Letter to the editor: Long Term Care

To the editor

The Conservative government has $933 million in taxpayer funds to “fix long-term care.” This includes tax money given to for-profit Long Term Care (LTC) homes, to add extra beds, hire more staff and pay them more. This is to compensate for gross deficiencies found in these homes.

But the question arises: the private LTC homes paid out $157 million in dividends in 2020, where the sites of most of the avoidable deaths, and did little to fix these deficiencies. So why, as per Ford, should ordinary taxpayers hand out welfare to private companies, without especially taxing their massive dividends to finance all these upgrades? Why all this welfare to rich businesses and cutbacks to the poor?

Hendrik S. Weiler Port Perry