BILL NO. 171
(as introduced)
1st Session, 65th General Assembly
Nova Scotia
4 Charles III, 2025
Private Member's Public Bill
Long-term Care Strategy Act
Rod Wilson
Halifax Armdale
First Reading: October 2, 2025
Second Reading:
Third Reading:
An Act Respecting
a Strategy for the Provision of
Long-term Care
Be it enacted by the Governor and Assembly as follows:
1 The bill may be cited as the Long-term Care Strategy Act.
2 The purpose of this Act is to ensure the Government is on track to create enough high-quality long-term care beds to meet the needs of an aging population by requiring the Minister to develop a strategy for this purpose.
"continuing care assistant" means a person registered in the Continuing Care Assistants Registry established under the Continuing Care Assistants Registry Act;
"Department" means the Department of Seniors and Long-term Care;
"long-term care" means the provision of accommodation, nutrition, help with personal care, supervisory care and nursing service;
"Minister" means the Minister of Seniors and Long-term Care.
4 This Act is binding on the Crown in right of the Province.
5 (1) By October 1, 2026, The Minister shall publish a revised Long-term Care Strategy that reviews the projected demand for long-term care beds across the province by 2032 and provides a comprehensive strategy to meet the projected demand.
(2) The Strategy must prioritize
(a) reducing over-crowding in existing long-term care facilities, measured by the percentage of residents in a facility that are sharing bedrooms or sharing bathrooms; and
(b) reducing the wait-list for long-term care.
(3) The Strategy must exclusively rely on the creation of long-term care beds in public long-term care facilities and non-profit long-term care facilities.
6 The Government shall not provide capital or operating funding for the creation of new for-profit long-term care facilities.
7 The Government shall make department-level support available to non-profit long-term care providers building new long-term care facilities or replacing existing long-term care beds to ensure third party contractors are not overcharging or taking advantage of service providers.
8 (1) Long-term care facilities must, as a standard, provide each resident with a minimum of 4.1 hours of hands-on care per day from continuing care assistants, in addition to care provided by licensed practical nurses and registered nurses.
(2) To achieve the standard established by subsection (1), the Minister shall work to improve continuing care assistant staffing levels by
(b) improving working conditions; and
(c) establishing a long-term workforce retention and recruitment strategy.
9 The Minister shall, in each year, publish an annual report on compliance with this Act that contains
(a) an estimate of the number of people on the wait-list for long-term care;
(b) an estimate of the required number of long-term care beds required to meet demand;
(c) a breakdown of new and existing long-term care facilities that are administered publicly, on a not-for-profit basis or on a for-profit basis;
(d) an estimate of the number of long-term care residents that are sharing a bathroom, sharing a bedrooms or sharing both a bathroom and a bedroom;
(e) the percentage of nursing homes providing each resident with 4.1 hours of hands-on care per day from continuing care assistants;
(f) an estimate of how many continuing care assistants are employed in long-term care settings and a breakdown of how many have full-time contracts and how many have part-time contracts; and
(g) an overview of what concrete steps have been taken to improve continuing care assistant staffing levels, wages and working conditions.