Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the minister for being here today.
I come from a riding, Okanagan—Coquihalla, where we have a large number of seniors, who moved there because it has good weather. We continue to see more and more people in my riding who are retired, thus this has been a real interest of mine.
First I would like to make a comment that I totally agree with your rationale for not including a chronological age, Minister. It's commonly known that we are living to be older and hopefully healthier, but as those health outcomes improve, we can obviously expect the chronological age will eventually have to be changed. This gives a large amount of discretion.
Going back to some of the comments I've heard across the way with regard to the palliative care report, before I was on this committee I was part of the status of women committee, which conducted a very thorough investigation into elder abuse, specifically of women. Mr. Jacob was saying that the consultation was done extremely.... A large number of people came from all across the country to talk about their experience.
One of the key outcomes, Minister, I'm sure you know, was that the government look at introducing changes to the Criminal Code. I would like to thank you and the government for taking action on this, because a tremendous amount of work went into that study, and I'm glad to see that happen.
We heard quite a bit about the new horizons for seniors program, which is a great initiative. I also find that there's often a disconnect between taxpayers back home and all the programs that many of us are privy to and hear about.
In addition to the new horizons initiative, what is our Conservative government doing to assist seniors victimized by abuse? I certainly appreciate your comments that it was a multifaceted approach. You would expect that, but I would love to hear about any other programs we're currently working on.