Categories : Media Releases and Statements

Safety and Accountability

The insinuation in recent media that Chartwell used government pandemic funding to pay dividends to its unitholders, instead of investing in residents’ safety, is wrong. Every dollar of this support was invested in resident safety, including staffing. We are deeply grateful to governments who provided their support. Still, in the first nine months of 2020, in response to the pandemic, Chartwell incurred over $10 million of unfunded costs and over $20 million of lost revenues. These costs are borne by the unitholders.

From the first days of the pandemic, the safety of our residents, their families and our employees has been and continues to be our top priority. We sourced millions of pieces of personal protective equipment, hired over 2,000 additional staff, and implemented numerous technological solutions to support our residents and employees.

In a poll conducted by a third party last summer, 96% of our residents stated that Chartwell took the necessary steps to keep them safe and 94% of families stated that they felt their loved ones were safe living at Chartwell. Despite tremendous and heroic efforts of our staff, sadly we have not been able to protect all our residents from the impact of this pandemic, the likes of which has not been seen for over 100 years. Our thoughts are with those who have lost their loved ones to this virus.

Availability of capital is crucial for sustainable business operations, maintenance and creation of thousands of jobs, renovations of existing residences, development of new and redevelopment of older homes. This capital comes from lenders and thousands of individual unitholders. These individuals, many of whom are retirees, have invested their savings and are dependent on distributions to fund their living. If you have an RRSP, TFSA, a company, union or government sponsored pension plan, you are likely a Chartwell unitholder. Providing a reasonable and stable investment return to our unitholders ensures availability of capital in the future.

I want to thank all our stakeholders who came together despite the adversity of the pandemic and negative media – our residents for their patience and encouragement, our families for their appreciation, our government and public health partners and our capital providers for their ongoing support. Most of all I thank all our employees for their courage and selfless dedication to our residents and for their commitment to Making Peoples’ Lives Better.

Vlad Volodarski
Chief Executive Officer