Evidence of meeting #68 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was need.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Associate Professor, Cape Breton University, As an Individual
I'm not quite sure how to answer your question.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
With the other provinces, I mean, between experts, do you share practices?
Associate Professor, Cape Breton University, As an Individual
With respect to housing development?
October 26th, 2017 / 4:35 p.m.
Liberal
Associate Professor, Cape Breton University, As an Individual
I guess I'm not quite sure how to answer that question either.
I'm thinking about the community-based housing research that I do and the organizations that I work with. Certainly we attend the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association conference and present there and listen to presentations from people from other parts of the country as well. There's the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. We go to that conference as well and learn from others.
So sure we do. I hope that's an acceptable answer to the question. If not, I can try to clarify further.
Liberal
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
I'll just make a quick comment, then.
Ms. Wright, you mentioned hearing loss and dementia. I'm quite interested in that because I think dementia has a big role to play as it's one of those diseases that is affecting our seniors. I'm not sure where we go with that.
How much time do I have?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
You're out of time, but guess what? You're up next, so you have six minutes.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Thank you very much.
I'll come back to you in a moment.
Thank you, everybody, for your presentations.
Clearly, this is something that should have been dealt with in the last 20 years. We didn't pay enough attention to this, and we knew it was coming, overall. It's not to point fingers or blame.
One of the things we know absolutely is that if we figure out the housing, that changes a lot of the picture because we heard that the difference between a senior in B.C. and a senior out in the Maritimes is $400 extra left over each month compared to $1,400 left over each month. That's number one. We have to figure that out, but we know that.
I want to speak with Monsieur Marcoux about the medical system.
If you look at your practitioners across the country, what percentage, or how many practitioners, are actually specialized when it comes to seniors, or are there more GPs? What is the breakdown?
President, Canadian Medical Association
You raise a good point.
Seniors are generally treated by their family physicians until the end of their days. We need more assistance and more geriatricians than we currently have. Those geriatricians should be trained to work in communities more than in health care facilities. You do not find the elderly in acute care hospitals. Well, sometimes you do find them there, but they are getting poor care, because they should not be there.
In health care facilities in Canada, 20% of the beds are occupied by those awaiting placement. It is not in their interests at all and it is very expensive.
Recently, an old friend was admitted to a short-term centre. It is one of the best in Montreal. In terms of the care she received, it was incredibly sad. She was left alone. I am not saying that the people working there were not competent. It is just that the centre was simply not set up to provide the care required.
So we need geriatricians who prefer to practise in home-care situations. We have to create a system so that people at home can be cared for there and can remain there longer in safety and comfort.
I am very sensitive to the fact that we need accommodation and we need to increase the number of beds, but the beds are already there. Seniors are already in their beds, in their homes and in their environments. Let us keep them there as long as we can in safety. It also costs a lot less.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
How can we increase the number of physicians who specialize in geriatrics?
President, Canadian Medical Association
Right now, I have in my mind the example of a geriatrician in Quebec who wants to work for community organizations. However, the remuneration methods are not set up to accommodate work in a community setting. They are linked to services provided in hospitals. So we have a young geriatrician doing volunteer work because he really believes in it.
There has to be strong leadership on the part of the central government, provincial governments and associations like ours to bring about a change in methods in order to encourage home-based medical practice.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Is the Canadian Medical Association taking a leadership role in pushing for more specialists in gerontology?
President, Canadian Medical Association
We did not do it directly, but the need is definitely there.
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Okay.
Part of the challenge we have is asking ourselves whether we need to blow up the whole system or whether we need to reallocate our resources so that we have more specialists who understand, especially when it comes to dementia and Parkinson's, because there is a lot of waste in the system.
I'm going to move to Langley Care Society.
Debra, you talked a lot about home care. We announced that we are giving to the provinces part of that $6 billion for home care. You've heard about that?
Liberal
Dan Ruimy Liberal Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC
Are you seeing anything coming to you through that? If not, what does the picture look like for home care? I'm curious to know.
Chief Executive Officer, Langley Lodge, Langley Care Society
I haven't seen the funds flowing yet. We've just had a provincial election. I think they're trying to get everything rolling. There's a cap on home care of four hours per day. That's just tremendously inadequate. If we're talking about—
Liberal
Chief Executive Officer, Langley Lodge, Langley Care Society
That's provincial.