DEMANDING DECARCERATION OF LONG-TERM CARE

We can build communities where disabled people thrive through the deinstitutionalization and decarceration of long-term care in so-called Canada.

Long-term care institutions are fundamentally institutions for disabled people. We believe deinstitutionalization is the only means of liberation for disabled people!

We believe that disabled people make our communities whole. We need to create systems where disabled people live in community. The current system isolates, segregates, and warehouses disabled people and elders. We believe that the maintenance of any form of institutionalization, regardless of ownership, signifies an ongoing investment in institutional models of “care” that put disabled people and elders at risk.

Abolition, not nationalization, is the only appropriate response to the deaths of more than 14,000 older, disabled people during the COVID-19 pandemic. We cannot expand a system of institutionalization that normalizes the mass death of elders and disabled people. We must abolish long-term care

We believe in an end to the ableist and ageist system that prioritizes profits at the cost of human lives. The maintenance of these institutions, both private and even public, fails to address the systemic issues that cause institutionalization—lack of access to housing, income supports, homecare, health* care and community supports.

Abolition of long-term care is the only means of building systems of JUST CARE WORK. We believe in just working conditions which lead to just care conditions. Abolishing long-term care does not mean job losses - it means reconfiguring labor conditions.

We believe that disabled people and elders are valuable apart from their ability to produce. We should not segregate people based on their ability to contribute to the economy.

We believe that institutionalization fails to consider the loss that communities experience when disabled people and elders are segregated into institutions. Warehousing elders and disabled people means severing intergenerational bonds and community. We believe in creating communities where disabled people and elders have access to the resources, care and support they need.

We believe that institutionalization is a result of the same systems of incarceration that removes, isolates and confines community members in psychiatric institutions, emergency shelters, and prisons. We believe in an end to the warehousing, caging and incarcerating of people instead of providing care and justice.

DEINSTITUTIONALIZE:

Stop public spending on the construction of new long-term care institutions, building more beds, and investing in the private sector.
End the use of long-term care for the 23,650 disabled people under the age of 65 across Canada who are currently confined there.
Shut down deadly institutions and do not replace them with new ones.

CREATE:

Voluntary, accessible, community-run services, access to just care work, and public infrastructures that are not tied to employment.
Reimagine the Canada Health Act to nationalize home care, palliative care, and pharmacare, and funding for assistive devices.
Expropriate housing from corporate landlords in order to make rapid investments in the development of public, accessible, affordable housing.