The Orchard Villa Care home, in Pickering, Ont., saw 70 residents die of COVID-19 during the first wave of the virus – the highest number of pandemic deaths at any nursing home in the province to that point.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The Ontario government violated its own long-term care legislation by awarding a new 30-year operating licence to the for-profit owner of a nursing home that was hard hit in the early days of the pandemic, a health care advocacy group alleges in a court filing.
The group, the Ontario Health Coalition, is seeking a judicial review of the government’s decision to extend the licence for Orchard Villa, a 233-bed facility in Pickering, Ont., where 70 residents died of COVID-19 during the first wave of the virus – the highest number of pandemic deaths at any nursing home in the province to that point.
Under provincial legislation introduced in 2021 as part of a wide-ranging overhaul of the rules governing the sector, Long-Term Care Ministry officials are required to review a nursing home owner’s track record for providing care to the elderly before renewing an operating licence.
Natalie Mehra, executive director of the coalition, said at a news conference on Tuesday that her group spent years fighting for provisions to be included in the long-term care legislation aimed at preventing the government from rewarding homes with poor track records. With Orchard Villa, she noted, the government has also given the home’s owner, the for-profit chain Southbridge Care Homes, the go-ahead to replace the existing facility with a larger one containing 320 beds.
“To give this operator a big expansion of 87 new beds is astonishing,” Ms. Mehra said. “To give it a 30-year licence is just despicable.”
Southbridge officials could not be reached for comment.
The coalition made its court filing jointly with Cathy Parkes, the leader of a group of families opposing Orchard Villa’s expansion plans. They are asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to declare that the government acted “unlawfully, unreasonably, and improperly” by renewing the home’s licence.
The legislation says an owner is eligible for a licence only if, in the Long-Term Care Ministry’s opinion, their past conduct “affords reasonable grounds to believe that the home will not be operated in a manner that is prejudicial to the health, safety or welfare of its residents.”
Because of the “virtual collapse” of resident care at Orchard Villa during the first few weeks of the pandemic, the court documents say, Lakeridge Health, a regional hospital network, took over management of the home. When hospital staff arrived at the home, the documents say, they found few staff members, garbage everywhere and the absence of even rudimentary infection-control measures.
The Canadian Armed Forces were then briefly deployed to Orchard Villa and four other Ontario nursing homes in the spring of 2020.
A report from the military, released in May, 2020, described poor infection-control practices and abuse and neglect of residents at Orchard Villa. The report singled out one resident who choked to death while being fed lying down.
Ms. Parkes said at the news conference that her 86-year-old father, Paul Parkes, endured inadequate care at the home even before the pandemic. Her father died of COVID-19 in April, 2020.
“I’m at a loss for words as to how this home was granted a licence,” she said.
Asked at a separate news conference on Tuesday about the licence, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said his government has increased the number of inspectors monitoring long-term care homes since the pandemic and is also modernizing the sector by creating 30,000 new beds and upgrading many older homes.
“I acknowledge it was a tough time throughout COVID not only here, but around the world,” he said. “But we’ve corrected those problems.”
The new licence for Orchard Villa was awarded on Dec. 1 and posted on a Long-Term Care Ministry website. Earlier last year, the provincial government had made plans to override municipal planning powers and fast-track the expansion of Orchard Villa.
The city council in Pickering unanimously rejected a request from the province in May that the city approve a minister’s zoning order, or MZO, to replace the existing nursing home with a larger one.
Over the objections of councillors, the government issued an MZO a month later for Southbridge to proceed with building the new Orchard Villa home in Pickering. On that same day in June, the government also issued MZOs for two other Southbridge long-term care projects in Port Hope and Ottawa.