Human Resources Committee on June 8th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Now over to MP Blaney, please, for six minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much, all, for being here today.

My first question is going to be for you as well, Nancy. Many seniors have experienced in our riding and other ridings excessive wait times in receiving their old age security. They are also often put in the position where they are waiting for their application for the guaranteed income supplement to be processed. What we are seeing is a compounding of their financial crunch.

Can you just explain to us why this wait time is happening, and if there is going to be a fix to this systemic issue?

[Nancy Milroy Swainson]

What I want to do first is tell you the things we're doing to expedite the process. I acknowledge that there are some Canadians who do wait a fair amount, but, in fact, there have been a lot of efforts in the department put forward to make sure Canadians don't wait, and get the benefits to which they are entitled at the time they are entitled.

I did mention automatic enrolment. We introduced this in two different phases for old age security. The first phase was in 2013 and it used Canada Pension Plan contribution information we already had available as a proxy for residence, so if someone had made 40 years of contributions to the Canada Pension Plan, we were pretty confident they had 40 years of residence and so we were able to automatically enrol that population.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Is there an automatic enrolment process for GIS as well?

[Nancy Milroy Swainson]

That will be coming at the end of 2017. The people who will be automatically enrolled for GIS are those who were automatically enrolled for OAS because we have sufficient information on hand for them, so starting next year they will be able to automatically enrol the population of seniors who are low income who were automatically enrolled for GIS.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

One of the things we've seen—I'm the seniors critic so we've heard of it—is that a lot of low-income seniors, not even knowing about the GIS program, are coming to see us years after because they're in devastating circumstances and then we're able to finally support them and get them enrolled in that program. This sounds good, but is there a way of working with CRA, where you already have a comprehensive understanding in that department of where people are financially, to find something that's going to work so that we keep those impoverished seniors out of poverty?

[Nancy Milroy Swainson]

You're absolutely right. We want to make sure they get the benefits they are entitled to. We do work with CRA, and in fact send out correspondence to seniors every year, who, based on data we get from CRA on their income, we believe are eligible. We write to them to tell them they could be eligible. Would you like to apply for GIS? We're also piloting, for example, a combined application for those who cannot be automatically enrolled, where if you apply for OAS you automatically apply for GIS. That wasn't the case in the past; it was two separate applications. This will make it much easier for people to automatically apply for GIS at the same time as they apply for OAS.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much.

I'm going to talk to you, Lyse. One of the things you talked about was the $4-billion announcement around community infrastructure. Specifically, how will this be dedicated to seniors and seniors' housing? We've heard a lot from indigenous communities specifically that are looking at really making sure that their seniors stay in the community as they really need to be supported and housed in a positive way.

I've been asked by a lot of my over 20 indigenous communities about seniors housing in the community, so I'm just wondering if this will play a role in that.

[Lyse Langevin]

Budget 2017 builds on the historic investments of budget 2016, of which $416 million over two years was dedicated to housing. The dollars go to the first nations and they decide how they allocate it within their housing projects.

These investments are addressing priorities of the indigenous community such as health care, education, housing, and other critical infrastructure that can be related to seniors. We are working in partnership with first nations, Inuit, and Métis to ensure that these investments will lead to positive change.

As per the budget text, we have to engage with indigenous people to define how these amounts will be allocated.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Anna, one of the things I was interested in was the age-friendly communities program that you were putting together. I'm really curious about the general costs associated with such endeavours. Is it harder to implement this kind of program in smaller communities across Canada?

[Anna Romano]

I'm not sure we've necessarily done the analysis of whether it's more difficult in a smaller or larger community. I'm going to check my stats. For example, about 800 communities are age-friendly in Quebec, 300 in Ontario, only 28 in Manitoba, so the numbers vary across the country.

I can tell you a little about the steps to establish an age-friendly community. The first step is to raise awareness of why it's important to have those types of supports available for seniors, and then establish an advisory committee that includes older adults from the community to get their input, then securing municipal commitment to the project.

We have established an evaluation guide at the Public Health Agency. It's available on our website, and any community can use it as a guide. It has the steps you need to take to establish an age-friendly community.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Do you have any idea of the smallest community that is working in this program?

[Anna Romano]

We don't have any up north. We have one in New Brunswick, which I'm guessing is probably a smaller community. I can certainly report back to the committee with a little analysis of the size, whether there's an impact there.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

That would be amazing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you so much.

Now we'll move over to MP Ruimy, please, for six minutes.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you everybody for being here as we continue our study. There isn't an easy solution. It's very complex and sometimes when we look at the government to solve the whole problem, that's not going to be the answer. We can provide framework, some funding, but at the end of the day, as you mentioned, to get these types of communities, the municipalities and the provinces have to start to be a part of that, or else it's not going to work.

Ms. Romano, we talk about dementia. Do you have any stats for us on that?

[Anna Romano]

Sure, if you want stats, I can go to my stat book here.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

What kind of numbers are we looking at?

[Anna Romano]

I'll give you some basic stats around population projections. In 2015, for the first time in Canadian history, the number of persons aged 65 years and older exceeded the number of children aged 0 to 14. I think this committee knows that. In terms of the proportion of Canadian seniors with dementia, the prevalence of dementia increases with age group, from 0.8% in the 65- to 69-year age group to 24.6% in the 85-plus age group.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Are we seeing an increase in dementia over the last decade?

[Anna Romano]

Yes. I want to check here because I don't want to give the wrong numbers. The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias is increasing, it's 7.1% over the last...I don't have exactly since when, but the trend is going up.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Even in my riding of Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, I see seniors every day. I talk to them on the streets, at the local coffee shops, and I see a lot of great things going on. When they're involved, engaged, and out volunteering, they're healthy and happy; the quality of life is great.

But when they're not, when they're stuck at home...and I'm starting to see that dementia is becoming more prevalent. Nobody really understands how we deal with it. Families don't know how to deal with it. That's the part that scares me because we can build houses; we can offer subsidies; we can do a lot of things, but when it comes to dementia, I think that's where people lose it. They don't know what to do.

Could you expand a little more on what public health initiatives are being taken on that?

[Anna Romano]

Sure. I'll start with the basic issue around stigma. You'll never get to quality of life for someone with dementia unless you address the issue of stigma. People need to have an understanding of what it's like to have the disease.

That's partly why we invest in the Dementia Friends initiative, which really is about raising awareness of what it's like to live with the disease. From our perspective, that's job number one.

Our second large investment, as I mentioned in my remarks, is in Baycrest. That is basically a hub, and it leverages.... We've put in $42 million, and there are other partners and stakeholders that bring it up to over $100 million, to get products and services to market that will help people living with dementia and help caregivers who are caring for people with dementia. The idea is to share best practices across the country.

To the point that was raised earlier by the honourable member, at the federal level there really is only so much we can do, because a lot of it does come down to provinces and territories and the individual municipalities. We hope that with the contributions we make in the area of data, surveillance, and sharing best practices, we can make a difference.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

I have only a little time left. Recently, the federal government made deals with mostly all the provinces, except for one, for funding for home care and mental health care. In British Columbia, we have about another $785 million for home care.

Could you tell us how you see that home care being executed? Are there expectations? Are we going to measure this? What are we hoping that the provinces will do with this home care funding?

[Anna Romano]

It's a very good question. It really should be directed to an official from Health Canada, because it does fall under their mandate.