Human Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I gave you 25 extra seconds.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Oh, golly gee. You know I can talk for hours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I know you can, and that's why I'm getting you to stop.

Now for six minutes, and only six minutes, Mary Ng. Welcome to our committee.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Thank you so much.

I'm a guest here today. I'm filling in for one of my MP colleagues, Mona Fortier. I'm very happy to be here. I'm very pleased to hear from all of the witnesses today.

I have to take the opportunity, quickly, for 15 seconds, to talk about how important seniors are to this government. I look at some of the initiatives that this government has implemented. Our friend talked about needing support for caregivers. The increase of time, so that there is extended EI for people who are caring for families, is something we have done. Additional funding for home care is something we have done. For sure, with respect to affordable housing, there is going to be a priority put on seniors, including our veterans. That's really important. And there's increasing the GIS.

I'm not going to take my time talking about the government's initiatives, because people can have a look at them, but this is certainly something that is important to this government. It's heartening to hear about the culture around the wraparound kinds of services from all of stakeholders that needs to take place in order to look after our seniors into the future.

I want to focus on a couple of areas. This is about looking into the future. There certainly is a lot of work to be done. I love what we heard from Langley Lodge. It seems to me that this is an outreach program: volunteers who are seniors who are going to help other seniors.

I'd be interested in hearing from around the table, if you will, on the kinds of community-type innovations and initiatives that are already started that are helping our seniors. I think that's something we should be looking at, the innovations or some of the community collaborations that are already taking place.

I'll start with Langley, and I'd love to hear from Grande Prairie as well. You're on the ground, so maybe you are seeing some things that the community is already taking into their own hands.

I'll start it there, with Langley.

[Debra Hauptman]

Are you speaking to me or to our MP?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I am speaking to you, please.

[Debra Hauptman]

With regard to some of the other initiatives that are starting in Langley?

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Yes, or that you're seeing as best practices.

[Debra Hauptman]

I mentioned the age-friendly communities.

The Township of Langley has formally become an age-friendly community. There is a formal designation, and there is quite a process to obtaining that. It looks at the World Health Organization definition for “age-friendly communities”, and there are a number of steps. That's something not ever community across Canada is doing, but more and more are. There are grants and all sorts of support to do that.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Great.

[Debra Hauptman]

That's very good.

There are a number of action tables in Langley. Some of them are driven by the health authority, and some of them by local interest groups. They look at different things, like housing and transportation. In terms of transportation, Langley Lodge participated with two other organizations, Magnolia, which is a private for-profit provider, and the Langley Senior Resources Centre, and we formed a for-profit bus co-op.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Oh, interesting.

[Debra Hauptman]

We share a bus—we share a few buses, actually—that are wheelchair accessible. We joined as members of the co-op.

It's been very successful. Instead of each organization having to own a bus, we can rent the bus. We have our own drivers. This is the bus that we're using for the new horizons outreach. We're going door to door to pick up those participants to bring them to the lodge for a nutritious lunch and a social program.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

In the interest of time, thank you.

I would expect that if we heard an example from you, there probably are many across the country. We'll look forward to exploring what those might be.

I'm going to direct my next question to Dr. Marcoux.

You talked about needing to shift the culture of the way we think about seniors. Rather than having seniors destined into places like hospitals or acute beds, more can be done in the community. I think about the opportunity for our country with respect to young people and new opportunities, new jobs, new skills, new training for those very young people, who could indeed work in the community.

Are you seeing across the country if there is anything like that? I'm thinking about young social workers, young nurses, young people, who are perhaps developing a future in caregiving, if you will, right in the community, that will help the health and well-being and aging of our seniors.

[Dr. Laurent Marcoux]

You are quite right in saying that young people should be encouraged to take care of older people because there will not be enough young people to look after them.

That said, we are lucky to live in the 21st century, when there is a lot of innovation in methods of communication. If seniors are shown how those means of communication work, they are able to use them and they feel less isolated. I'll come back to the example I gave you earlier, where people shared their health records with a remote team, which visited them occasionally.

