The province of Ontario’s lax oversight of long-term care homes and failure to protect vulnerable residents from the coronavirus led to widespread preventable illness, suffering and death, a new lawsuit alleges.
Court documents filed in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice on Monday accuse Premier Doug Ford’s government of discriminating against seniors’ homes and being “willfully blind” to the risks the highly infectious virus posed to the frail elderly.
“Ontario conducted its affairs with wanton and callous disregard for the class members’ interests, safety and well-being,” the statement of claim alleges.
Several proposed class-action lawsuits have been launched against private, for-profit owners of some of the hardest-hit homes in Ontario. But this is the first proposed class action that takes aim directly at the province’s stewardship of the sector, said Kirk Baert, a lawyer at Toronto law firm Koskie Minsky.
The Ontario Ministry of Long-Term Care is responsible for funding, regulating, licensing and inspecting the province’s 623 long-term care homes. The government pays home operators $182.23 a day for each bed, or $66,514 a year.
The lawsuit accuses the government of breaching its duty of care to nursing home residents, leaving them particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus.
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