Human Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Good afternoon, everybody.

I have some housekeeping things before we get started, because I will likely forget at the end.

November 7 is the last Tuesday before we break for Remembrance Week. The way the report is timing out, we should be done that week. I would recommend we extend the November 7 meeting by half an hour so that we can actually go through the drafting instructions with the analysts. The reason I'm requesting this is that we'll be wrapping up before Remembrance Week. It would give them that week to actually start drafting the report. Otherwise we lose that week, and it's not the most efficient use of committee time.

Does anybody have any questions about that? Is there any concern about extending that one meeting by half an hour?

Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

You said the 7th. The 7th is a Tuesday.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Correct. We have one more session. I'm assuming people wouldn't want to extend on the Thursday for travel reasons. We're not talking about line-by-line study or anything like that. It's simply drafting instructions for the analysts.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

We'll suspend to go in camera.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Welcome, everybody.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, May 4, 2017, the committee is resuming its study of advancing inclusion and quality of life for Canadian seniors. Today is the second of three panels that will be held on the subject of inclusion, social determinants of health, and well-being.

We have a very large panel today, and I am very pleased to welcome you all.

Coming to us via video conference from Grande Prairie is the Grande Prairie and Area Council on Aging. We have with us the director, Sherry Dennis, as well as an outreach worker, Anne Repetowski.

Can you hear me okay?

[Anne Repetowski, Outreach Worker, Grande Prairie and Area Council on Aging - Seniors Outreach]

Yes.

[Sherry Dennis, Director, Grande Prairie and Area Council on Aging - Seniors Outreach]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Also coming to us via video conference, from Burnaby, B.C., is Debra Hauptman, chief executive officer of Langley Lodge residential care home.

Welcome. Can you hear me okay?

[Debra Hauptman, Chief Executive Officer, Langley Lodge, Langley Care Society]

Yes. Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Perfectly fine.

Here in Ottawa we have, appearing as an individual, Catherine Leviten-Reid, associate professor at Cape Breton University. Welcome.

From the Canadian Medical Association, we have Laurent Marcoux, president, joined by Stephen Vail, director of policy.

From Speech-Language and Audiology Canada, we have Chantal Kealey, director of audiology, and Meredith Wright, director of speech-language pathology and communication health assistants. I may want to talk to you afterwards about my pronunciation, which is clearly a weakness of mine.

You will all have seven minutes to open. When I give you a signal, it means you have one minute left. Don't get too flustered when I do that. You have lots of time.

We are going to start with either Sherry Dennis or Anne Repetowski, from Grande Prairie. The next seven minutes are yours.

[Anne Repetowski]

Thank you.

I'm Anne Repetowski, and I'm an outreach worker. Our concern for seniors is about the wait times for processing Service Canada applications for old age security, guaranteed income supplement, guaranteed income supplement estimates and allowances.

I will give you a bit of background about Seniors Outreach. We've been running for approximately 35 years in the city of Grande Prairie. We are a northwestern Alberta community, and we service a large region, with just over 6,000 client files. There were approximately 4,000 walk-ins to our office last year. We have three full-time staff and a part-time receptionist, and we have two outreach workers. Sherry is our director. In 2016 we saw 2,629 clients in the year. It's a fairly good volume for our little office. We try to help them, provincially and federally, with anything to do with the pensions.

Our concern with Service Canada—with old age security and the guaranteed income supplement—is the long processing times and how they affect seniors. When they have delayed old age security, have complex old age security because they weren't born in Canada or haven't lived in Canada their whole life, or have an estimate to do with retiring or pensions ending—or even something as simple as if they've been on income support provincially and Canada pension plan disability payments, and the disability is going down to retirement—the wait times for an estimate in Alberta are at 35 weeks, which is 8.75 months.

