Appointment of Mike Harris to Order of Ontario sparks anger

Former premier Mike Harris’s appointment to the Order of Ontario — the province’s highest honour — is sparking outrage online amid the COVID-19 debacle in long-term-care homes and his current position as board chair of one of the largest operators.

Suze Morrison, Ontario NDP MPP for Toronto Centre, tweeted Harris “is the last person” she would put on a list of Order of Ontario appointees announced New Year’s Day.

Harris, ex-leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, was premier from 1995 to 2002. He has been chair of Chartwell Retirement Residences since 2003.

In an interview, Morrison said the timing of his appointment couldn’t be worse.

“In a moment in time when we’ve lost thousands of seniors to COVID-19 in these poorly managed, privatized homes, for the sake of profits, to recognize Mike Harris with this highest honour . . . is devastating to the families of people who have lost their loved ones in long-term care this year.”

A government spokeswoman acknowledged receiving the Star’s request for comment about the Harris backlash, but did not respond further.

Ottawa law student Tom Naciuk called the appointment “cronyism.”

“Appointing the chair of Chartwell, Mike Harris, to the Order of Ontario, particularly after everything that has happened with for-profit LTC homes, is a sickening example of cronyism,” Naciuk wrote on Twitter.

In a scathing June 2020 email sent to the CBC in response to what it called “a highly subjective portrayal of the COVID-19 situation in Canadian long-term care,” the CEO of Chartwell, Vlad Volodarski, defended Harris’s record as chair — and premier.

The email said the LTC sector “has been vocal for some time now with all levels of government . . . that it was facing staffing issues well before COVID-19,” Volodarski wrote in the email.

He also challenged the CBC to “substantiate the claim that a drop in care levels dates back to when Mike Harris was premier.”

While the Harris government moved from mandatory minimum staffing levels to a different funding formula, “within this funding system the average number of care hours has increased.”

Volodarski’s email also stated that during Harris’s tenure as premier, “the capacity of the Ontario LTC sector was expanded by 20,000 new beds and 16,000 old beds have been renovated . . . ,” he wrote, adding “There have been no meaningful investments in capacity expansion or renovation programs in the Ontario LTC sector ever since.”

Ninety per cent of Chartwell’s portfolio is private pay retirement residences, of which only 23 are LTC in Ontario, Chartwell spokeswoman Sharon Ranalli wrote in an email.

The Star has reported that during the first three-quarters of 2020, Extendicare, Sienna Senior Living and Chartwell Retirement Residences saw disproportionately more deaths among residents than the average in Ontario non-profit or municipally run long-term-care homes. In that same time period, the three operators made huge payouts to investors while taking millions in government funds, a Star analysis of data shows.

Ranalli wrote that payments made to Chartwell by governments for pandemic pay for front-line workers were “flo-thru funds for our employees or expenditures related to government directives for PPE, staffing and infection control measures in the four provinces in which we operate.” The funds were not CEWS (Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy.)

Lt-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell, chancellor of the Order of Canada, announced 47 appointees for 2019 and 2020 on Friday.

“We have seen the best of Ontarians this year, and many of these new appointees are being honoured for a lifetime of service to this province, laying the groundwork of resilience and community that each one of us was called to act upon in this historic global pandemic,” Dowdeswell said in a news release.

“Let these appointees inspire you and encourage you to honour those around you by nominating them to be recognized by the province. We have much to be proud of.”

The release did not say why the two years were lumped together and government spokespersons did not provide an explanation by deadline.

The 2019 appointees to the Order of Ontario are:

Melanie Adrian, Roland “Roly” Armitage, Allan Carswell, Helen Ching-Kircher, John Colangeli, Nancy Coldham, Sean Conway, Clare Copeland, Barbara Croall, Lisa Farano, Geoff Fernie, Allan Fox, John Freund, Susan Hay, John Jennings, Marlys Koschinsky, James W. Leech, Audrey Loeb, Dani Reiss, Janis Rotman, Linda Silver Dranoff and Joan Sutton Straus.

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The 2020 appointees to the Order of Ontario are:

Daniel Allen, Joseph Raymond Buncic, Michael DeGasperis, Raymond Desjardins, Ernest Eves, Hershell Ezrin, Carlo Fidani, Karen Goldenberg, Mike Harris, Ellis Jacob, Jing Jiang, Shana Kelley, André Lapierre, Dale Lastman, André M. Levesque, Peter Liu, Hazel McCallion, Arden McGregor, Janet McKelvy, George McLean, Rosemary Moodie, Robert. W. Runciman, Marilyn Sonley, Ahmad Reza Tabrizi and Karen Weiler.

The newest appointees will receive their honours at a ceremony at Queen’s Park when the chief medical officer of health deems gatherings possible once again in the province, the news release said.