New long-term care standards will fall flat without money or enforcement, experts warn

The federal government is spending $3 billion over five years to establish new standards to improve long-term care in Canada. Advocates say the money alone is not enough — that they want measures to ensure new standards actually lead to better care for seniors.

Expectations are high for the new standards, now being developed by the Health Standards Organization (HSO) and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). The work will take at least another 20 months but those involved say they hope new standards can help prevent the dire conditions that contributed to high pandemic death rates in the long-term care sector.

In the first wave of the pandemic, long-term care facilities saw 80 per cent of Canada's total COVID-19 deaths. Outside of Quebec and Nova Scotia, deaths in long-term care actually increased in the second wave.

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