Business View - March 2015 129
or do you think it’s more a variety of things that peo-
ple want to be a part of?
JOHNSTON:
One of the decisions we made a few years
ago was to become a servant leadership model, which
means everything we do must tie into supporting our
members. Yes, the lobbying is a major part of what we
do – a. to ensure that we’re at the table for discussing
new legislation impacting senior living and retirement
homes, and also to make sure that we can have con-
structive dialogue around what the future looks like
for our sector. And then, the other part was developing
actual tools that all of our members could use. And
so, interestingly enough, with our e-learning with staff
and front-line training, it was all the small operators
that picked that up to begin with, because they had
nothing to provide consistent training and track it. In-
terestingly enough, our largest chains are now adopt-
ing it as well, because they realized why would they
spend that money on something that they’re already
paying for in membership? So this is not only creating
a consistency in training for everybody working in the
sector, it’s putting our association in a position to lead
in the training and also to say to government, this is
the standard and not the reverse.
BUSINESS VIEW: With a membership that’s so di-
verse, are there still issues that are common that
you hear from a broad base of the membership that
they’re concerned about?
JOHNSTON:
Yes. Certainly, it doesn’t matter what size
you are, we’ve had a lot of change in the past couple of
years with government-funded programs that used to
supplement services offered by retirement communi-
ties to residents. And, where the government has cut
back on those programs we have worked hard to help
them understand the impact and also put forward so-
lutions for how they could better deliver these servic-
es, maximizing their resources and also providing our
residents with some support to be able to stay living in
their own residences in the community.
BUSINESS VIEW: Is Ontario at all unique? It sounds
like you all are trying to be the standard bearer for
the entire country in terms of the level of training
you’re able to provide and some of the other things
you’re doing that sound like you’re ahead of the
curve. Is running a facility in Ontario different than
running one in Alberta or BC or any place else?
JOHNSTON:
If anything, we’ve got more regulations
than anybody else has, and we’re definitely a private
sector industry here in Ontario, whereas you do see
more subsidies in other provinces. We are very strong.
We do believe we’re leaders. I guess part of that is be-
cause a lot of the leadership we have, we represent,
in Ontario, a lot of the major chains, which have their
head offices here, so we do have access to incredible
volunteer support when we develop programs. But, I
HEALTHCARE
