Letter to the Premier - Keep Profit Out of Seniors' Care

Seniors deserve better! Send the Premier and the Health Minister a letter demanding that seniors’ care be placed under public control.

Letter to the Premier: Keep Profit Out of Seniors' Care

Dear UCP Premier, 
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The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that seniors in for-profit continuing care homes receive inferior support and suffer worse health outcomes than those in 
publicly-funded facilities. That’s because the profit motive in private systems is directly at odds with adequate staffing or decent pay and benefits. The Canadian Forces report on conditions in facilities in Quebec and Ontario should be a wake-up call across the country, including here in Alberta. 
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In Alberta, for-profit continuing care facilities had much worse COVID outbreaks than either non-profit or AHS operated facilities. On average, outbreaks in for-profit facilities had much higher confirmed cases, with more resident deaths, and more confirmed staff cases than non-profit or AHS facilities. The comparison between for-profits and AHS facilities shows that for-profits had on average 57 per cent more confirmed resident cases, 38 per cent more resident deaths, and 32 per cent more confirmed staff cases.&nbsp; 
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Many seniors lost their lives too soon, and their families have been left to pick up the pieces. This tragedy lays at the feet of for-profit companies. By under-employing workers at low wages in order to maximize profit, for-profit companies forced care workers to gather hours by working at multiple locations. As we now know, this patchwork system turned out to be the ideal condition for the spread of the virus. 
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It’s time to take the profit motive out of seniors’ care in Alberta entirely. I am calling on you to take action to eliminate the profit motive from seniors care, and move to a publicly-delivered system. Increased privatization led to destabilized working conditions, diminished levels of care, and a general crisis in the sector. The depth of this crisis has now been laid bare by the tragic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
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For seniors, for workers, and for our communities, let’s make the implementation of publicly delivered seniors’ care a positive legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic. 
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cc: 
Jason Copping, Minister of Health

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