At a critical juncture last October 22, as the pandemic was racing through our province’s long-term care facilities, Ernst & Young reported to John Horgan’s BC NDP-led minority government on an astounding amalgam of ineptitude, incoherence and indifference.
But the band played on. And on. And on.
Two days later, an election and an NDP majority.
Week upon week, outbreaks and deaths.
Three months later, the big reveal of the report.
Today and forever, the shame.
The coronavirus has taken more than 600 lives in long-term care facilities in British Columbia, a staggering 60% of the loss of life in the pandemic and a real disclaimer to our self-satisfaction in how we have tackled coronavirus.
Successive governments have been entrusted and then entrust private and public sector alike with upholding the quality of life for our elderly when they cannot any longer be on their own.
Dignified, safe, end-of-life care ought to be a sacred trust for any government, rather like the commitment it makes to the veteran or the vulnerable. Who are we kidding about our values if we do not demand this of government?
The EY report makes us hope never to need for ourselves or our loved ones what is provided. The fault lines are too long and sorrowful to cite: poor prevention of infection, insufficient staffing and training, inadequate preparing for an emergency, disconnected communications, even miserly preference for public over private facilities in disbursing protective equipment.
Early in the crisis, the province stopped people from working in multiple facilities to reduce the spread of infection. The report concludes the unintended consequence is fatigue working double shifts because of a lack of available staff.
Last week, only after reporters had hounded the government, only after the government had played down its importance as a nothingburger, only after the minister said it was overwhelmingly positive, the EY report surfaced.
It was what you would hope not to expect: an indictment of systemic betrayal of those without much of a voice, many without much money, in care at the 500 facilities in the province. The report was written dispassionately so as not to apportion particular blame, but who else could be responsible but those who are officially responsible? A clue is in the recommendations, all of them directed at the need for provincial government intervention to effect broad changes.
More astonishing than the report’s contents, perhaps beyond belief, is the assertion by Adrian Dix, the health minister, that he only knew about the report 10 days earlier. This feels like a job for sodium pentothal.
He, the minister whose outfit commissioned the study. He, the minister who has held the role for nearly four years. He, the minister whose deputy is co-chairing the coronavirus public health response. He, the minister who at every public health briefing expresses solemnities for the families and loved ones of those taken by the pandemic.
Yet he did not know of a report from a consultation of 40 stakeholders he likely sees regularly on a central matter involving the most virulent of the pandemic’s horror in his ministry’s midst? How could he not? And if he did not, who dared keep the report away from him? Further, why should they be employed today?
These victims and sufferers, it ought to be noted, are those who the NDP champions, often piously when it talks of “putting people first,” yet this happened preventably under its watch – albeit so long in the making that Liberals are not credible critics themselves.
What is clear is that, like all important ingredients comprising an effective life, money is either the bridge or the hurdle to the desired outcome. The long-term care system costs so much and pays so little that it struggles in some quarters to uphold standards we would wish to stake our lives upon. Fixable, but formidable.
The government last week chided the public to do more to keep indoors and distant. The EY report is about those with little choice but to be indoors and distant. The residents and workers have been failed over recent decades and most tragically over recent months. While outbreaks have subsided and vaccinations will prevent many more deaths, there is little in the report to suggest the next pandemic will be greeted by a ready sector or that life between pandemics will be conferred with uppermost care. Our demography gives us no cause for optimism, either, as the sector booms.
What has struck me over the decades of absorbing reports on long-term care in Canada is how there is a common depiction of the residents as the “others,” not as ourselves in the making, and of the facilities as “over there,” not among us. We are then shocked to the core when the tragedy was hiding in plain sight.
There are more glamorous ways for government to gather glory than to force and finance the heavy, unceremonial reforms necessary to confer this care with confidence. Lately, though, I’m having a hard time thinking of a better idea. •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