When you are on a very fixed income, it puts you into a struggle as to how you pay for rent, medications, and so forth, and there's a lot of anxiety, worry, concern, and stress for people. Sherry's been doing this for 25 years, and I've been doing this for 18 years, and one of the things we have noticed is that in the last six to seven years, the wait times have doubled or tripled. When I started, it was three months to apply and get your estimate done at the same time, and people would have a result quite soon. Now, with this 8.75-month wait, we're seeing it not just take that amount of time, but even go as high as 22 months. I've had one client this year—a very unusual instance—who had waited three years to have their case taken care of.

It's sometimes because people aren't as aware of the procedures with Service Canada, in applying and doing follow-ups, because they don't deal with it daily and this isn't their.... They're concerned about their finances but they don't know how to approach it, and sometimes there's a bit of worry in dealing with government. We're seeing, on average, especially at the beginning of this year, that it was 11 to 23 months as an average for processing those estimates, so that puts them in a really tight space in terms of paying for their basic necessities.

We also have an issue when they are in urgent or dire need, because they're behind on rent or there's a concern. There was an issue about even those being processed in under the four weeks we were being advised it could take: we were seeing two to three months for those to be processed. This year, for the first time, we went from a fifth-level escalation, which means you've phoned in five times in dire need, asking for urgent processing. We even went up to 11th-level processing in January, and in March I had clients coming in and telling me that when they phoned from home, they were told not to phone anymore and that it would be done when it was done. That's a concern, when they've been waiting for over a year for back pay.

People who are on fixed income, have lost a spouse, retired from employment, are on workers' compensation or employment insurance, or have private pensions going down, those are the people who are struggling, and they're on a fixed income already.

Basic old age security is at $585.49 this month, and people may or may not have Canada pension. In Alberta, if they get the guaranteed income supplement, the GIS, plus the Alberta seniors benefit, which is a small provincial program, the most they're living on is $1,750 a month. The rents up here in Grande Prairie are usually around $900 to $1,000 for a basic one-bedroom apartment. Seniors lodges in our area start off at about $1,100 a month. It starts putting them on a very tight income, especially when they have a medication assistance program and must pay the cost to have that administered in lodges.

Our concern is the desperation seniors have. They borrow money, and they use up credit cards, so, yes, when they get the back pay, it's wonderful, and it helps alleviate some of that stress, but it doesn't help with the interest and the worry for all that time, the anxiety and the stress, which seem to aggravate—and I'm not a health care professional—their health and their wellness. They're not familiar with the necessity to follow through with phone calls, that after eight months, if they haven't heard an answer, they need to phone in. They're not getting the responses, and that's why it's taking so long.

The other concern is that even basic correspondence takes 20 weeks, which means five months. If somebody is getting married, and we're helping them to write in to say they've been married, and it changes their eligibility for the guaranteed income supplement or the allowance, it can take five months. We've had a few people this last year, probably about four now, who have serious back pay by the time it's processed and looked at. A change of address; authorization to communicate when somebody is going into a designated supported living facility and they need family members to help them out; powers of attorney; all of those items are in such delay that we're talking half a year for backlog and correcting things, which is a serious effect for seniors. That's what our concern is. We're hoping that somehow we could make those processing times better.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

From Burnaby, B.C., we have Debra Hauptman, chief executive officer, Langley Lodge residential home care.

The next seven minutes are yours.

[Debra Hauptman]

I'd like to thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee and for the opportunity to participate in this important dialogue.

I will speak to you today about Langley seniors' experiences in accessing long-term care and the plans for long-term care in our community. I'll also speak on some other programs and initiatives that we're working on that could be part of a national strategy.

I represent a non-profit organization that operates Langley Lodge, a licensed residential care home providing 24-hour nursing care for 139 seniors. We've been operators in Langley for 43 years. We provide government-subsidized long-term care services for 121 of our beds under an agreement with our local health authority, Fraser Health. We also have 18 private-pay spaces. These are currently full and have a wait-list.

I'll start with sharing some facts about long-term care in Langley and my community. There are six care homes in Langley, government-operated and privately operated, with a total of 665 beds. All are currently at full capacity. The Fraser Health Authority has projected that Langley will need to add 70 long-term care beds by 2021. The well-known published projections for the senior population indicate that this will barely meet the need in 2021. We're not able to keep up with the demand at present.

