Thank you, and thank you for those 20 seconds.
I want to thank everyone for their testimony. It is so good.
I'm hoping, because of the limited time we have to ask you questions, that each of you will provide the committee with a written brief with your recommendations, so that we could then have a fuller input from you. I think it would be very helpful.
I want to focus my questions on Irene Sheppard from Surrey. She hasn't had a chance to answer any whole question, so this will be the time.
Isobel Mackenzie was at our last meeting. She's the seniors advocate for British Columbia. She provided some very interesting testimony too.
There's a large senior population in Langley. I visited the residential care right by the Langley Memorial Hospital. One of the directors there in senior care said that there's not enough time or money to build enough care beds, that they can't afford to build enough and there's not enough time. The suggestion was that if we make it possible for seniors to age in place longer, we can accommodate and afford to provide good care for an aging population.
I'd like you to touch on that, if you would. I'd like you to comment on where the major gaps in care are, which communities are doing it right, and what we can learn from those communities. It appears to everybody I've talked to that we are not ready for this aging population, but that we could be if we were to do the right things and do them smartly.
Also, you touched on home care. You mentioned that one in four has dementia. Having gone through saying goodbye to aging parents, though, I saw that they did not have dementia but did not have the cognitive or physical skills to operate. They needed an advocate. I very often see seniors without advocates and see their social isolation. Yet in another family, one of the senior care providers is burning out because the other person has dementia.
There are so many issues. Again, I look forward to a written brief with recommendations, but could you just touch on the major gaps in our communities? Is there another model we could look at, or another community that's doing it right?