The Forgotten Disposables

"I think they [authorities] need to look at whether we are having deaths due to heat in long-term care homes. The problem is, if they don't look, they are not going to find it."

"In a normal year these rooms are incredibly hot. I have been in old homes and new homes where there is no air conditioning and I could not stand it."

"Every year when we get heat waves we get calls and I can't imagine that the premier's office doesn't get calls. Every June we start getting calls from people shocked that the home they chose for their parents doesn't have air conditioning."

"It is definitely something that should have been on his [Ontario Premier] radar."

Jane Meadus, staff lawyer, Advocacy Centre for the Elderly

"[The air conditioning units in older homes] are not sufficient in soaring temperatures."

"A major part of fixing this issue will take addressing the long-term infrastructure problem facing long-term care homes in Ontario."

"We have been advocating for upgrading older homes over the pas ten years and we hope to see this process underway as soon as possible."

"This is an issue that needs to be addressed across the long-term care sector, for both residents and front-line staff who are working tirelessly through the pandemic in full PPE [personal protection equipment]." 

Rebecca Scott-Rawn, spokesperson, Extendicare Long Term Care

The Ottawa Valley is a geographic area of weather extremes; extreme cold and snow accumulation in the winter, and extreme heat and humidity throughout the deep summer months. A century ago, struggling to cope with such temperatures presented a quandary to residents of the areas comprising the Ottawa Valley; they 'pioneered' the geology and the atmospheric conditions as hardy survivors. In this modern era where advances in heating and cooling to cope with adverse weather events make it possible for the greater population to access coping technology there is little excuse for institutions designed to care for the elderly and the health-compromised not to come equipped with air-conditioning.

Extreme heat conditions prey on the elderly and the health-compromised; their physical comfort should be assured as much as possible, and living conditions that moderate the effects of both extreme cold and extreme heat should be an integrated part of what is offered in long-term care homes. When most people rent apartments or buy houses, air conditioning in a climate of high humidity is an issue of enquiry. Making it puzzling that people arranging for elderly relatives to be placed in such homes bypassing such a critical issue as to later claim they had no idea that homes they decide upon lacked the forethought to cool the inner environment for their residents and staff.

Ottawa, the capital of an advanced society, a wealthy and technology-based nation, appears to have failed the most elementary of tests in ensuring that the elderly and health-impaired, placed in long-term care homes, could rely upon the same comfort that any shopper can access entering a commercial establishment. Calls have now been raised by advocates of improved senior housing to have Ontario's coroner track heat-related deaths in long-term care homes. Quebec records such deaths, Ontario does not.

Many long-term care homes operating in the province lack what is considered a basic amenity in control of  temperatures in living interiors. A situation which can be directly linked to elderly people living in such homes succumbing to the dual effects of impaired health exacerbated by extreme heat conditions. Deaths in long-term care homes are not investigated by the coroner's office, so deaths attributed to other factors may be linked to extreme heat exhaustion in the elderly.

With the advent of the novel coronavirus mandating that routines and exposures be handled differently, the impact on elderly residents in such homes is notable. In homes where common areas may be air conditioned but not individual rooms, relief in the common areas is denied as a result of self-isolation, where residents are kept in their rooms. Fans which might otherwise be useful in moving air around, are disused, linked to concerns of spreading COVID-19.

There is no legal requirement for care homes to be fully air-conditioned, a simple fact that the province's premier was unaware of. Under the Long Term Care Act, such homes are required to have at least one designated cooling area for every 40 residents; unworkable under the changed regimes caused by the global pandemic. On the other hand, care homes are required by that same Act to have a plan for the prevention and management of hot weather-related illness. 

The issue, newly brought to the fore in the wake of a horrendous death count resulting from COVID in such homes, has awakened the conscience of provincial government where the premier is considering making air conditioning mandatory in homes.

The summer of 2020 will go down in history books for the crushing weight of the global pandemic all over the world, making millions of people ill, with the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the untimely deaths of over a half-million people world-wide. 

In the Ottawa Valley, this summer is also turning out to be one of the hottest on record, with prolonged and frequent heat waves, ongoing days of 30C and higher, along with high humidity. Both municipally-operated and privately operated long-term care homes are now facing criticism over their lack of vision in failing to implement plans to include air-conditioning in homes where the elderly feeble live in unspeakably difficult conditions.

Premier Doug Ford says his government will move 'rapidly' to require Ontario long-term care homes to have air conditioning. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)