Ontario court dismisses Charter challenge of law designed to free up hospital beds

An Ontario court has dismissed a Charter challenge of a controversial law that allows hospitals to place discharged patients into nursing homes they didn’t choose and charge those who refuse the transfer $400 per day to remain in a hospital bed.

Superior Court Justice Robert Centa says Bill 7 is making more hospital beds available faster and is not coercive or interfering with patients’ liberty, dignity and autonomy.

The law enacted in late 2022 allows hospital placement co-ordinators to choose a nursing home for a patient who has been deemed by a doctor as requiring an “alternate level of care,” or ALC, without consent.

Patients can be sent to nursing homes up to 70 kilometres from their preferred spot in southern Ontario and up to 150 kilometres away in northern Ontario.

The law sparked outrage among seniors and was challenged in court by the Ontario Health Coalition and the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly.

The organizations argued in their court filing that Bill 7 has not had its intended effect, pointing to government data that showed the number of ALC patients had increased more than a year after the law was enacted.

But the judge disagreed, saying Bill 7 “advances an important objective” of reducing the number of those patients in hospitals in order to free up beds for those who need hospital-level care.

“I have also found that any limitations on the rights of ALC patients are rationally connected to that goal, that the means chosen by the legislature to achieve the government objective meet the requirement of minimal impairment, and that any impact of the limit of those rights is proportionate,” Centa wrote in his decision.

The government has said that placing patients in non-preferred nursing homes is a “temporary measure” until a spot opens up in one of their chosen homes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2025.

The Canadian Press