Governments failed long-term care residents

By Letter to the Editor on April 24, 2020.

Where does the blame and responsibility fall for the 31 lives lost at Montreal’s Residence Herron long-term care centre and the rest of Canada’s facilities that failed our long-term residents?

Let’s start at the top, the provincial and federal governments. Long-term care facilities are licensed, and presumably monitored by the provincial an federal governments.

It appears all levels of government have failed. Did they believe their responsibility ends with issuing licences?

The first resident died from the coronavirus March 29. Why did it take two weeks to find the operating deficiencies at the care homes? Should monitoring not be done on a continuous basis? And how long prior to the epidemic were conditions inferior and not addressed? Why were people’s lives superseded to lax legislation and enforcement?

The owners of the long-term care facility should have their licence immediately revoked. Other than greed, how can you justify conditions such as short staff, reduced work hours, multiple work environments, shortage of protective equipment, adequate screening and testing an under trained personnel?

What purpose or appeasement did the residents have to succumb to this horrible disease?

If policies are not monitored and changed immediately, society has let down and abandoned our most vulnerable.

Stan Adamus

Lethbridge

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