The average age of our residents is 85 years, not just in Langley Lodge, but overall in our health authority. Seventy per cent of our residents are 80 to 101 years old. In 2025, the leading edge of the baby boomer demographic will turn 80 years of age.

Wait-lists for long-term care are already very long, often multiple years. In our experience, seniors wait until they've exhausted all of the available home supports and their caregivers can no longer cope. When they apply for a government-subsidized bed, they're surprised to learn that they will wait on a wait-list. We have had a 100-year-old gentleman admitted to a private-pay bed by his 99-year-old spouse. He was not approved for a funded bed. Every day we meet families who are desperate, anxious, and failing to cope, and who are astonished that they will not have access to long-term care in the short term. If they can afford private-pay, they will take that option. Many cannot afford it, the average cost being $190 a day.

Health authorities in British Columbia are employing strategies to manage the capacity that they have today to ensure that those who need it most urgently will get services. The unintended consequence is that other eligible seniors fall through the cracks, are turned down, or wait far too long. For example, we have a resident whose family admitted her to a private-pay bed due to advanced dementia. That was in 2014. This resident is still waiting for a funded placement. There are many stories of families liquidating assets to pay for care for their loved one. These include families who do not have wealth or where a primary spouse is still living in that residence.

The impact and burden on caregivers must be considered. Their voice must be heard at the planning tables. They are often the last to know that they will be impacted by changes in health policy and service plans.

It's also a fact that home care services are not sufficient today to support those who are turned down for long-term care, and they need to be ramped up further and more rapidly. There is a need for more publicly funded assisted living, respite care, and adult day programs. These are essential components of a spectrum of services that will ensure seniors are supported to the extent that they require along the aging journey.

Langley Care Society's vision and strategic plan is to expand service offerings and create a broader spectrum of care, for example, respite care and adult day programs. We have started with the most basic of programs, a volunteer-driven seniors peer outreach program that we launched this summer with a grant from the new horizons program. Our program engages volunteers who are seniors to provide outreach to at-risk seniors who live in our vicinity. We have identified 800 seniors in our local area who live alone.

The individuals who are participating in our outreach program are the older seniors. They're living alone and do not have family nearby or friends who are still living. They no longer drive. They've been recently widowed. They are experiencing declining mobility. The response to our program has been strong.

We know we are achieving the goals, and that it will continue to grow. In the next year or two we hope to add more health and wellness services, such as health promotion and primary care.

Langley Care Society also established a private foundation, the Langley Care Foundation, that is actively fundraising to provide resources for quality of life programs for our elderly residents. The monies raised ensure that our residents have music, art, and horticultural therapies, as well as spiritual care.

What is missing? We need a vision for seniors care in Canada. We need to be planning for 2025 and beyond, when 25% of the population will be over 65 years of age. A national seniors strategy could lead the way by establishing a vision for seniors' quality of life, health care inclusion, and income security. The national strategy could assist small organizations and communities like ours in Langley to adopt a planning strategy with a clear vision, access to information, and resources about types of programs and services that communities can set up with their existing service providers.

Long-term care organizations want to do more, to stretch our boundaries. We have the infrastructure, the knowledge, and experience to hit the ground running. A national strategy would help to focus efforts.

There is much work to do to prepare for the needs of the next wave of seniors. I encourage our federal leaders to lead the way with a national strategy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Appearing as an individual, we have Catherine Leviten-Reid, associate professor, Cape Breton University. Welcome.

[Dr. Catherine Leviten-Reid, Associate Professor, Cape Breton University, As an Individual]

Thanks for the invitation.

I want to talk about creating affordable rental housing for seniors that's accessible and that supports healthy aging. I'm basing my submission on research projects I have led on rental housing in Nova Scotia. This includes an inventory of rental housing stock in the Cape Breton regional municipality and case study research on affordable rental housing projects built specifically for seniors through the investment in affordable housing program.

