[Reporter: David Common] COVID is the great revealer.
The mass death in long-term care only a symptom of a sector long-neglected.
Why did it take a pandemic for us to notice, to care?
And will it be enough to force change?
We as a society are failing older people
but it also means that we're losing parents and grandparents to a system in Canada
in an inexcusable state.
[Reporter] Laura Tamblyn Watts runs can age a seniors advocacy organization.
The only good thing is for us as a country to really understand
that the long term care system in Canada is broken.
[Reporter] Nursing homes are locked up tight now
but two years ago, CBC marketplace went undercover inside long-term care.
Inside a home that today is struggling with a deadly outbreak.
Back then, seeing the impact of short staffing firsthand.
Desperate residents waiting to use the toilet.
Still waiting.
Staff racing from room to room.
OK, so she can't go but she's been waiting to use the washroom for like an hour.
By one estimate, Ontario staff were only getting six minutes
to get each frail resident out of bed dressed and down for breakfast.
Minister Elliot, I'm David with CBC.
Such short staffing
that we raise the long-standing issue with what was then Ontario's brand-new Health Minister.
How do you address the concerns of these frontline workers have?
We take their concerns very seriously.
[Reporter] Now, the same government is planning a review of the entire system.
Many of these issues have been decades in the making
and this sector was neglected for decades.
Back then health care workers were sounding the alarm
and demanding not just more staff
but a legal requirement for a minimum staff to resident ratio.
This hidden camera captures care workers
urging a visiting government inspector to do something.
But she points out the law does not require a ratio.
A minimum number of staff to residents similar to how daycares and schools operate.
And so there's nothing she can do.
In long-term care
people are very surprised to find that there is no actual minimum number of service staff to residents
and particularly they're shocked to find out that it may mean that you actually would have
in some cases one personal support worker to 20 or 30 residents at a time.
In Quebec, staff shortages meant some residents died not of COVID
but of dehydration and starvation.
Because staff just couldn't get to them.
Homes themselves are a problem too.
The architecture can hamper infection control .
Rooms often shared, bathrooms too.
Sometimes four or more people separated by little more than a curtain.
This is one of the reasons that so many people got sick and died in long-term care .
They simply were not able to be socially distant.
Beds are two feet apart.
You've got communal washrooms.
You had communal dining, communal activities.
Everything in care homes is communal.
[Reporter] For 20 years, Karen Henderson has warned of the crisis in long-term care.
200,000 beds short nationwide.
She says now is the time to build new and build private rooms
so infections are less likely to spread.
So that's where a lot of the money should go
but I also think that there's a tremendous opportunity in retrofitting the older buildings that we have.
We have to do better for our long-term care.
We've got to do better for our older Canadians and we're not doing it.
[Reporter] The question for Karen is whether the trauma of the last two months will be remembered.
Whether changes made in emergency will stick.
My fear, David, is that we have made some changes as a result of COVID-19.
There's been some wage increases.
There's been some changes in working conditions for PSWs.
But I fear that when everything settles down
that we're going to somehow slip back to the way we were
unless there is enough of a public outcry to say we've seen the horrors
and we've had enough.
And as far as I'm concerned, I never want to end up in a long-term care facility.
At least not the way they are now
and I will do everything in my power not to end up in one.
[Reporter] As horrible as the pandemic has been inside long-term care
the legacy of all the death may finally be change.
David Common, CBC News, Toronto