November 21, 2022
Treat Seniors with Respect, Withdraw Bill 7
During question period this morning MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) asked Premier Doug Ford to withdraw Bill 7, a bill which allows alternate level of care patients to be send to long term care homes not of their choosing, hundreds of kilometers away.
This morning the Ontario Health Coalition and the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly announced a charter challenge against Bill 7. Bill 7 takes away the rights of frail elderly people to give consent and to keep their personal health information private. All week-end health care workers have been reaching out to me, social workers, nurses, physicians; they do not want to have to tell their patients that they have to pay $400 a day or move to a LTC home hundreds of kilometres away from their home. Many of them will quit their job, rather than do something that goes completely against their ethical and moral values. You see speaker, contrary to this government health care workers do not discriminate against frail elderly people, they care for them!
‘Will this government do the right thing and repeal bill 7’’ Gélinas asked. In September Gélinas wrote to Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Patricia DeGuire asking for recommendations regarding the rights seniors lost under this legislation (Bill 7).
This morning the Executive Director of the Ontario Health Coalition, Natalie Mehra was joined by the Executive Director of the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, Graham Webb, to announce the two groups will be co-applicants to an Ontario Superior Court of Justice Charter Challenge. They are seeking the court to strike down Bill 7, as a violation of the fundamental rights of patients under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They were joined by their legal representative Benjamin Piper from the law firm Goldblatt Partners LLP.