Veterans Affairs Committee on Jan. 31st, 2008

[Dr. Linda Mealing]

I know that Dr. David Pedlar, your director of research at Veterans Affairs, has been meeting with the Canadian longitudinal study on aging researchers to decide how best to include a military cohort in this long-term study, because of your population health research strategy. There is no clear data, but they are trying to figure out a way to do it efficiently.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you.

[Nancy Milroy-Swainson]

This isn't specifically related to veterans, but with regard to the complications associated with medications, there are two things that Health Canada is certainly trying to do. One is working with pharmacists and providers on optimal prescribing. So there is work to try to ensure that only those who need medication get medication, and those who get medication get the right medication.

Secondly, jurisdictions across the country--with the support of Infoway--are introducing electronic systems to track and contain pharmaceutical information. Through that mechanism--by having all of one person's medications on one record accessible to any pharmacist or physician they go to--that certainly helps avoid unexpected complications. It can flag where there are interactions between drugs that will potentially cause confusion or instability. It certainly is recognized as a problem, and there are tools that can help partly address it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much.

Now over to the Liberal Party of Canada. Mr. St. Denis, for five minutes.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for being here and helping us out.

I picked up a number of excellent points raised today, but you reference age-friendly communities. As a short preamble, in my northern Ontario riding I have the small city of Elliot Lake, which having once been the world's uranium capital has not a single uranium mine left. The clean-up has been very well done by the mining companies under the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's fine jurisdiction. The number of early retirees, younger middle-aged seniors, if I could describe them that way, and even older seniors who have moved to Elliot Lake is incredible, in the thousands. For a lot of these retirees it was basically an economic thing as well as environmental--clean air, access to fishing and the outdoors, and so on. Among these thousands are many retired military. The local legion is one of the biggest legions anywhere. It think it has 800 or 900 members in a town with a population of 12,000.

Could you talk a bit more about age-friendly communities? Is it simply just to set up nice things you can do for seniors, or is it a really proactive modelling of what can be done to encourage seniors to move to rural Canada where we believe the quality of life is higher? With the baby boom generation--I and many of us here I think are part of that--there's a huge number of us approaching those years when we will need seniors' accommodation.

[Claude Rocan]

Age-friendly communities is something that in fact was built on to the age-friendly cities initiative that we did internationally. Drawing from the experience of that, this was something that was applied to the Canadian context and it was done through the federal-provincial-territorial forum focused on seniors issues. Through that forum a guide was developed for age-friendly communities. There are I think ten communities that are participating.

Is it ten?

[John Cox]

There were ten initially.

[Claude Rocan]

It is about looking for common indicators of an age-friendly community, some practical advice in terms of what makes an age-friendly community, and a way of advocating for certain changes and improvements to be made in a community's core characteristics to encourage it to be age-friendly. So it was built on that basis. It certainly is something that can be expanded. There was a tool that was developed, which is essentially a guide that can be used by any community in Canada. In fact it's been gifted to the World Health Organization as well for them to use in other circumstances. It's a very practical tool that communities can use to essentially assess where they are in terms of categories that would make them age-friendly communities and to make some improvements, where appropriate.

I'll ask John to expand on that a little as well, because he's been very closely associated with that project.

[John Cox]

The age-friendly communities initiative, which was focused, as Claude has indicated, both internationally and domestically, is now in the roll-out process with interested jurisdictions. It basically provides a mechanism whereby seniors in communities together with other components of the community--the business sector, the non-government sector, the municipality, the municipal government, and so on--can look at those things that seniors themselves find helpful to their enjoyment of their community, wherever it is, or that may be a problem. It could be a lack of proper street repair, or it could be an environmental thing. We've talked a lot about falls and some of the things that contribute to that. It can be a whole range of things, but it's what those individual older community members think would be important to them.

Beyond that, it is an opportunity for them to have established in that process of dialogue possible areas that they can target to move on. Those things can be as simple as getting a bench between bus stops on a hill in Saanich, B.C., or it could be something more extensive that would require coordination between provincial and municipal governments with respect to snow plowing. The province might go through the middle of town and fill the sidewalks essentially with banks of snow. The roads are clear but the older persons or persons with disabilities or moms with carriages can't get across the street because it's just lying there.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Before I run out of time, how can we get more information on that? Is there a website?

