Hi, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to present in front of you today.
CARP, as many of you may know, is a national not-for-profit, non-partisan organization, with 320,000 members in every province and territory across Canada.
It's also important to distinguish that, while most of our members are retired and enjoy above-average education and income, an overwhelming majority consistently report that CARP represents the interests of all older Canadian across Canada. We believe that all older adults deserve to live in dignity and with respect, regardless of income level, family support or health challenges.
COVID-19 has undermined these fundamental principles of aging well and revealed the lack of planning and preparation that would secure the health and well-being of seniors during a pandemic. CARP has been actively engaged with our membership since the onset of COVID-19 in providing credible and reliable information to older adult populations on our website through programming and via surveys that we conduct to better understand our members' needs and concerns.
We hosted three virtual town hall events, each with a reach of up to 12,500 members, to provide them with a forum to ask their specific questions to trusted experts on matters related to health and finance. These sessions were recorded for television and aired on our media networks across Canada.
We've heard largely from our members, apart from the obvious, that seniors have been negatively impacted by an increase in their cost of living, from grocery premiums and delivery fees and an increase in prescription medication fees to a lack of free or discounted community services, whether that's laundry services, meals at community centres or volunteer tax preparation, all which closed down due to physical distancing restrictions.
In addition, as you know, stock markets have taken a plunge, and many seniors have seen significant declines in their retirement savings. In a survey pre-COVID, the majority of our members had already expressed that they were concerned about outliving their savings in retirement. With the recent economic impacts of COVID-19, these fears have never been more real.
While we understand the government's initial economic response was to quickly address income replacement, several weeks have passed, and there have been no meaningful announcements around addressing the financial concerns of seniors. Retirees, as you know, are ineligible for CERB. While the 25% reduction in the minimum RRIF withdrawal was welcomed, it was not retroactive, and many would rather leave their savings untouched, given current market volatility. Additionally, the $9 million that was earmarked for seniors and provided to the United Way was met with confusion on how to access it. Our own call centres and those of the United Way's 2-1-1 service have been flooded with calls to better understand how that $9 million was to be distributed and accessed.
I'd also like to speak to what my colleague from CALTC was speaking about earlier, which was a more urgent piece around how we care for older adults, particularly in congregate settings like long-term care.
If COVID-19 has revealed anything, it's revealed the following: that we warehouse frail and very ill seniors in unsafe situations, which are underfunded and understaffed, often with little or no certified training, and that we expect individuals and their families to pay a significant part of the privilege to be in those facilities. It is unconscionable that of 4,900 deaths in Canada so far from COVID-19, 82% were from a population whom we are duty bound to protect, and we failed them.
This is not the responsibility of the federal government alone, but it is very much the duty of the federal government to make sure it doesn't happen again. If we've learned anything, it's that we didn't have a real plan in place for seniors in long-term care in this kind of pandemic, despite having advance warning from other countries that have seen previous crises of similar scale, like SARS and MERS, and the experience with seasonal flu, which spreads in these settings and claims seniors' lives annually.
These are our most vulnerable residents. We can and we must do better.
Thank you.