The inventory of rental housing stock we did last year found that there is a limited amount of accessible rental housing in the Cape Breton regional municipality. We looked at public housing, non-profit rental housing, and market-based rentals, and found that 3% of rental units were fully accessible. There is more accessible housing in the non-profit sector compared to market rentals and public housing units.

The good news with respect to the work you're doing is that more of this accessible housing is targeted to seniors in our communities, so even though there is not a lot of it, it's intended mostly for them. But, with respect to affordability, shelter costs are higher for accessible units than non-accessible units. A one-bedroom apartment that's accessible is about $130 more per month, and a two-bedroom apartment that's accessible is almost $300 more per month. Also, accessible units are less likely to be vacant.

We also looked at rooming houses in our municipality, because rooming houses are an important source of affordable rental housing for single people, including seniors. We found that none of this housing at all was accessible.

Overall there are limited opportunities to living in accessible rental housing for seniors. They're more costly, and we know that renters will surely experience barriers to aging in place. We do know that almost half of renter households in our municipality experience activity limitations.

One recommendation that came out of this research is whether Canada Mortgage and Housing can collect data on accessible rental housing. It already collects data twice a year on the primary rental market. It asks about rental costs and vacancy rates. Can it also ask about accessibility?

The case study research we did identified what seniors value in housing and some of the constraints developers of rental housing face when they build it. We did this research in 2012. We looked at three housing projects, and they were all located in rural communities.

The seniors we spoke with very much valued shared space, so common rooms stood out. They're an extremely important feature. They facilitated formal gatherings and also informal interactions. Shared space was also used for physical activity. If there was a shared hallway, it was used as a kind of walking track, especially in the wintertime. Shared space also allowed tenants to check in on each other, but this shared space was inconsistently provided by housing developers, and when we interviewed them, of course they talked about needing a sound business case when they are building this housing, and shared space increased their costs.

Seniors talked about the importance of good housing design, but in the interviews we conducted, design-related barriers to aging in place were identified by almost everyone. Some tenants really thought all of the units being constructed should be barrier-free as a way to accommodate their changing needs.

At the same time, two of the development teams we interviewed talked about really learning as they went, and said that the affordable rental housing they were building was a one-time project. They were responding to a community need they identified for affordable rental housing, and they were really learning as they were going along. They said that if they ever did it again, they absolutely would change what they did.

I think it's also important to note that these housing developers had a different understanding of the rental housing they were building and who they were building it for. While the tenants were talking to us about quality of life dimensions of their housing, the developers were saying that this was unassisted, affordable rental housing for seniors, so they expected their tenants to be living independently.

Seniors, of course, noted that access to affordable transportation was important. The seniors not living in housing on a bus line absolutely experienced barriers to accessing amenities and services.

Again, housing developers have to think about the cost of what they were doing, and in two cases they were building on land that was contributed to them in kind.

Last, some of the seniors we interviewed spoke about the importance of having a mechanism through which they could participate in decision-making on housing that provides them input, such as the opportunity to be on the board of directors, or to participate in a tenant's committee.

As far as recommendations coming out of this research are concerned, first, can we think about affordable rental housing for seniors as more than a bricks and mortar strategy? It's not just about providing a place to live; it's also about healthy aging.

Some specific recommendations that might allow us to do may include the following. Can we be more specific with our developers about what is required in this housing with respect to how the units are designed, and how the buildings are designed? They need to be providing common rooms, and there has to be some kind of a mechanism for seniors to participate in decision-making.

Can we at the same time increase the funding that's available to build affordable, rental housing for seniors? Can we encourage or require partnerships among developers and organizations in our communities who are providing services to seniors?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

We'll now hear from Laurent Marcoux, the president of the Canadian Medical Association, and Stephen Vail, the director of policy.

The next seven minutes are yours, gentlemen.

[Dr. Laurent Marcoux, President, Canadian Medical Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am Dr. Laurent Marcoux. As president of the Canadian Medical Association, the CMA, I am pleased to be here. Thank you for your invitation.

