The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

9 | O akville B eaver | T hursday,N ovem ber 11,2021 insidehalton.com 2022 CAMPAIGN KICKOFF Join Tareq Hadhad on Saturday, Nov. 13 from 6:30-7:30pm Learn more & purchase tickets at ymcaofoakville.org Aleading, award-winningbuilder of qualitynewhome development and communities.Webringyouthebest thatNiagara has to offer, right outside your doorstep. COMINGSOON in Fort Erie NOWSELLING! in St. Catharines NOWSELLING! in Niagara Falls AVAILABLECOMMUNITIES Learn more at Silvergatehomes.com Building for your Lifestyle forover35Years inNiagara @silvergate_homes LETTER TO THE EDITOR I appreciate the feed- back that Joyce Wayne provided in her column in the Oakville Beaver. Since my October col- umn on the Throne Speech, which Joyce was responding to, there have been many developments relating to long-term care that I wanted to write about to address the top- ics raised in her opinion piece. There were many shortfalls in handling long-term care prior to 2018. Unfortunately, the pre- vious Liberal government from 2011-2018 only built 611 new beds (0.8-per-cent increase in supply) in the entire province. None were built in Oakville. In addition, there were over 3,000 com- plaints and critical inci- dent inspections that were backlogged by 2018 due to a reduction in qual- ity inspections. The Ontario govern- ment is committed to fix- ing the long-term care sector and enhancing the standards of care. This commitment is backed with funding, new legislation on standards of care and the first min- istry solely dedicated to this important service. Most recently, the Min- ister of Long-Term Care introduced new legisla- tion Providing More Care, Protecting Seniors, and Building More Beds Act, 2021, that would, if passed, improve the well-being of residents in long-term care and retirement homes, protect the prog- ress of increasing staffing and bring more account- ability to the sector. Specifically, the pro- posed legislation would strengthen the Residents' Bill of Rights to align with the Ontario Human Rights Code, solidify the four hours of direct care per resident by the spring of 2025, introduce new public reporting require- ments on quality indica- tors that will draw upon feedback surveys from both residents and fami- lies and overhaul enforce- ment mechanisms, in- cluding doubling the ex- isting penalties. The government's un- dertaking to build 30,000 new beds and provide more hours of direct care for residents is being ac- complished with historic levels of funding to in- crease staffing levels. In particular, $270 mil- lion has been invested this year for long-term care homes to increase staffing levels by 4,050 across the province. Locally, Oakville long- term care homes have re- ceived a total of $455,975 for additional staffing this year alone. This is part of the plan to invest $4.9 billion to hire more than 27,000 long-term care staff over four years. Moreover, the Ontario government is in- vesting up to $100 million to add an additional 2,000 nurses to the long-term care sector by 2024-25. Ensuring residents feel comfortable and experi- ence quality care they de- serve is a priority. The government has committed to investing $72.3 million over three years to increase enforce- ment capacity. In 2021, $20 million has been provided not only to hire 193 new inspections staff but also to launch a new annual proactive in- spections program. The Ontario govern- ment is delivering real change to the long-term care sector to provide res- idents with more comfort and support the hard- working personal support workers. STEPHEN CRAWFORD OAKVILLE MPP ONTARIO GOVERNMENT COMMITTED TO IMPROVING LONG-TERM CARE The Oakville Beaver values the opinions of its readers, and the communi- ty at large. With that said, we wel- come your letters to the ed- itor on all matters that im- pact area residents. We ask that letters be no more than 275 words, and include the full name and town of the writer. Your address and tele- phone number must also be included for verification purposes only. We do not publish anon- ymous letters. Letters will be edited or rejected for of- fensive content, factual er- rors, legal issues or space restrictions. Send your letters to insi- dehalton@metroland.com. SEND US YOUR LETTERS TO THE EDITOR