The well-being of seniors is not just about medication. A whole host of factors make their lives enjoyable and make them feel part of society. The medical community, the recreational community, the transportation sector, everyone needs to think about focusing on that.

[Mary Ng, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

In my own riding that's very diverse, and there's an opportunity for the connectedness of young people to the diverse communities. They can actually help seniors age. I think about a program that was funded under new horizons, where young people are teaching seniors how to interact with the social network so that they can, in fact, participate broadly in their communities.

Thank you for your testimony today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you all.

We now go to MP Rachel Blaney for six minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to come back to you, Ms. Wright.

Speech-Language and Audiology Canada was part of the alliance for a national seniors strategy. Can you share with us specifically what your organization would like to see happen in this strategy and what the next steps should be for this government?

[Dr. Meredith Wright]

My discussion will relate almost always to speech-language pathology and audiology services.

As Dr. Marcoux mentioned, the acute care hospitals have been primarily the place where care has been provided. However, now that we have a changing health care system, with both positions and beds being cut in hospitals, we need to be developing the community services. Our organization is very much focused on looking to see what services can be provided in the community and through home care for our patients and elderly seniors.

We need services in place to maintain people who are relatively high-functioning but, say, are developing hearing loss. We need access to services those individuals can afford. Private speech language pathology and private audiology services don't come cheap. Not all seniors, especially those on low and fixed incomes, can afford them, so we would need access to publicly funded services for that particular group.

We also need to ensure, as part of a seniors strategy, that there is appropriate community and health care for ill and frail seniors, and people with neurological disorders, to help them manage in the best way they can. We need to have those services in place, but we also need to make sure they link with other services, the family health care team, and other social services as well.

We have pockets of excellence in service providing in the community. I'm thinking locally of the Aphasia Centre of Ottawa, which provides community-based services for people following a stroke and follows them for years afterwards. It's a collaborative approach with a social worker.

These services are available in the city, but not necessarily in rural and remote communities and across all provinces. I'd like to see us look for examples of excellence, not only in clinical practice but also with the current research that's happening in our professions of audiology and speech language pathology. We have leaders in research developing different sorts of intervention strategies with caregivers and with people with dementia and other degenerative conditions. I would like to see the programs they have developed actually being translated into practice, as well.

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

I also know your organization supports the revising of definitions terminology and requirements for the disability tax credit. Can you tell us how the current interpretation isn't working?

[Dr. Meredith Wright]

Chantal, can you answer that one?

[Dr. Chantal Kealey]

For the hearing portion of the disability tax credit, the language is very ambiguous, and audiologists often find themselves wondering if they should be certifying a given individual. The language in there basically asks if the individual is markedly restricted in an environment that's quiet with somebody they know. The problem is that we don't live in a quiet environment, only speaking to people we know, so that language really needs to be changed. That will then provide a bit more assurance that the audiologist—or the physician or nurse practitioner, who can certify certain parts of the disability tax credit—is doing the right thing and helping the client when it's necessary.

Anecdotally, I have heard from a number of people that patients do a little shopping around to see who will actually sign this for them, because a lot of people just don't feel comfortable when they have to use those criteria.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to come back to you, Dr. Marcoux.

I did 11 town halls on seniors issues in my riding because I have a huge rural riding with a lot of remote communities. I'm wondering if you can tell me about the challenges that you're seeing in remote and rural communities and how a national seniors strategy can assist those communities with moving forward.

[Dr. Laurent Marcoux]

I think it's about providing them with services, providing them with housing. In a small area, there are less services available for them, so we need to have a larger community to bring people services. They are more isolated in the remote areas. The youngest have gone to town, as we know. They are very isolated, and they can't go to the nearest [Inaudible—Editor] It is a problem to be a senior in a remote area because of the isolation and lack of services.

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

Many of the seniors that I work with talk about the fact that they have a lot of social infrastructure in their smaller communities. When somebody is sick, people will drop by and help them out. They have all that structure. Moving away means they're suddenly in a new community, and they don't have that social infrastructure. In terms of health care, how do we value social infrastructure and how important it is?