Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.
I appreciate the testimony. It's very informative.
As has been pointed out, we have an aging population. At this present time, I believe it's one in six Canadians is a senior. In 12 and a half to 13 years, it will be one in four. I have a number of questions and not enough time, so I'm assuming I know the answer to this question, but is there any witness here today who believes that Canada is ready to take care of an aging population? I don't see any hands, so I will assume that no one thinks that we're ready, which is what I think. I don't think any member of this committee thinks we're ready, and that's why we're discussing this issue.
Dr. MacDonald, you mentioned the synergy. We just heard from Ms. Mackenzie, and she's the advocate for seniors. We heard from the federal retirees that they would like to have a national seniors strategy and a minister for seniors. Over the last two years, having worked with my colleague, Alice Wong, who used to be the minister for seniors, we've heard over and over again from the different stakeholders representing seniors of the importance of working together as a country, creating a national seniors strategy, binding all the synergy, and finding the solutions to the problems. You created some very practical solutions. I'm thinking of the studies that have been done over the last three years by the Office of the Seniors Advocate of British Columbia and I think, since we have Mrs. Mackenzie and her office focusing on the needs of seniors, we have incredibly valuable and important studies and reports that we can rely on that could apply to the situation in Canada.
Would you agree that to provide a plan and a strategy and to move forward in a positive way and get ready, we need to have in every province and territory a person or a minister appointed to focus on their senior issues, so that we can start moving the synergy forward and get ready for this aging population?