Seniors’ whistleblowers must be protected

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/07/2022 (1364 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You may have heard about a tragic case of elder abuse in a Winnipeg care home. In June, family members of 15 residents were notified that their relatives in care had allegedly been abused and assaulted.

The people who were allegedly hurt were seniors, some with dementia, some in their 90s. They were defenceless and in some cases, couldn’t even speak. My heart breaks for them and their families.

A whistleblower complaint was ignored until a second one was made at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. Both the health authority and Extendicare admitted policies and procedures weren’t followed.

This shouldn’t happen to anyone, not even once. If it happens even once, people need to be free to speak up without fear of reprisal.

We need to call this what it is — a cover-up of elder abuse, and it shouldn’t be tolerated.

We expect the government to invite people to come forward with what they know, and provide them with assurances they won’t face retaliation or blacklisting for having the courage to call out wrongdoing.

The fear is real and justified. In a letter to the Minister for Seniors, the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) told the government “Most of these groups feared speaking out lest their government funding be decreased or cut altogether.”

This is outrageous. It means that government itself is complicit in a culture of cover-up that labels people who speak up as “troublemakers”, and will punish people for speaking up.

It needs to be called out for what it is — corruption. It needs to be challenged and rooted out, and to do that, whistleblowers must be assured they will be safe coming forward.

Ultimately, the provincial government is responsible for seniors’ homes. The provincial government, through Shared Health, regulates, inspects and funds care homes. They set the standards, and must be willing to pull licences when things go wrong and fund them properly to make sure things can go right.

For decades, this hasn’t happened. There are inquiries, reports and inquests that have recognized short staffing as a problem. It’s known that private homes struggle to provide care because they receive a fraction of the funding that public homes do. And in many cases, funding has been frozen — or even cut — for more than a decade.

We need to remind ourselves — and the government needs to make it clear – seniors’ homes exist for one reason: to care for seniors. It is not to protect private profits, bureaucrats, workers or politicians.

It is about doing the right thing. There’s an old saying – that if you face a difficult choice, the right one is often the harder one. We want to make it easier.

If you want to speak up – let us know. You can write to me in confidence at dougald.lamont@leg.gov.mb.ca, call (204) 792-8806 or write a letter to 118 Marion St., R2H 0T1.