The sad case of Tony Butler shouldn't happen in Ontario, the NDP critic on seniors issues charged yesterday.
MPP France Gelinas said the government isn't doing enough to prevent elder abuse.
She made the comments in response to the Sun's story yesterday on Butler -- a stroke victim who was beaten, starved and tied up like a dog by the drug addict lover of his much younger ex-girlfriend.
Crown lawyers were sharply critical of Butler's twice-daily professional home-care workers who told cops "they did not see anything that concerned them," after the battered and skeletal senior was rescued from his home.
DOMINO EFFECT
"The broken link in our system is home care," Gelinas told the Sun yesterday. "And because home care is broken it has tremendously bad effects on many other parts of the system."
Calls by the Sun to Aileen Carroll, the minister responsible for seniors, for comment were not returned.
Gelinas called on the Liberal government to take action immediately to fix a "broken" home-care system so ongoing elder abuse doesn't go undetected.
"What happened to Mr. Butler should never happen in a province like Ontario," the Nickel Belt MPP said.
DAILY VISITS
Crown attorney Michael Demczur called unacceptable the fact that a government-financed service providing daily visits to attend Butler did nothing to help him. He said the company's records of the visits "have disappeared."
Gelinas said the home-care system must become public.
"We have to get rid of competitive bidding and we have to get rid of the for-profit within the home-care system.
"When the Tories were in power they brought forward competitive bidding," she said. "It completely changed the way home care was delivered. Every three years you turn the system on its head, you lay off all your workers and you start from scratch with new companies that win the bid.
"It makes for a very unstable workforce."
