Status of Women committee  I'll add that the single biggest loss in a person's life is their health. Next to that, it's their spouse and their house. Those are the three biggest losses. The wild card is your health. As soon as that joker is played, it's game over; it could happen to any one of us today as we're going home.

Status of Women committee  No. I wish I could claim ownership of that. I heard it from someone else.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for your question. I think it's a really good point to pause and reflect on. I'd like you to check your neighbours at the table—I hope you have someone sitting next to you on both sides—because the bad news is that one out of the three of you will be demented by the time you're 80.

Status of Women committee  If you believe what I just said, welcome to the world of denial. We are supreme at denial: Nothing's going to happen to us. The difference is that in 1900, the average life expectancy was around 48. It is now 84. People are living longer. We never expected to live this long. I think that's been a huge shift.

Status of Women committee  Yes. That's what it boils down to.

Status of Women committee  I'll just add one quick thing to that. It's not just from outside. We actually have a saying in our business: “When there's a will, there's family.” It happens not infrequently. We see it a lot. We just have to be very protective of our aging population.

Status of Women committee  There are many models of that in the world.

Status of Women committee  The difference is that it will affect 100% of us.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for that fantastic question. I really think that this is such an important point that we need to spend more time discussing, but just in the short time we have here.... Margie and I actually wrote to the minister when the health accord was being rolled out, about a year and a half or two years ago, with some recommendations on how we can make our health care system better moving forward.

Status of Women committee  That is the bigger issue, but we need more time to talk about the details.

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. We would be happy to talk to you about them.

Status of Women committee  I'm a physician as well. I'm a family doctor and a geriatric psychiatrist. I co-chair the Canadian Coalition for Seniors' Mental Health. We've just put out program that we call the Fountain of Health. We focus on basically three things: brain health and wellness, which have to do with social isolation; physical health; and, keeping your mind and brain active.

Status of Women committee  Ms. Zahid, that is such an important question. Let me just take it one notch above where you started. Every single person in this world needs three things to have a good quality of life: We need a good place to live; we need something useful, purposeful to do; and someone to love.