The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated systemic issues that have plagued long-term care for decades. With new found urgency, and the attention of the public, media and government, now is the time to take the necessary actions to improve care and quality of life for the province’s most vulnerable seniors who built the society we enjoy today.
With Ontario’s population over 80 expected to more than double in the next 14 years, what institutional and societal changes need to be implemented to secure a future where seniors and their loved ones feel safe and empowered choosing long-term care? And what can we learn from other jurisdictions?
Join Canadian Club Toronto on September 24th for a frank and solutions-oriented discussion featuring sector experts Donna Duncan (CEO, Ontario Long-Term Care Association), Wendy Beckles (President and CEO, Shepherd Village Inc.), Laura Tamblyn Watts (President and CEO, CanAge) and Katie Smith Sloan (President and CEO, LeadingAge), moderated by Laura Stone (The Globe and Mail) as we look to the new future of long-term care in Ontario.
You will receive the event link on the morning of the event.
Donna Duncan
CEO, Ontario Long-Term Care Association
Donna Duncan is an experienced public sector board member and executive, with extensive experience in health care and academics. Donna is the Chief Executive Officer of the Ontario Long-Term Care Association, the largest association representing long-term care providers in Canada. Prior to taking on this role, Donna served as the Interim Chief Executive Officer of The Ontario Caregiver Organization where she led the organization’s start-up operations, building a foundation for new leadership and a provincial board to lead the development of services and supports for Ontario’s family caregivers.
Donna has deep understanding of Ontario’s hospital and community mental health services. She served as President and CEO of the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, Toronto’s largest children’s mental health treatment, research and teaching centre and a University of Toronto community affiliate. Donna led Hincks-Dellcrest through transformational change and extensive programmatic and quality improvements, culminating in Hincks-Dellcrest’s integration with The Hospital for Sick Children in 2017. Earlier in her career, Donna played a key role in securing the approvals for the transformational redevelopment of The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Queen Street campus.
Donna also has extensive experience within government, having worked with federal and provincial ministers.
Donna has a deep commitment to volunteerism and governance. In addition to her service on the Board of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Donna sits on the Board of The Ontario Caregiver Organization. In the past, Donna sat on the Boards for Children’s Mental Health Ontario, and the Kids Brain Health Network, she also chaired the board of Seneca College and the provincial College Employer Council.
Donna joined the Board of Directors of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre on June 12, 2017. She is the Chair of the Quality & Patient Experience Committee and a Director on the Veterans Advisory Committee of the Board.
Wendy Beckles
President and CEO, Shepherd Village Inc.
Wendy has over 25 years of experience in Financial Management and Executive Leadership. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Rotman School of Management. Wendy holds several accreditations including the Certified General Accounting designation, Chartered Professional Accounting designation and Certified Healthcare Administrator designation.
As President and CEO of Shepherd Village Inc., Wendy provides executive leadership to the largest integrated single-site, Seniors’ community in Ontario. Serving over 900 seniors across an innovative healthcare campus, Shepherd Village Inc. delivers a continuum of care including independent living, retirement living, assisted living and long-term care.
Having diversified professional experience across multiple sectors including Oil and Gas, Non-profit and Healthcare, she executes management and leadership disciplines to drive process improvement, organizational excellence and service quality.
Wendy has provided exceptional oversight and exemplary leadership to the expansion of services within the healthcare sector particularly at Kensington Health where she was a key contributor in the development and evolution of the Kensington Cancer Screening Clinic, the Kensington Eye Institute, the Kensington Research Institute, the Kensington Vision and Research Centre and the Kensington Hospice.
Wendy is professionally engaged as a member on several committees which include: the Ontario Long Term Care Association – Advocacy Committee and Nominations Committee, the Not-For-Profit Long-Term Care Alliance CEO Group, Scarborough Ontario Health Team Steering Committee and the Leadership, Accountability and Governance Working Group.
Additionally during the COVID Pandemic Wendy has been invited to join AdvantAge Ontario Not-for-profit/Charitable Regional Representatives Advisory Group, the East Region PPE and Critical Supplies Table and the Ontario Recovery and Planning Table.
Whether through volunteering, or serving on professional committees, Wendy brings critical thinking, insight and innovation to enable continuous modernization, always with the end user in mind.
Laura Tamblyn Watts
President and CEO, CanAge
Laura Tamblyn Watts is a lawyer, advocate, researcher and media commentator. Her work focuses on law, aging, abuse, accessibility, law reform, governance and knowledge mobilization. She has previously served as Chief Public Policy Officer at CARP (Canadian Association of Retired Persons) for the past two years and National Director of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law. She currently teaches at the University of Toronto, where she is also a Fellow of the Institute for Lifecourse and Aging.
She is a past Chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s National Elder Law section, where she sits as a current Executive member. Laura is a Board member of the National Initiative for Care of the Elderly (NICE) network and facilitates the section on Law and Aging issues. She is a Board member of the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI) and a member of the Investment Funds Institute of Canada’s (IFIC) committee on Seniors and Vulnerable Investors (IFIC). She is one of two Canadian representatives on the North American Securities Administrators Association (NAASA) committee on Vulnerable Investors and a continuing
member of the Ontario Securities Commission’s Taskforce on Seniors. Laura is also a Board member of PACE Independent Living, a housing and services non-profit which provides attendant care to persons with physical differences. Laura created and oversaw CARP’s research portfolio and is actively involved with a number of National Centres of Excellence and a wide variety of current research initiatives, including the NICE Network, AGE-WELL and the Canadian Frailty Network. She helped to co-found Canada’s second low income seniors’ legal services centre, SeniorsFirst BC, located in Vancouver. She received her undergraduate honours degree in Political Science from Queen’s University and her law degree from the University of Victoria. She was called to the BC Bar in 1999.
Katie Smith Sloan
President and CEO, LeadingAge
Katie Smith Sloan is president and CEO of LeadingAge. Guided by the mission to be the trusted voice for aging, Sloan advances the organization’s strategic priorities to increase impact through advocacy, enhanced member value and generates ideas to improve our current system of services and supports. As LeadingAge’s President and CEO, Katie Smith Sloan seeks common ground with other stakeholders to address ageism and to promote innovation.
Sloan also serves as the executive director of the Global Ageing Network, an organization with a presence in over 50 countries committed to improving the quality of life for people as they age throughout the world.
Sloan serves on the Board of Directors of the Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation (CABHI) based in Toronto, HelpAge USA, the Long Term Quality Alliance (LTQA) and ValueFirst, a group purchasing company serving the aging services field. She is also co-chair of Dementia Friendly America, a multi-sector national collaborative with a mission to foster dementia friendly communities.
Sloan has a master’s degree from the George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College.
Laura Stone
Reporter, The Globe and Mail
Laura Stone is a reporter for The Globe and Mail’s Queen’s Park bureau, where she has been covering Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government since October 2018. She appears regularly on CTV’s Your Morning and occasionally on CTV Power Play and CBC’s Power & Politics.
Laura joined the Globe in February 2016, reporting on federal politics in the Ottawa Parliamentary bureau. Before that, she was an online and TV reporter for Global News in Ottawa. Laura was the first recipient of the Michelle Lang award at the Calgary Herald, where she wrote a national series about women’s prisons. In 2015, she won the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Greg Clark Award, which allowed her inside the RCMP’s Senate investigation.
Most of all, Laura likes to profile politicians over lunch. She always picks up her own tab.
