Ont. snap election wipes bill to reunite senior couples separated in care

Ontario's snap election has sidelined a bill to reunite senior couples living separately in long-term care homes. CTV’s Spencer Turcotte reports.

The snap election in Ontario will have significant implications on a bill that would reunite senior couples separated in long-term care.

All legislation that was yet to pass at Queen’s Park has been wiped from the docket and will need to be re-submitted under the next government.

It’s not the update 85-year-old Jim McLeod was hoping to hear. He currently lives at Fairview Mennonite Home in Cambridge, Ont. and has been separated from his wife Joan, who requires long-term care, since 2017.

“She resides in Hilltop Manor in Cambridge, which is approximately a 25-minute drive from where I live,” McLeod explained. “I have visited her over the past seven-and-a-half years, approximately 2,600 times.”

The pair have been married for 66 years and being apart will never feel normal.

“I find it difficult to bring Joan to Fairview because she doesn’t want to go back,” McLeod said.

He’s been fighting since 2019, alongside Waterloo MPP Catherine Fife, to make Bill 21 – the ‘Till Death Do Us Part Act’ – a reality.

The legislation would eliminate spousal separation in Ontario’s long-term care system. But now that an election has been called, that’s no longer the case.

“It essentially kills the bill once again,” Fife said.

It will have to be re-tabled and re-debated under a new government, making it the fourth time the bill would have to be re-introduced.

“The legislation passed the first time and the second time. But the government has never acted on it. And to date, even the Ford government in the second round voted for the bill. However, they sent it to committee where it’s been, languishing for over 800 days,” said Fife.

Long-term care researcher Vivian Stamatopoulos isn’t surprised.

She worked on another bill, with MPP Lisa Gretzky during the pandemic lockdowns, to re-unite separated families in congregate care settings. That bill eventually fell through because government was prorogued.

“Not only is it dangerous to separate these people, but it’s cruel. It’s inhumane, and it’s frankly unhealthy,” said Stamatopolous, an associate professor at Ontario Tech University. “We saw during the pandemic that any form of prolonged isolation, it kills. It frankly kills.”

She added that capacity is likely the main factor why Fife’s bill has hit a wall.

“The roadblocks are capacity issues. There’s no question about it,” said Stamatopoulos. “It doesn’t help us that we’ve had, I believe, six long-term care homes already announced that they are closing because they don’t want to make the necessary safety upgrades. So we are losing upwards of 500 long-term care beds.”

Both Fife and McLeod know they’re in a race against time. Two seniors in his retirement home had their spouses die, while living in separate long-term care facilities, within the last few years.

McLeod doesn’t want that to happen to his dear Joan.

“She’s very listless and doesn’t think anything will ever happen and she’ll be stuck there for the rest of her life,” he said.

In an email to CTV News, the Ontario Progressive Conservative party stated they created a system that prioritizes reuniting and keeping senior couples together, called the Fixing Long-Term Care Act.

In part, the party said “As always, the highest priority must go to Ontarians with acute care needs. The candidate’s Bill does not include care requirements, meaning spouses with minimal care needs—or no needs at all—could be pushed to the top of the waitlist at the expense of others in urgent need of care."