TORONTO - Retirement homes in Ontario will be regulated for the first time under legislation passed Wednesday, but critics charge the move clears the way for more private, for-profit health care.
The Liberals got support from the Progressive Conservatives for third and final reading of the Retirement Homes Act.
Premier Dalton McGuinty said it was high time to regulate the industry, especially with Ontario's rapidly aging population.
"Some folks want us to take this over lock, stock and barrel with a very highly and tightly regulated environment, and some people advocated `No, hands-off, it's working by and large fairly well,"' said McGuinty.
"I think we've struck the right balance."
However, the New Democrats said the province will only appoint four of the nine members on a new advisory board that will oversee implementation of the act. That means the board could be dominated by the retirement home industry, the party charged.
"We will tell the people of Ontario that retirement homes are now regulated by the government," NDP health critic France Gelinas told the legislature.
"People will feel safe putting their vulnerable parents into retirement homes because they will be regulated by the government, but none of that is true."
Gerry Phillips, the minister responsible for seniors, claimed his critics don't understand the bill. The government will pass a bylaw making sure the board is not dominated by industry players, he added.
"I can just assure people that there's no way this can be an industry-dominated board," said Phillips.
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said he supported the bill, despite some reservations, because the industry is able to regulate itself.
"We think the industry is a mature industry, that they can work through self-regulation to raise the standards and ensure that residents of retirement homes have access to top-quality care," said Hudak.
"The only reason why this legislation has come forward is because of Dalton McGuinty's failure to invest in long-term care."
Groups including the Registered Nurses Association, the Ontario Health Coalition and the Canadian Union of Public Employees have all raised concerns about what they see as the self-regulating model the province has chosen in the legislation.
The bill also doesn't limit the level of care retirement homes can provide, which means it will lead to a two-tier health system that allows wealthy people to buy services they should get for free under Ontario's Health Insurance Plan, said the New Democrats.
"We are throwing medicare out the window and coming in with this act with a parallel, fee-for-service model dominated by private industry," said Gelinas.
"If you have the money to pay, you can buy yourself the equivalent of what you would get in a complex, continuing care bed in any one of the 157 hospitals in Ontario."
The Ontario Health Coalition said the powerful, multi-national companies that dominate the heavily regulated, long-term care industry want to expand the roles of for-profit retirement homes.
"If their care levels aren't capped, very easily they would become something like a private, for-profit second-tier of long-term care homes," said coalition spokeswoman Natalie Mehra. "In the worst case they could start taking on some of the work of chronic-care hospitals and privatize that."
The bill defines a retirement home as one where at least six unrelated residents, primarily aged 65 and over, purchase accommodation and care. About 43,000 Ontario seniors live in the approximately 700 retirement homes in the province.
Unlike nursing homes, which receive government funding to provide medical care to elderly patients, retirement homes are privately operated and, until now, unregulated.
