Sioux Lookout, Ont., was promised 76 long-term care beds by 2 premiers. It's still waiting for them

A community that's the health-care hub for more than 30 First Nations in northern Ontario has been waiting more than six years for long-term care beds promised by two premiers.

"The longer we wait for the government to make this progress for Sioux Lookout and for the north, the longer this crisis will grow," said Sioux Lookout Coun. Reece Van Breda.

"Standing still is moving backwards, right? The more we wait, the more we're going to have to play catch-up."

Sioux Lookout, a town with a permanent population of about 5,800, provides health care and social services to 33 surrounding First Nations, 28 of which are considered remote.

In spring 2018, the Liberal premier at the time, Kathleen Wynne, promised to build 76 additional long-term care (LTC) beds to help ease the strain on the 21-bed William A. George Extended Care Facility, which is operated by the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Care Centre.

During his pre-election campaign, Doug Ford vowed to uphold that promise, but the community is still waiting for the Conservative premier's words to turn into action.

CBC News requested an interview with Minister of Long-Term Care Natalia Kusendova-Bashta about the project's status. A spokesperson said the minister could not do an interview, but provided an emailed statement.

"Minister Kusendova-Bashta recently met with the local leadership of Sioux Lookout at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference to reiterate our government's full commitment to this project," wrote spokesperson Daniel Strauss.

"The Ministry of Long-Term Care is continuing to advance the project through the early planning stages and will be providing updates as they become available."

In November 2023, CBC News reported on a letter-writing campaign in Sioux Lookout intended to pressure the province to build the beds faster. A spokesperson for the minister of long-term care at the time similarly said the project was "in the early planning stages of development," with no timeline available.

Ripple effects on acute care, emergency department

About half the beds at the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre — the town's only hospital — are occupied by alternate level of care (ALC) patients, meaning those waiting for space in a long-term care facility.

"This has drastically limited our ability to admit acute patients out of our emergency department, thus having anywhere from three to 17 admitted patients waiting for a bed on the unit on any given day," said Dean Osmond, CEO of the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre, in an email to CBC News.

"This also affects our ability to repatriate our patients back from tertiary centres. Acute patients are placed in overflow beds while regular beds are occupied with ALCs," Osmond said.

The hospital has 55 acute-care beds, plus 10 overflow beds throughout the medical and surgical units "in unconventional spaces."

The Meno Ya Win Health Centre's team has been in "constant talks" with the Ministry of Long-Term Care and Ministry of Health about the need for more long-term care beds, said Osmond.

'We need to do better'

Sonia Isaac-Mann, president and CEO of the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority (SLFNHA), said the shortage of long-term care beds forces people from surrounding First Nations to go further afield, to places like Kenora, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay or down south.

"It's further away from home, further away from their families, further away from their support network — and we know from a health perspective that the further away you get from that, the worse health outcomes you have," Isaac-Mann said.

The type of care offered in hospitals is also different than long-term care, which involves more wraparound support, she added.

"How many people have died alone in the hospital without the appropriate care that they should be receiving through a long-term care facility? That's not OK," Isaac-Mann said.

"To me, this is perpetuating the systemic racism against First Nations people within the health system. We need to do better — and that's everybody that's in the health system."

In order to get the province to act quicker, she said, organizations and advocates may have to take a more political approach and get more community chiefs involved.

Commitment without action

Sol Mamakwa is the MPP for Kiiwetinoong — an area that stretches north of Kenora-Rainy River to Fort Severn. In May, he became the first person to ask a question in the Ontario Legislature in a language other than English or French.

In Anishininiimowin, he asked about the status of the long-term care project in Sioux Lookout, and received a pledge from the premier that the beds would be coming.

Last month, Mamakwa visited the Meno Ya Win Health Centre and said it was heartbreaking to see the number of elders waiting for a bed. Meanwhile, a lack of housing means it's become increasingly hard to recruit and retain workers in the health-care sector, further compounding the situation, he explained.

"It just seems that because we are who we are in the north … there's a commitment, but there's no real action," Mamakwa said. "We need to come together and send a big message to the leadership that they need to act on this."

He said he hopes to bring long-term care Kusendova-Bashta to Sioux Lookout so she can better understand the realities facing the community.

But he also wants to see more health-care services within First Nations themselves, to reduce the amount of time and energy it takes to travel elsewhere for services.

"When we live in those conditions on a daily basis, we just begin to accept it — that's just the way things are and that it's normal, but it's not," he said.

"I think that's really critical that we begin to address this as a region, not just First Nations, not just Kiiwetinoong, but it's northern Ontario."