As the national organization representing more than 85,000 physicians, the CMA has been advocating for improvements to seniors' care for a number of years. In addition, more than 50,000 Canadians have reached us on demandaplan.ca, our website devoted to mobilizing patient support for a national seniors strategy.

For the last 50 years, Canadians have been living longer and are in better health. We are clearly delighted with the progress our country has made, but we also recognize the pressures on our health care system. We know that the number of seniors in Canada will double in the next 30 years, which will result in additional pressures on our healthcare system.

I must emphasize the exceptional work done by Marc Serré MP, whose motion on the need for a national seniors strategy is what started the study that your committee is undertaking.

The CMA brief before you today contains 15 recommendations that form the basis of a national seniors strategy. It is our view that these recommendations will help our seniors to remain active, contributing citizens of their communities.

Given the limited time I have available, I will focus on the three themes that your committee is addressing. So I will not go through all the recommendations in our brief.

First, I will talk about seniors' access to housing.

As I just mentioned, we know that the demand for long-term care will increase as the population of Canada ages. A recent report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information indicated that residential care capacity must double over the next 20 years in order to meet the needs of the elderly population.

Not only must we build new long-term facilities, we must also renovate current facilities and ensure that they are safe and ready to meet the needs of the patients. We rely too much on hospitals to provide that type of care, and it is neither effective, nor viable nor satisfactory for the elderly. It is critical for us to decentralize health care services from hospitals towards communities and home care.

The current situation is a major contributor to clogged emergency room services, the lengthening wait times and the cancellation of surgery. The situation is completely unacceptable and, I repeat, is not viable. It even threatens to put our health care system in danger.

We encourage the government to continue investing in infrastructure that provides long-term care and ongoing care, so that we can improve care for seniors, at the same time as we are relieving the pressure on the short-term care system.

To that end, the CMA has asked the Conference Board of Canada to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of meeting the demand for long-term beds in Canada. The report will be released in the coming weeks.

We were reassured to see the government announce, in its most recent budget, the new national housing strategy that will inject more than $11.2 billion into adequate and affordable housing for Canadians. It is our view that a significant part of that investment should be allocated to the needs of seniors.

Second, I will talk about income security for vulnerable seniors.

At retirement age, many of our fellow Canadians rely on various public programs to meet their needs, such as old age security, the Canada pension plan and the guaranteed income supplement. Sometimes, these measures are in addition to personal pensions and investments.

We all know that the health of Canadians tends to improve with income. It is therefore troubling to see that poverty among seniors has been on the increase for a number of years. We are also of the view that, thanks to those investments, a number of seniors will benefit from a basic level of financial security, which will allow them to remain in their homes or in communities that cater to seniors. However, the measures must be continued, and be better targeted to the needs of Canadian seniors.

On the topic of income security, we must protect seniors by supporting public awareness initiatives that bring attention to the financial abuse of seniors. Too many seniors are victims of it and it is an evil that must stop.

Third, I will talk about the overall quality of life and well-being for seniors.

The CMA is of the opinion that our country is able to respond to the health and social needs of our seniors. A strategic approach is needed, a national strategy on the care of seniors.

In that context, we need to make sure that access to home care is uniform all across Canada and that clear operating principles are established. We must also establish performance objectives and a degree of accountability from all levels of government. A measure of that kind is necessary in order to give the public and the patients greater confidence in the home care system.

We have to provide better support for family and informal caregivers by providing them with training, respite care and financial assistance. We must also invest in programs that encourage healthy aging, such as programs that focus on physical activity, nutrition and mental health.

All partners in the field of health must unite their efforts in order to ensure that seniors have easy access to the care they need, ideally at home. These measures include access to a family physician, supported by a multidisciplinary team, coverage for essential medications, and smooth transitions between the levels of care.

We must create supportive environments that allow seniors to remain independent for as long as possible. To that end, we must promote positive messages about aging, provide employment to those who want to work, and ensure that buildings, pedestrian areas and transportation systems are safe and accessible.

In simple terms, improving the quality of life of seniors in Canada is not just a matter of health care. We have to create an environment in which Canadians can thrive as they age.

