Grey Highlands Mayor Paul McQueen says it’s possible the 62 additional beds allocated by the province for Grey Gables could be lost by 2025.
At council’s meeting on Feb. 1, McQueen updated his colleagues about a meeting Grey Highlands officials had with Minister of Long-Term Care Paul Calandra at the recent Rural Ontario Municipalities Association conference in Toronto. McQueen said the possibility exists that Grey County will lose the 62 additional long-term care beds allocated to Grey Gables by 2025.
“(The Ministry) would like to see them completed by 2025,” said McQueen. “There needs to be a decision made. Those beds could be re-allocated somewhere else. I sort of got the impression - if you don’t use them, you lose them.”
In Nov. 2020, the province announced that Grey Gables had been granted an additional 62 beds to bring the Markdale long-term care home up to 128 total beds.
However, in August 2021, Grey County council voted to put the Grey Gables project on hold and concentrate on the Rockwood Terrace redevelopment project in Durham.
McQueen recently announced he would be bringing forward a motion at county council to resume discussions about the future of Grey Gables. McQueen had intended to bring the resolution to county council’s meeting on Feb. 9, but now plans to introduce his motion at the Feb. 23 meeting.
Grey County CAO Kim Wingrove confirmed that the province was aware of the county’s decision to table the project.
“The province is aware of that decision. There has been no further communication on the matter between Grey County and the Ministry of Long-Term Care,” she said in an email.
Wingrove also noted that long-term bed allocations from the province are preliminary.
“All long-term care bed allocations are provided on a preliminary basis. Until the province has approved a development agreement with the operator (in this case Grey County), approved a design and undertaken public consultation, future operating and capital funding is not guaranteed,” she said in an email.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Long-Term Care did not comment specifically on McQueen’s suggestion, but did say the ministry expects those who have been allocated new beds to use them.
“Our government has developed an ambitious plan to fix long-term care, which includes building 30,000 new beds by 2028. We expect that all allocation recipients are working diligently on the construction of beds and homes to meet this goal,” ministry spokesperson Jake Roseman said in an emailed statement.
