The long-term care facility in Wiikwemkoong on Manitoulin Island is one of more than two dozen nursing homes across Ontario set to see their licences expire next June.

Toronto Star: David Wassegijig worries that the cultural fabric of his northern Ontario First Nation is at risk of being torn apart. 

The 64-year-old retired construction worker is one of 59 residents of the long-term-care home in Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory on Manitoulin Island facing the prospect of being removed from their community if the provincial and federal governments cannot agree on who is responsible for a final piece of funding for a new nursing home. 

The licence of Wassegijig’s aging facility expires next summer and he wonders how he will see his four grandchildren if he and fellow residents are moved to other long-term-care facilities across the province — or even the country. 

“Everybody loses … the parents, the relatives and the children miss out from growing up with (the elders). It’s all family,” said Wassegijig, who has lived at Wiikwemkoong’s long-term-care home for two years. “It’s the elders that teach us. They are our teachers, our knowledge keepers. You can ask them anything.”

The non-profit nursing home in Wiikwemkoong is one of more than two dozen long-term-care facilities across Ontario set to see their licences expire on June 30, 2025. Built more than 40 years ago, these homes do not conform with the province’s updated design and safety standards and face costly renovations in order to stay open. While the province has announced redevelopment plans or new beds for most of these facilities, the fate of a handful, including the home in Wiikwemkoong, remains unknown.

In the last three years alone, eight nursing homes representing more than 650 beds in the province have shut down or announced they are closing because they cannot afford to renovate to meet the new standards.

Wiikwemkoong Chief Tim Ominika says his community’s 59-bed single-storey facility was built in 1972, decades before the province introduced new design standards. Residents’ rooms are too small, many of them are shared, the dining area is cramped and there are no spaces to accommodate activities central to First Nations culture, he says.

In 2022, Wiikwemkoong submitted a request to the federal government for $20 million to help construct a new elders’ home, the plans for which feature three separate living areas and a central building with both indoor and outdoor gathering spaces that would facilitate traditional ceremonies and intergenerational meetings. It would also accommodate an additional 37 beds, bringing the total to 96 to meet current demand.

The final estimated price tag for the new facility is $60 million, for which Wiikwemkoong has already secured $30.8 million from the provincial government, $7.5 million from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), a federal agency, and $2.5 million from local fundraising. Ominika says the First Nation’s pleas to the federal government to cover the remaining $20 million have so far gone unanswered. 

The province has offered to extend the licence of Wiikwemkoong’s existing nursing home while the First Nation seeks additional funding from Ottawa, but Ominika says the facility will nonetheless close if the federal government doesn’t come through. 

“If we don’t get this commitment, there is no reason for the province to extend our licence,” he said, adding that any relocation to other nursing homes would traumatize residents, many of whom were removed from their communities and sent to residential schools when they were children.

“They would have to go stay in another facility where the language won’t be spoken to them, they probably won’t be eating our traditional foods anymore, they won’t see their children or their grandchildren,” Ominika said. “These impacts are going to be very drastic to our First Nation community.”

A delegation from Wiikwemkoong met with Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu on Sept. 4 to plead their case once again. Ominika says Hajdu told the delegation that she would speak to the federal finance department, but stressed that long-term care is a provincial responsibility. 

Jennifer Kozelj, press secretary for Hajdu, said the federal government “provides billions of dollars every year in health transfers to support the government of Ontario in delivering on their responsibility to fund health services, including for elders and seniors, that are close to home.”

“Long-term care has always been under the jurisdiction of the province; yet time and time again, we see the Ontario government failing to step up when it comes to health services for communities in Northern Ontario,” she wrote in an email, noting that CMHC is partnering with the community “since the province of Ontario is refusing to play its full part.”

“We expect the Ontario government to exercise their jurisdictional responsibilities and provide the remaining funding to support Wiikwemkoong First Nation’s needs,” she added.

Ominika doesn’t buy it. He says there is precedent for the federal government funding First Nations’ infrastructure projects, including long-term-care homes on reserves.

In January 2023, the Ministry of Indigenous Services announced it was providing $30.25 million for the construction of a new 128-bed Elder Care Home in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, near Belleville, that would “help to keep connections to language, culture and community.”

In January of this year, the federal and Nunavut governments committed more than $194 million for several infrastructure projects in the territory, including a 24-bed seniors long-term-care home in Rankin Inlet for Nunavummiut Elders. 

And in June, Indigenous Services confirmed it would commit $1.24 billion to the Weeneebayko Area Health Authority for a new hospital in Moosonee. 

For Ontario’s part, Daniel Strauss, spokesperson for Minister of Long-Term Care Natalia Kusendova-Bashta, said that while exact dollar amounts are subject to change, the province is committed to 30 years of operational funding, construction funding subsidies and development funding related to the new elders’ home. 

“We are disappointed in the federal government’s continued lack of engagement on this project, which is needlessly delaying construction,” he added. 

At the end of the day, Ominika says it doesn’t matter what level of government ends up bridging the funding gap, “but they’ve got to stop throwing stones at each other.”

At the Wiikwemkoong long-term-care home, Jet Francis, president of the resident council, says being forced to leave the community if the facility has to shut down would be akin to losing a piece of who they are. 

“It would be hard for families,” says Francis, 65, who has lived at the facility for three years. Francis, who has 25 grandchildren, says he loves to get together with family “and have a joke.”

“We’re there to be with them.”

By Kenyon Wallace Business Reporter

Kenyon Wallace is a Toronto-based business reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @KenyonWallace or reach him via email: kwallace@thestar.ca.