Ontario’s Long-Term Care Minister is not saying when all long-term care homes will be fully air-conditioned.

Residents overheating in LTC homes made headlines during a heatwave in July of 2020, and Premier Doug Ford promised to require all of those facilities to have adequate cooling systems.

Sector Minister Dr. Merrilee Fullerton announced on Thursday that all of Ontario’s long-term care homes now meet a new regulation requiring at least one air-conditioned area.

Around 40 per cent don’t have A/C in residents’ rooms, however.

She says there’s many reasons some homes can’t be fully upgraded right now.

“If you look at the age of some of these homes, built in the 70’s, some of them, and they simply cannot accommodate the AC in all the rooms at this point in time,” she explains.

Fullerton could not say how many homes in the Northwest have air conditioning in residents’ rooms.