Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones and her ministry are refusing to divulge the amount of money that seven patients in the province have been fined for refusing transfers from a hospital to a long-term care home not of their choosing.
A law enacted in 2022, known as Bill 7, requires hospitals to levy fines of $400 a day on patients who can be discharged but need long-term care and are refusing to go to a home selected for them by a placement co-ordinator.
The government has long said it was not aware of anyone being fined, but a spokesperson for Jones said last week that they just learned that seven people have been fined, as Ontario Health had not been relaying that information.
Since then, daily requests to the ministry by The Canadian Press for the total charges those seven people face have been ignored.
Today, when asked the same question, Jones did not provide a response.
The three opposition parties say the law should be repealed, but at a bare minimum the government should be transparent about the effects of its law on patients and their families.
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