SGAP was appalled to find out that the Ontario government has funded $41 million for the nursing homes in Ontario to have security guards at their entrances

https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2021/01/28/security-guards-at-doors-of-ltc-homes-chilling-says-ndp-leader.html

The government’s claim is that the guards will be there to provide “third party oversight” is to ensure that visitors entering homes adhere to screening a testing requirements. Really?! Third party security guards are contracted by an organization to keep people out. The Government of Ontario has leveraged covid to “raise the bar” on the requirements to visiting residents in nursing homes to a nearly impossible level to meet. Conversely, the standard for nursing home staff  to enter is much lower.   The only logical explanation is the purpose of these measures is to deliberately keep visitors out of nursing homes so that they will not see and report problems to authorities and news media.

This is very disturbing based on the horrific problems that were exemplified by the Canadian Military report last summer.

Residents in Ontario nursing homes are now in a  state of “house arrest” in a legal and practical sense.    The only thing missing are the guards, which arrive next month. To keep Canadians imprisoned in their own homes (their legal residences) under such conditions is a violation of the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms in the Canadian Constitution!

Last week, the Ford government released a memorandum to nursing homes in Ontario titles “Enhancing the Protection for LTC-Homes” (  https://fco.ngo/files/Memorandum-Enhaning-the-Protection-for-LTC-Homes-February-4.pdf  )  It leaves these basic questions unanswered;

1. Why are nursing home staff (who interact with many residents) covid tested WEEKLY while a visitor (who only interacts with one resident) is tested DAILY? **
2. Why are nursing home staff  able to start interacting with many residents as soon as they arrive for work. That is, BEFORE the results of their covid tests are determined? *
3. Why must a nursing home visitor,  who only interacts with one resident, wait outside of the building for his/her covid test result to be determined? *
4. Why does the timeline for adopting Rapid Antigen testing have visitors starting three weeks before nursing home staff?  (p.4)

* “For staff, … Antigen Tests should be performed as soon as practically possible once a shift has started. … For …visitors… , the Antigen Test should be performed before contact with residents.” (p. 1)

** ” Staff … who enter LTC homes two or more days in a 7-day period undergo Antigen Tests on non-consecutive days up to 3 times in the period … visitors undergo an Antigen Test on the “day of” regardless of how many times they attend to a home (p.2 )