Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.
I am Heidi Sveistrup. I am the CEO of the Bruyère Research Institute. It's the institute that's associated with the Bruyère Hospital, a multi-site academic hospital affiliated with Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. At any one point, we're serving, every day, about 1,000 older adults, in addition to conducting research and teaching the next generation's health professionals.
I know you've been hearing a lot about Canada's aging population, including earlier this week. I'm here today to talk about an alternative future to the sometimes fearmongering perspective that we have toward “the silver tsunami” because, as with any challenge, there is an opportunity, and global aging is actually a massive economic opportunity for our country.
I'm going to provide the context for this economic opportunity and give three tangible recommendations for this committee to consider.
I'll start with an example. We know that Canada is in a deficit of long-term care beds. In less than 15 years, we're going to need about 200,000 new long-term care beds. This is going to add billions of dollars to our health care costs annually. Long-term care is often viewed as a solution to the impacts of aging on our health system, but this is because we have inadequate supports to help people stay in their homes, where they want to be.
While more beds are part of the solution, we can't continue to simply absorb the costs associated with our rapidly aging population. I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with aging—I'm aging—but there is currently a dearth of alternatives to keep people out of expensive health care institutions. We have to find a way to keep people at home longer, where they want to be.
One way is by doubling down on research. In this example, one focuses on an emerging branch of health care technology known as age-tech. Age-tech is providing distinct solutions for long-term care and health care by leveraging existing technologies like the Internet of things, sensors and virtual reality to provide digital home care and support for all Canadians, including aging adults.
Age-tech for the silver economy will be a multi-million, multi-trillion dollar global market within the next half decade, with an estimated growth of $8.5 trillion by 2025 in Europe alone.
Here is our opportunity. As earlier stated, Canada is uniquely positioned to be a leader in age-tech because of our hallmark public health system. We can leverage this through research, development and commercialization to truly capitalize on the silver economy in ways that we never imagined.
Here's how. We provided a pre-budget submission last year with five recommendations. I'm going to talk about three. First, the government should continue to consult with industry and the research sector through its economic strategy tables and expand the focus to include age-tech and the silver economy.
Second, the government should renew funding for the strategic innovation fund, stream 4, in pursuit of the health and biosciences economic strategy table objectives.
Third, the government should expand federal research funding, including CIHR's Institute of Aging, to add more work on age-tech and how these technologies can support healthy aging.
As my colleague Paul-Émile stated, levelling the playing field and ensuring that access to infrastructure and capacity-building funding opportunities is open to academic health care organizations directly is critical to success. To unleash the potential of the silver economy, the government must implement ambitious policy packages targeting the aging population, such as those I've listed. These will position and enable Canada to become a leader in the global age-tech economy.
Thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to your questions.