Long-term care homes need stable, predictable and sustainable funding that matches their costs based on increasing resident needs, inflation and arbitrated wage awards to operate today, build for tomorrow and lay a solid foundation for innovation.
Long-term care homes need stable, predictable and sustainable funding that matches their costs based on increasing resident needs, inflation and arbitrated wage awards to operate today, build for tomorrow and lay a solid foundation for innovation.
The Ontario government has made historic investments in long-term care that helped correct historic underfunding, supported the increase in staffing and modernization of older homes. We now need funding to continue to keep pace with operating realities to ensure homes are equipped to care for residents with more care needs while managing increasing costs of operations and arbitrated wage awards.
Funding gaps create financial instability, undermining homes ability to innovate and create even better models of care that their residents need and deserve.
Long-term care homes depend on stable, predictable and sustainable funding that recognizes their operating costs and the financial requirements they must meet for lenders that fund the re/development of long-term care homes. It’s an essential part of our commitment to providing quality services and care to those they serve.
Growing daily costs like food, arbitrated wage awards, policy and legislative requirements, and changing approaches to funding have led to instability in many homes across the province, especially in small and rural towns. This puts many homes at risk of closure, leaving their communities and seniors without access to local care.
Without long-term care capacity, pressures on local emergency rooms intensify, the demands placed on family physicians will grow, and the burden on caregivers and community supports will become unmanageable.
Ontario has been on a path to remove ward-style rooms with three or more residents living together.
The absence of a viable capital program delayed the ability of homes to rebuild to modern standards without ward rooms. Then, the pandemic exposed the risks of ward-style rooms, leading the government to quickly close 3,500 spaces in 179 long-term care homes in order to protect those living in long-term care. These spaces will continue to stay closed until homes can redevelop them under modern standards.
To lessen the impact of the loss of these beds, the Government of Ontario has been partially funding these unoccupied spaces, helping ensure residents’ safety and the continued viability of these homes.
Continuing this funding is essential to enabling homes to cover fixed operating costs, meet debt service requirements and maintain staff levels. Additionally, this funding is critical to ensuring these homes are stable enough to focus on redeveloping, so that they can continue to serve their communities for decades more.
Many of these homes will not be viable without immediate funding support as they lack the economies of scale to be able to cover their fixed costs under the proposed funding reductions.
Read our 2025 Provincial Budget Submission