally in Toronto this Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 12:00 noon at the Ministry of Finance (southeast corner Grosvenor and Queen’s Park Crescent). They will be joined by health sector staff and other public sector workers from across Ontario at the Wednesday rally focused on defending impartial interest arbitration and free collective bargaining for over 250,000 essential health care workers.

Health sector arbitration is working well and shouldn’t be attacked. The government’s intrusion into a stable, neutral process like arbitration “threatens these efforts and the public services Ontarians rely on,” says Michael Hurley, the president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU).

A review of private-sector and public-sector collective agreements for the last 20 years found that compensation increases in the health sector are slightly below those of other sectors. Furthermore, health sector arbitrated settlements are modest, keep pace with inflation, and are less generous than for other essential service workers.

“Liberal leadership candidates are being urged to focus on economic recovery and job creation, rather than on public sector restraint policies that hinge on taking away workers’ rights and changing arbitration so it is no longer independent of government involvement,” says Hurley. To date, only a few of the leadership candidates have indicated that they would restore collective bargaining rights for education sector workers taken away under Bill 115 and not pursue similar legislation for other public sector workers.

“Regrettably, none of the candidates have said that, if they become Premier, they won’t pursue changes to the arbitration system. If rebranding is truly a goal for the Liberals, then stepping back from some of these ideas that have been disastrous for them would set them on a better course,” says Hurley.

For their part, the opposition Tories say they are pursuing radical changes to arbitration that would remove all neutrality from the process. Inherently, this is an issue of fairness for health care workers who have been provided with a fair arbitration process because, under law, they do not have the right to strike,” says Hurley.

OCHU is the hospital division of CUPE in Ontario which represents over 75,000 essential health sector staff at long-term care homes and hospitals across the province.

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For more information, please contact:

Michael Hurley
President OCHU
(416) 884-0770

Stella Yeadon
CUPE Communications
(416) 559-9300