Our 15 recommendations, which you have before you, make up a master plan for the health system of tomorrow. The time has come to create an effective, efficient and equitable health system for seniors and for all Canadians.

We will be happy to answer your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Last but not least, from Speech-Language & Audiology Canada, we have Chantal Kealey, director of audiology, and Meredith Wright, director of speech-language pathology and communication health assistants.

Welcome. The next 10 minutes are yours.

[Dr. Meredith Wright, Director of Speech-Language Pathology and Communication Health Assistants, Speech-Language & Audiology Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to address this important committee. My name is Meredith Wright, and I'm joined today by my colleague Chantal Kealey.

I am proud to represent Speech-Language & Audiology Canada, the national professional association for the two distinct but interconnected professions of speech-language pathology and audiology. Today, the association represents approximately 6,400 professionals across Canada.

As a speech-language pathologist, my scope of practice with seniors includes assessing and treating a wide range of communication and swallowing disorders, from the inability to communicate following stroke, to swallowing difficulties experienced by a person with dementia at the end of life.

As an audiologist, Dr. Kealey's scope of practice with seniors includes assessing and treating an array of auditory disorders, such as hearing loss, tinnitus, auditory processing, and balance problems.

For our association, the term “communication health” refers to everything within the scopes of practice of audiology and speech-language pathology. We know that the existence and extent of most communication and hearing difficulties is largely unknown by the Canadian public, but the statistics are eye-opening. Approximately one in six people in Canada has a speech, language, or hearing disorder.

As we age, we experience a decline in memory, and our ability to process information slows. Complex sentences, like the ones used by many health care providers, lawyers, and financial planners, become more and more difficult to understand. Aging muscles can contribute to the development of swallowing problems, particularly in frail seniors. Swallowing problems can result in choking, malnutrition, dehydration, and pneumonia. Hearing loss also gradually increases as we age. By 65, about one in three people has a clinically significant hearing loss, and by 75, about 50% of people are affected.

Seniors are by no means a homogeneous group, but certain changes in communication, swallowing, and hearing abilities are associated with normal aging. So even the healthiest of seniors need access to affordable and appropriate care as they age so they are able to have a high quality of life and stay in their homes as long as possible.

However, more significant communication, swallowing, and hearing changes can occur as part of an age-related health problem. With aging comes a higher prevalence of neurological conditions, such as stroke, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and other dementias. Communication difficulties experienced by people with neurological diseases vary depending on the type and duration of the disease and the part of the brain affected. For instance, people who have had a stroke may experience both communication and swallowing difficulties. People with Parkinson's disease may have speech and voice problems.

The relationship between hearing loss and dementia is receiving significant attention. Research suggests that hearing loss is more prevalent in seniors with dementia than in those with normal cognition. Indeed, some studies found that individuals with hearing loss had two to five times increased risk of developing dementia, although we should not assume a causal link at this time.

Furthermore, hearing loss, especially if not managed appropriately, can lead to balance disorders, which increases the risk of falls. The risk of falling is three to four times higher among older people with balance disorders, and falls are the leading cause of injuries in seniors.

Communication, swallowing, and hearing difficulties can be extremely frustrating, frightening, and isolating for the person experiencing the difficulties, as well as for their families, friends, and caregivers. Quality of life and personal relationships can be affected. Social withdrawal, anxiety, and depression can result. Caregiver burden can increase. Indeed, seniors with communication and hearing disorders may experience difficulty participating in many of the social interactions of day-to-day life. Even accessing basic goods and services can be a challenge.

Right now, we have an opportunity to build a better Canada for our seniors, one that includes universal access to appropriate communication health services. We need better training for service providers so they can communicate with seniors in more meaningful ways. Service providers who work in places like Service Canada, hospitals, banks, pharmacies, and law firms need to be prepared to communicate with seniors who may not be able to hear and speak the way I do.

