BURST
Ed Jamieson has been stuck in a hospital bed for the past month following a fire at his independent long-term care home in Mission. Family members say they’re frustrated that he keeps getting passed over by the local health authority for placement in a publicly subsidized care facility.
The fire that damaged Chartwell Carrington House on March 9 forced 142 residents to leave and destroyed many of their personal belongings. Jamieson spent about 45 days at a Chartwell facility in Surrey before being moved to Mission Hospital.
Carl Jamieson says he has been taking care of his father since he had a stroke in 2013 and has spent about $300,000 on his care, which included bringing him to B.C. from Saskatchewan after he was moved between half a dozen facilities in that province.
He says he’s done everything he can to support his father.
“I just simply can’t anymore,” he said. On top of that, he says, it’s not right that his father is “taking somebody else’s hospital bed.”
“We’re misspending the money. We’re no closer to a solution, and somehow this continues to be OK with this government.”
The Jamieson family’s case is another illustration of the severe shortage of long-term care beds in the province that Postmedia has documented in recent weeks. Dan Levitt, B.C.’s seniors advocate, has said there are 2,000 fewer beds than needed, a number that is expected to rise to a 16,000-bed shortfall over the next decade
Carl Jamieson said Chartwell gave the family a discount to place Ed at their facility in Mission 12 years ago. At the time of the fire, he was being charged $625 a month.
After the fire, Ed Jamieson was given a temporary bed at a dementia facility Chartwell runs in Surrey, despite not having dementia, for a discounted rate of $4,000 a month, as opposed to the $12,000 they usually charge, his son said.
By the end of April, however, Chartwell could no longer house him and he was moved to Mission Hospital, which Carl says is costing the government an estimated $2,000 a day and taking up space that could be used by someone in greater need.
Carl said that Fraser Health has assessed Ed and found him eligible for full-time care in a public long-term care facility. But despite being near the top of the list, he keeps getting passed over.
“By the 18th of March, they had agreed that, ‘Yes, your dad is a candidate for funded living, and he needs full-time care,'” he said.
“They’ve assured us that Dad is intolerable risk, meaning that he literally has no place to go and cannot live on his own, and therefore is supposedly top of the list. So, I said, ‘Great, what’s taking so long?’ Well, he continues to be passed over by the long-term care places.”
Health Minister Josie Osborne said that it isn’t as simple as somebody being at the top of the list for long-term care. Instead, people are assessed by their level of need and what long-term care facilities with vacancies can provide.
She said it is her understanding Fraser Health is working to find Ed Jamieson a place that works for him.
In a statement, Fraser Health said that they don’t operate or fund independent facilities like those run by Carrington, but if somebody is eligible for public care, they can choose to stay in a temporary facility while waiting for space to open up in one of their three preferred options.
“Generally speaking, if a person’s care needs change and independent living is no longer the right fit for them, we work with them and their loved ones to understand their needs and connect them with the most appropriate level of care and support,” said the health authority.
Bruce Banman, Conservative MLA for Abbotsford South, said it is unacceptable that a person who has paid taxes in Canada all his life is stuck in a hospital waiting for long-term care.
He said it represents a failure by the NDP government to plan for the growing number of senior citizens in the province, pointing to the seven new long-term care facilities that the province put on pause or cancelled as part of it’s 2026 budget, including one in Abbotsford.
“For one reason or another, they chose not to place Ed, and here he is, 78 days later, he’s stuck in the Mission hospital. He’s not getting the type of exercise he needs. He’s had infections as a result of being in the hospital. He’s getting hospital food, which is not ideal,” said Banman.
“We have people stacked in hospitals or in hallways in hospitals that should not be in there, and this is one bed that, if we could just get Ed into an appropriate long-term care facility, that would open up a hospital bed for somebody that’s currently in a hallway. It is just gross incompetence.”