Liberal Response as Government

A year later, as Premier, McGuinty appointed Elinor Caplan with a mandate to conduct a review of home care but with no mandate to look beyond the competitive bidding model. The OFL and its affiliates with a direct involvement in home care used this review as yet another opportunity to discuss both the crisis in home care and viable solutions.  They met together and individually with Caplan on numerous occasions.

When she reported back in June 2005, the OFL and its affiliates saw her report as simply tinkering with a flawed system because she did not/could not call for the elimination of competitive bidding nor the return of home care to a public, non-profit system.

Positive Action on Home Care

Based on labour’s direct experiences in home care, the November 2005 Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) convention document Rebuilding Health Care outlined specific actions which the Liberal government could begin to implement immediately:

Stop the competitive bidding process in home care.  A process which has created massive and regular disruption of job security and working conditions for workers and in the continuity of services for Ontarians in need.

Move to establish a public system of home care drawing on the successful working models found in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Home care should be seen as part of the continuum of a health care system in our province and country.  The 2002 Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, popularly known as the Romanow Report, identified the expansion of the home care system as an essential element of an expanded health care system.  Such a system must ensure that services reflecting the diversity of need are available to Ontarians where and when they are needed, services which are provided by dedicated and knowledgeable workers who understand what their fellow Ontarians need.  Home care workers must be seen as health care workers and should be treated as such.

The home care system which we need in Ontario must be established in a context of enforceable standards of care and appropriate levels of funding to ensure quality care. The kind of system we need can not and will not be developed by the advocates of Public-Private Partnerships (P3s).  Their motive is to satisfy their greed, not to address the needs of the community.