[John Cox]

I'd be happy to provide the information to you.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

I will give you my card afterwards.

[John Cox]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now we're on to Mr. Sweet, for the Conservative Party, for five minutes.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I might as well stick with the line of questioning Mr. St. Denis was on.

The question of success will be a good point to really check. Do you monitor the take-up of this by municipalities? Do you monitor which municipalities have actually taken up this information or are using it? Do you monitor that?

[John Cox]

As I mentioned, there were ten communities across the country who were involved, basically, in the focus testing. Both the Province of British Columbia and the Province of Manitoba have been very impressed with the promise they saw in this. British Columbia is committed, as I understand, to try to get all 168 communities to look at and begin to take advantage of this with a variety of partners. While we don't have that count now, as they've just begun, we will certainly know about that take-up over the next couple of years.

In Manitoba, that government's intention, as I understand, is to move it out in waves of ten communities, based on their interests—and they're providing support for that action.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I think all of the members on this committee here would like to get that information, so we could be champions of it in our respective communities.

One of the questions that was asked before, and on which we've had a lot of discussion, was about the fact we are moving into a very serious situation from a lack of psychiatrists and psychologists for seniors, and particularly for veterans, because of the added need for professionals in PTSD.

Is there anything we can do that we are not doing right now as a federal government with Health Canada to make sure we have candidates in the queue, so that somewhere down the line in the next ten years we can start to see some of this problem being alleviated? I can think of some things offhand, but I'm certain you've been immersed in these issues all the time and that you must have some action in mind, even to the point of getting some guidance counsellors in high school to encourage young people.

Are we doing anything like that?

[Nancy Milroy-Swainson]

I can't speak to the details of that, but I am awarethat the issue of people's readiness to enter the health professions has been under considerable discussion, not only within the health domain but certainly also within education. In particular, within Health Canada our effort has focused on educational readiness among first nations communities. So there are efforts to support not only first nations Canadians moving right into nursing or psychology or psychiatry, but also to create, if you will, some stepladder programming where once they get to a certain level readiness in the health profession with some experience, they then move to another level of education.

So from the first nations side of things, there has certainly been consideration of that. I can't speak to the details of efforts in the broader sector, but I know it is an issue.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

You had mentioned the Canadian health human resources plan. The native community is in there, but there's not—

[Nancy Milroy-Swainson]

I would have to look at the plan itself to see how they've characterized it. The aboriginal plan is generally reflected inthe pan-Canadian health human resources plan, but it's more specifically reflected in the work of the first nations and Inuit health branch.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I wanted to ask you about social engagement. Again, one of the consistent points we hear from all of the witnesses is that the likelihood of a senior staying fit and of course then also being less susceptible to disease and to falling, etc., depends on whether they have good personal networks. Within the higher public policy plans we're giving to the provinces, do we have some specific strategies to try to catch these people earlier? Because I believe that once you're 75 years old and don't have these social networks, you usually don't end up being a social butterfly—excuse the expression—who does this spontaneously. Is there any action or initiative we're taking on that?

[Claude Rocan]

I will make a comment first.

You're absolutely right. I think that is a hugely important issue, and it relates a bit to the point that was raised a bit earlier about being part of the workforce. I guess that's what we were trying to get at in the presentation. It's not so much the question of working. It's the question of being engaged in society, and whatever form that engagement takes I think is hugely important. We have done some work in the area of what's come to be called “social capital”, and that's essentially the whole social network of support that people have, being part of the community, family members, part of the voluntary sector, organizations, whatever the case might be.

We certainly have taken some steps to try to encourage an understanding of the importance of social engagement for seniors.

Correct me if I'm wrong, John, but I don't think we have specific strategies at the federal level. Certainly this is a point that's discussed with our provincial and territorial counterparts so that again we can share some ideas. If we have some knowledge of best practices, then that's an opportunity to do that. So we operate it that way.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I'm probably running out of time, so I just want to try to squeeze in one more question here. On page 13, you have a policy guide that you developed. How current is that policy guide right now for home care?

[John Cox]

I would have to go back and check, but I would think it would be within the last three years.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you.