Ontario has built nearly 6,700 long-term care beds with another 18,000 beds in the pipeline, a far cry from the province’s goal to add 58,000 new or upgraded beds by 2028, numbers released in the province’s fall fiscal update show.
Despite the shortfall, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy said Thursday the province will meet its goal, and an industry association believes recent funding changes will catalyze more nursing home builds.
The minister highlighted what he described as the paltry efforts of the previous Liberal government, which added just 611 long-term care beds from 2011 to 2018.
“We’ve made more investments and completed more beds in Pickering and Ajax in our term in office than the previous government did in seven years,” Bethlenfalvy said.
“So I think, yes, we’re going to not waver from achieving that goal.”
The province launched an ambitious plan in 2021 to modernize long-term care. That came in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that killed thousands of people in nursing homes.
The province said 44 long-term care homes have been built since, with another 104 either under construction or approved.
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Long-Term Care Minister Natalia Kusendova-Bashta did not respond to a request for comment about the latest data.
The province recently launched a new capital funding program to stimulate construction of more nursing homes.
An industry association that represents non-profit long-term care homes says the new program is a “game changer.”
Lisa Levin, CEO of AdvantAge Ontario, said the program has already spurred a number of the organization’s members to begin building new nursing homes.
The province previously offered similar programs but they were limited to six-month windows for applications, which proved difficult for many organizations to complete in time, Levin said.
The province has now made the program permanent.
“That’s amazing because it gives more confidence to the sector that they can go ahead and move forward,” Levin said. “Secondly, there’s a lot more money that’s being offered.”
Levin believes this will help spur the construction of significantly more homes.
The province’s Financial Accountability Office recently released a report that examined spending in health care and highlighted issues in long-term care.
There were 79,212 long-term care beds in the province in 2024-25, the office found. It projected that number to increase by 4,276 beds by 2027-28 based on the province’s spending plans.
“On a per-capita basis, this represents a decline from 60 long-term care beds per 1,000 Ontarians aged 75 and over in 2024-25 to 56 long-term care beds per 1,000 Ontarians aged 75 and over in 2027-28, as the projected growth rate in Ontarians aged 75 and over is expected to outpace the increase in the number of long-term care beds,” the report said.
The province must make even more of an effort to expand both long-term and home care in order to keep pace with Ontario’s aging population, said New Democrat finance critic Jessica Bell.
“We’re also seeing long-term care homes going under, closing and being replaced by condos, especially downtown (Toronto), because it’s financially viable for developers to do that,” Bell said.
The province recently said it will invest more than $1 billion into home care. The goal is to connect more patients to nurses, physiotherapists and social workers, “so they can avoid lengthy hospital stays and live in the comfort of their own home independently.”
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