Thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee today. The Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism, or SSM, is the umbrella organization representing 16 seniors organizations, including about 100,000 seniors. I'm pleased to be able to highlight for you the importance of age-friendly communities and how strategic investments in this initiative can reduce costs to our public systems while improving quality of life for Canadian seniors and communities as a whole.
The age-friendly communities initiative, as you probably know, is a global initiative started by the World Health Organization. It's a process that promotes healthy, accessible, inclusive communities by applying an age-friendly lens to key areas of community life, including such aspects as transportation, housing, social participation, community support, health services, outdoor spaces and buildings, communication, and education.
Helping communities become more age-friendly is key to creating communities where older adults are included, respected, valued, and less isolated. This approach demonstrates tremendous benefits for our community, business, and older adults, including increased access to and use of services. It helps governments meet the needs of citizens. It supports older adults to remain in the community and engage in volunteer or paid work and civic activities. It reduces mental and physical illness, social isolation, and dependence on the public health system, and mobilizes communities to work in partnership.
Since implementing this initiative, we see positive change. We have visited a number of communities, some 15 or so in total, including the Regina International Airport, where we see increased customer satisfaction and reduced accidents from older adults using the airport by improving signage.
The Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism is working hard to share this initiative with communities across Saskatchewan. Increased federal government funding for the age-friendly community initiative would help to ensure that the communities are able to maximize the benefits. Government support would also assist in building community capacity and in raising the profile of age-friendly communities through promotion of the initiative and by sharing success stories of communities that have embraced age-friendly concepts. If they have embraced age-friendly concepts, that also applies to other age groups, so it indeed becomes intergenerational.
Thank you for the opportunity to profile the benefits of age-friendly communities and the importance of federal support.