The Private Home Care Market in Ontario: Implications for Aging People and Careworkers


Cynthia Cranford, University of Toronto

This paper is part of an ongoing project to analyze the kind of private homecare market for aging people is being created in Canada by powerful actors, like government and employers, how homecare advocates are responding, and implications for quality care and carework. Canadians have long paid for cleaning and childcare using contract migrant labour programs or an informal economy of migrant workers (Arat-Koc 1997; Tungohan et. al 2015). For-profit companies have also provided state-funded homecare since the 1990s (Aronson and Neysmith 1996; Cranford 2020). Yet, a new completely private market, where homecare is delivered by private companies to paying, aging care receivers is rapidly developing in Ontario, making it an ideal research location, but has only recently been studied in the U.S., where it is more extensive (Coe 2019; Nazareno et. al 2022). The following questions inform this paper. Does Ontario government discourse, proposals or policies encourage employers to set marginalizing or empowering care? Does it encourage employers to set exploitative or rewarding work? Does it pit aging care receivers against workers? To determine how much the Ontario government is promoting a private homecare market, and its implications for the quality of care and carework, we will collect data on government officials’ public statements and emerging policies. Ontario’s explicit support of privatization accelerated with the Ford government, but it is unclear how much this extends into homecare. Thus, we will consult the Canadian Newstream search engine, filtered for Ontario from the beginning of Ford’s term in 2018 to 2024. We will create a sample of relevant articles using combined keyword searches (e.g., homecare AND family-funded - the government term for privately paid). We will conduct a content analysis to count the number of supportive statements made by government officials and the policy areas of support mentioned. Preliminary analysis suggests government support through subsidies for private employers, care receiver tax credits, and human resources policies. We will conduct discourse analysis to interpret how policies or proposals claim to shape conditions of care and carework.

This paper will be presented at the following session: