Evidence of meeting #70 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 hospice.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
Senior Associate, Canadian Urban Institute
Not as it used to exist. Maybe MP Vaughan has more knowledge.
I could add something to your recent question about things like signage. More than 15 years ago the Government of Japan adopted the principles of universal design as a national policy, and they apply these policies, not just to the built environment, but to this philosophy in all their activities. As we know, the private sector works very closely with the government, so they've had some amazing success in promoting the principles of universal design, which deal with things like signage and perceptible information. I just thought I'd mention that.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Bobby Morrissey Liberal Egmont, PE
I'm going to ask a general question because I participated in this committee for a number of meetings, and we've been listening to a lot of the testimony that's been given on the challenges confronting the aging demographic in this country. Today in a local newspaper in my community there was a story about a 90-year-old man still running his dairy farm and two 86-year-olds in their commercial fishing operations.
Do you see an opportunity within the aging demographic going forward? Some of the evidence given was on what the cost impact would be. That would be on one side of this aging demographic. Whichever one of you chooses to answer would be fine. Is there an opportunity, and where?
4:45 p.m.
Senior Associate, Canadian Urban Institute
I believe there is. I wouldn't want to downplay some of the negatives, but I'm working with the City of Toronto on the second version of their seniors strategy, and one of the philosophical standpoints, if you like, of that strategy is that our older population is a tremendous resource. It's contributing to the community economically and socially and is there to be seen as a positive element; it's not an area of society that is just associated with disabilities. I see it as a very positive outlook.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you. Sorry, but you're out of time.
We'll go over to MP Wong, please, for five minutes.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Alice Wong Conservative Richmond Centre, BC
Thank you, Mr. President—not Mr. President. I meant to say “Mr. Chair”.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Alice Wong Conservative Richmond Centre, BC
That's a compliment, right? Depending on which president, right?
I started on a very light note, but my heart is pretty heavy because of some of the challenges mentioned in our study about the need for a national seniors strategy.
I'd like to first of all thank all the witnesses who are here, first via teleconference all the way from Victoria, B.C. and also from Langley, and then, of course, Mr. Miller and Professor Lee. Thank you for taking time from your very busy schedules to come and give us some advice and insights.
Kudos to UBC, which has done a lot of good work supporting seniors. You have the Canadian Centre for Elder Law Studies, which had been working very closely with the former government.
Then, of course, I am a Rotarian. For a good number of years, my club has been raising money. We started the first hospice home in Richmond. I definitely know the challenges. I am still a volunteer for the hospice home.
At the same time, though, of course I applaud Mr. Miller for his quote of the Japanese experience. I've had the privilege of sharing some of their success stories and how they advance in technology and everything to support their seniors.
I'm also interested in the co-housing concept. In Japan, I think they had...I don't know whether you could call it a commune, but a place where they have several seniors with different degrees of dementia living together. Some of them are very capable and some of them are not. They share the same unit, and then they even have a guardian who is very capable, but he is not much younger. That model is happening in Japan.
At the same time, in my community of Richmond, there are non-profit organizations that, despite the very high cost of housing, were able to get the city to support them with a house. There are eight seniors with disabilities of varying severity, with one manager. That is a form of sharing, I believe.
All of these are excellent ideas.
However, I would like to take this opportunity to applaud CARP for mentioning another human side. Whenever you want to talk about looking after seniors at home or having them in isolation in formal institutions, there's one great challenge that we haven't done enough about at this point, and that is about family caregivers.
These caregivers are informal. They don't get any pay. They can be very young mothers who are looking after their sick kids. They can be middle-aged professionals who have to work part time to look after the parents or grandparents. They can be a senior looking after another senior, maybe a spouse. It could be a friend looking after another friend who doesn't have any relatives.
When you look at that whole scenario of the human side of caring, whether we're talking about aging in place or not, I think the CARP suggestion that we should really support the caregivers is a very important issue right now in my heart. I was able to listen to how the U.K. has been very supportive of the caregiver.
I would like to ask whoever is interested in commenting on this issue about caring for the caregivers. I would start with Susan.
You do see some of the caregivers in your hospice, right? Can you suggest how we could support these caregivers as well?
4:50 p.m.
Client Volunteer, Langley Hospice Society
Supporting caregivers is.... Recognizing that you have seniors who are dying in their home environment, the health support system in some way needs to know that's going on and get more support in there for the caregiver, but it's still a challenge. Even if you have somebody coming in for a couple of hours every day or three times a week, that person is still there 24-7 with the person who needs a lot of attention and care.
I just wish everybody who is in that situation could go into a hospice environment where they have their own living space. They can stay overnight and they can literally live there for as long as that process takes. All that burden and onus is taken off the person who's trying to look after their loved one, and they can spend that quality time with them, not worrying about, “Did you take your medicine? Are you feeling okay?” Just having that time together and that quality of life at the end is so important, and you can't really do that when you're under all that stress.
As I pointed out earlier, I was young when I went through this. I was only 56 years old, and with some of our elderly people who come into the hospice, you can see the look on these poor people's faces. They're so relieved to get their husband or wife in there, because they're almost broken and dying themselves because of everything they're going through.
I don't know how we can stress that more. We just need more care for the caregivers. The person who's sick is going to benefit immensely from it too, because there's a lot of guilt involved with a lot of these people. They'll say, “Oh, I didn't want to bother my wife, so I didn't....” You know how that is.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you.
Mr. Miller, I'm going to come back to you again.
You talked about some of the concerns you had around the suburbs and the realities for seniors there. I represent really rural and remote communities, and I just have to say that one of the challenges for the seniors I represent is they often feel pushed out of those communities because they want to have people closer to the services. What they don't have is the social network that they had in their own communities. After 40 years of living in a community, if anybody gets sick, people are dropping by to give them food, making sure they look after them, giving them a break, and doing all of that great work.
I'm wondering if you could explain more about the barriers associated with an age-friendly community in the more remote communities, and if you have any ideas for solutions.
4:55 p.m.
Senior Associate, Canadian Urban Institute
My focus has been on the urban areas, and I know, to extrapolate some of the more suburban situations.... We know, for example, in the suburban areas around Toronto, which are very car-dependent, the Minister of Transportation projects that 42% of people who are currently in their fifties will not have driving licences 20 years from now. The same kind of problem is going to be faced in rural areas, and it is truly a problem.
The only thing I can suggest is that people like to age in places that are familiar to them. If you're talking about a rural situation where people aren't physically proximate, the only thing that can substitute for the kind of social network you referred to is to have places created that are in a village or somewhere in the general geographic area.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Okay. Thank you so much.
When I hear age-friendly communities, I hear public health, social services, and local government, so where do you think the federal government sits in this? How do they lend a hand without stepping on other jurisdictions' toes?
4:55 p.m.
Senior Associate, Canadian Urban Institute
I think the federal government has done an enormous amount and has focused a lot of resources on the health side. I think it's important, where I'm coming from—and I've talked about this with physicians as well—not to be trapped into thinking that old age is a disease. People are getting older, and it's part of the natural process, and the more we can do to normalize that process by making it possible for people to live an active life in areas they're familiar with, the better.
I come back to the CMHC, which did some great work back in the early 2000's. Unfortunately, that was stalled, but there's no reason it couldn't be picked up as an opportunity for the Public Health Agency of Canada, which has a national mandate. I talked about it at one of the committees dealing with that. What I hear a lot is a huge focus on small and rural communities. I think that CMHC and the Public Health Agency together could really make an impact, as I said earlier, by focusing on the public and the development community to help them realize that there's a huge opportunity as well as a growing need.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you very much.
That brings us to the end of two complete rounds of questions. What we've been doing throughout this study is giving folks an opportunity to ask a final question. We have plenty of time today, so we could do one of two things. We can continue with that strategy, or we could do a whole other standard round.
I'm looking to the committee for some guidance. Are we good with one more question each?
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
We'll start a whole new round of questioning.
It would go Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Liberal. Would we be fine with that?
5 p.m.
Conservative
Steven Blaney Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
We have two folks who haven't talked yet.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
I'm looking to the Conservatives, then.
Karen, the next six minutes are yours. Go ahead.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you very much. I will share my time with Alice. She does have some more questions.
Mr. Lee, I want to start with you.
We're looking at projections of the growth for our senior population and we know that in the next 30 years it will grow by 51.3% at a low average rate. Prior to being in this role, I also worked for a member of Parliament and I remember calling the provinces, saying “We have a problem: people can't get into beds when they're at the nursing homes.” I was told that the projection was for the future, which now is just absolutely not there.
Can you advise us on what our current deficit is if we're looking for...? How outnumbered are we already when it comes to our population versus the beds that we need for health care, the beds that we need for hospice care, and what we need for seniors' homes?
Do you have some of that data with you?
5 p.m.
Associate Professor, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, As an Individual
I don't have the exact data. I've got some fragments I can quote to you. I've got it packaged, obviously—
5 p.m.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Everything that's in that brain of yours, just share whatever you have.
5 p.m.
Associate Professor, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, As an Individual
Let me do it this way.
First off, even though I did come up with sort of apocalyptic numbers, it's because they're there. It's real. In 20 years, 25% of the totality of Canada is going to be over 65. That's a reality. That's not a theory; that is hard data. It's the same for the U.S., as it is for Europe. We have to confront that. I don't want to leave the idea, though, that old age is an illness. I think you said it very nicely: not every elderly person is sick.
