With pandemic bonus pay soon to end, seniors' residences fear loss of staff, more closures

With less than two months to go before one of only three privately operated seniors' residences in Baie-Saint-Paul, Que., closes for good, only four of the home's 10 residents have found a new place to live.

Patrick Côté has operated La Maison d'hébergement Jocelyne Côté in the picturesque Charlevoix town for the past seven years.

He made the difficult decision last June to close the home, concluding that the workload had become unbearable during the pandemic. Côté simply couldn't find more staff to help out. 

He tried to find a buyer to take over the business, but to no avail. Last November, he broke the news to the residents that the home, named for his mother who first set it up, would be closing its doors on May 18. 

It is an increasingly familiar story across the province, according to an association representing private seniors' residences (RPAs) like La Maison d'hébergement Jocelyne Côté.

At least 150 RPAs have closed since January 2021, leaving elderly people without a home and scrambling to find somewhere else to live.

"It's more than two and a half [residences closing] per week, so it's a huge number," said Marc Fortin, the president of the Regroupement québécois des résidences pour aînés (RQRA).

The hardest-hit regions are the Montérégie, Chaudière-Appalaches,  Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec and the North Shore, though the entire province is affected.

According to Fortin, the labour shortage and the rising cost of operations are to blame. 

"It was already hard financially prior to the pandemic," said Fortin. "With the pandemic, it became a lot harder to make the model work." 

Harm to seniors' health

Pierre Lynch, the president of a seniors' rights group,  the Association québécoise de défense des droits des personnes retraitées et préretraitées (AQDR), said the stress of finding a new home is very hard on seniors, and can even lead to premature death.

"They get worried. Their blood pressure increases. They need to consult, as far as their health is concerned," said Lynch.

"These people are at the point in their lives where they don't need all that excess anxiety,'' Lynch said. 

He said elderly people in the regions are even more affected than those in big cities because there are limited options of places to go. 

More help needed, say RPA advocate

The office of Quebec's minister responsible for seniors, Marguerite Blais, said in an email that the minister is acutely aware of the challenges faced by RPAs. 

"That's why we have supported them in a considerable manner with new programs," the statement read. "This is unheard of for the private sector."

Some of the programs in place include emergency funding, employee bonuses, and financial assistance to renovate the homes and bring them up to date.

However, the $4 hourly bonus that the government has offered caregivers at RPAs and other long-term care homes since early in the pandemic is soon to disappear.

The government is expected to announce Wednesday it will extend its bonus program until May 14, Radio-Canada has learned.

Blais's office said the government will put in place a transition program to help the residences adapt gradually to the change. 

But Fortin worries that many RPAs won't be able to retain their staff without the government's continued assistance. 

He said people will simply look for work elsewhere if they lose the extra bonus they have been accustomed to receiving for the past two years.

"We cannot afford to provide that revenue," he said. Forting said most homes are barely breaking even, and some are running deficits. 

"In many cases, it means increasing drastically the cost to seniors who can't afford it, and we can't just increase the cost like that."

In an email, the Quebec Health and Social Services Ministry said that the bonus-pay programs were always meant to be a temporary assistance during the pandemic. 

Now that the emergency measures are ending and that the fifth wave is over, the ministry said, it will instead prioritize the health-care system's current needs.