For that reason, we need the new federal accessibility law to be inclusive of Canadians who have communication and hearing difficulties. We need to invest in more publicly funded, community-based health services, including communication groups for people with hearing loss, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and dementia, and also communication skills training for family and caregivers. We need more community-based screening programs for hearing, balance, and swallowing disorders, to ensure that seniors, particularly those living in rural and remote communities, are getting access to appropriate care in a timely manner.

Too often, we hear about publicly funded speech-language pathology and audiology positions being cut. This is deeply concerning since most Canadian seniors cannot afford to pay for private speech-language pathology and audiology services. We need to invest in more research in communication health as it relates to seniors, to ensure that Canadian seniors are provided with the best care.

Audiology and speech-language pathology researchers in Canada make substantial contributions to the evidence base for the care of seniors with communication difficulties and hearing loss. We need to continue to support research focused on communication health in seniors.

In conclusion, I urge this committee to consider these recommendations when developing its report, and to ensure the needs of seniors with communication and hearing difficulties are represented.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I thank all of you for those great introductions. You all kept within the time, and that's wonderful. Thank you.

First off, we're going to go to MP Warawa for six minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I find your topics of expertise diverse and very interesting. I want to thank each of you for trying to improve life for our aging population by offering a better quality of life, and for showing dignity for those who need some help. Thank you for your work.

Many of you have provided recommendations. You may have more recommendations to give. If you would, please forward them to the committee, in short order, in the form of a written brief, so that they can be translated. Very shortly, we'll be working on a report to Parliament, and your recommendations will be considered.

You are diverse in the way you're assisting seniors across the country and in communities. My number one question is how we bring all this expertise in to meet the needs of seniors.

In Canada, the number of seniors is one in six, but in my riding of Langley, it's probably closer to one in five, or maybe one in four and a half. Because of the climate and topography, it's a nice place to retire, so there's a large senior population, just as there is in Richmond, as my colleague to my left here, Alice can attest.

How do we bring all the resources for seniors together so that we can meet the need? The common theme is also that we're not ready and that we need to have a national seniors strategy. As we've heard, the wait times in Grande Prairie are exceptionally long and they are getting longer. I think there's a problem with wait times right across the country, so I don't think it's the blame of any one government. We're not functioning the way we need to. We need to rethink how we provide services to seniors. How do we bring it together so we don't have silos but a real, functioning machine to provide for that need?

I'm going to start off with Ms. Hauptman in Langley.

You had mentioned that there are about 800 people living around Langley Lodge. Those are seniors living by themselves. I think you used two figures, 1,500 and 800. Is aging in place the silver bullet to be able to help seniors?

[Debra Hauptman]

There are 1,500 people over the age of 65 in our vicinity. Of those, 800 live alone. I don't think that aging in place is the silver bullet. I'm quite concerned that we're not thinking about what that will look like when we get there. In long-term care, for example, people are very elderly.

There are a lot of needs that we have to maintain our independence, even when we are healthy and younger and strong. These are simple things, like getting groceries into the home, being able to connect with other people—social connections—being able to get out to get to medical appointments. Those kinds of things become very real challenges, especially for these folks who are quite elderly and living alone.

In the U.K., they have started a program called the Silver Line, which is a helpline for older adults. In their first year, they had over a million calls. It's a 24-hour, 365-day call line. They have about 3,000 volunteers, and I think they said 10,000 calls a week now. They have volunteers who are simply volunteering to befriend isolated seniors.

There is a tendency to think that communal living is not great. I was interested in hearing the witness from P.E.I. talk about how seniors prefer shared spaces. There is a lot of benefit for seniors to share spaces. They can support each other a lot better, and it alleviates some of the social isolation. Some of those seniors may even have family and friends that others don't, and those families are quite willing to reach out, as we've seen in Langley Lodge.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

I have a quick question. I'm running short on time.

You mentioned that there will be 70 more beds needed in long-term care in the Langley area in 2021.

Will those 70 beds be available? Are they under construction or are plans in place?

[Debra Hauptman]

I think they are going to achieve that by upgrading some of the existing older homes. There's no new development and no plans for new builds, just a rebuild of what's there.