Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Physician, Heal Thyself

By Hank Beekhuis, Ontario Director

Lately, CLAC has been asked to participate as a stakeholder in a number of government round tables on issues such as long term care, violence in the workplace, and the gender wage gap.

Although we very much appreciate having the opportunity to express our members’ views in these forums, these are perhaps among the most frustrating forums to participate in. A lot of time, energy, and conversation takes place, but often little is accomplished in terms of actually resolving the problems.

It is supremely ironic to me that the government initiates these good and necessary discussions, but takes little responsibility for their role in creating the problem in the first place.

The province of Ontario and other sub-provincial bodies are the single largest employers of publicly funded workers in the province and they should be responsible for playing a leadership role in changing how things are done in the province. It is easy to attack the private sector for some of their egregious practices, but the government has to clean up its own act first and lead by example.

Let me give you some concrete examples of where they have failed to do so.

For the past 30 years, CLAC has consistently raised the issue of inadequate staffing levels in long term care. Every observer—including bureaucrats, labour leaders, and managers—agrees that this is and remains the single largest challenge in long term care.

The government, however, has continued to refuse to establish minimum staffing levels or provide adequate funding that would keep Ontario standards up to par with the Canadian average.

The ministry of health and long term care has further responded with additional regulations that treat the symptoms of the problem—such as creating new programs to deal with the rising incidents of falls and increased resident acuity—all of which could be adequately dealt with if sufficient staff were available.

The ministry of labour also wants to discuss violence in long term care, but takes no responsibility for ensuring that adequate staff are available, which would alleviate much of the problem. They prefer to educate and regulate, which only adds additional burdens to the already over-stretched staff.

There is now a stakeholder group discussing the gender wage gap in the province. As the largest single employer of women in Ontario, one would think that the government would take the lead in solving this issue. Yet they continue to fund daycare, home care, and long term care at such low levels that staff in these female-dominated sectors cannot possibly be paid an adequate wage.

This hypocrisy has to end. If the government of Ontario wants to be the provider of all of these services, then they must take the lead in resolving the problems, rather than try to divert responsibility and blame to someone else. Otherwise, we will continue having endless, fruitless, and frustrating discussions about symptoms rather than solving the core issues.

Physician, Heal Thyself

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