Status of Women Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2011

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I want to ask one more question. I hope you can answer this. You mentioned that after the National Seniors Council, which was created in 2007, did their study, they came out with a report, and you indicated that the first step was to raise awareness. What do you think the second step is?

[Jacques Paquette]

Oh, I think there are many elements that were put in place. The awareness is not only the first step but is also something we'll have to keep doing, because we're not finished with that at this stage.

The second thing is that it was important to start developing tools for front-line service providers. We have been working on this, and we have to keep working on it, because in some cases the needs are quite specialized, in a way. We need to ensure that people can identify the signs and know what to do. That's another thing that we will keep working on.

I should say that the third thing is that it's very important for us to continue to work very closely with the provinces because, in fact, the provinces are very much responsible for many of the tools on the ground. It is a coordination of all levels of government that will allow us to achieve the results we want to achieve.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'm going to try to get in one last question. You mentioned an element in the Speech from the Throne about making a commitment to address seniors abuse through legislation. Given the fact that your statistics indicate that elder abuse is going to continue to rise, based on our aging population, do you believe that we need to really take a look at this and address it more carefully through legislation?

[Jacques Paquette]

I think the government commitment is pretty clear. I would say that what you have here is a way to use all the tools available to address that issue, and this is one among others. If you ask me, this one alone won't make the difference, and another one alone might not make the difference. It's the combination of all these elements that will make a difference in the longer term.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have time? Can I squeeze in one more?

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

No, we're done. Thank you very much.

Now we'll move to Ms. Sgro.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thanks to you both for the good work you do on behalf of all Canadians.

There's an issue we're trying to deal with here when we talk about elder abuse in Canada. From the work you've done and from your initiatives, I'm sure you've learned a lot of statistics about just how prevalent the abuse is, over and above the financial abuse. What else have you learned through this process? Also, are you planning to disseminate that information to other organizations that are working on this, the front-line workers? We've heard from many of the organizations that are struggling to deal with this issue. Are you going to be sharing that information with them as well?

[Jacques Paquette]

Yes. I would say that one of our main objectives--and I think it's also the objective of all of our partners--is to ensure that we can share all of the information we have.

As you said, first of all, it's difficult to get the information, but we are learning, not only from the research that is being done, but also from the service providers. Some of the tools that have been developed are very useful. We have done this in the past, but we are going to put even more emphasis on ensuring that the new projects that are being developed, even if they are specialized in some cases, can be replicated in other places in Canada. This is something we are working on at the moment, as we speak.

We also notice that when you start pushing the issue, you realize that many challenges arise. I was referring to the power of attorney, for example, where what the ministry has realized is that there can be two angles to that tool. It's a very useful tool, but at the same time we have to make sure it's not being used to support financial elder abuse.

Sometimes it's easier, as you can imagine, to identify the problem than to find a solution. This is why it is so important to have not only all levels of government but also all partners trying to find some of the appropriate solutions.

For data, for any information that we have, there are a few surveys that have been done, and what we know from these numbers is that it's sometimes difficult to compare one with another, because definitions are different and so on. That's part of the issue that we absolutely want to solve, because with the little information we have, we want to make sure that it will be useful to help us target the right person at the right place.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Ms. Healey?

[Ellen Healey]

On your first question about dissemination, we already are disseminating, but we do it passively through our agreements. In most of the project descriptions and for the work done in them, since the proponents are very proud when they reach the point that they have a pamphlet or fact sheet or video, they have a dissemination plan. Most projects are working very actively; we close most of them in March.

I would also add that we met with our agreement holders in January 2011. We were quite pleased at how many accepted our invitation. We had a day, and I think that if I had my time back, I would have made it a day and a half. The energy in the room to exchange information about what they had done in itself created a network. What we could see happening that day was that people were saying, “I'll call you”, and they were taking home materials. Hopefully one of the things we've learned is that we may be able to reduce the amount of overlap and duplication, because people are coming up the curve.

The second thing we learned that day was that there is an immense desire to start working on community response initiatives, whereby they start to work outside the silos a little, because they can't do it all on their own. It's fine to have a pamphlet, but if you have to go to another service provider to work on a solution or response, you have to figure out the dynamic to come together.

That's one of the things we're hoping to do in our next call for proposals: to see whether community groups and larger-scale projects can start to push the envelope a little bit on those types of protocols and see how you bring those pieces together to form a holistic, seamless solution.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

When we're talking about the financial abuse issue, whether it's through abuse of the power of attorney or just abuse of a bank account, how do you get into nursing homes and retirement homes with this kind of information? It's a very delicate thing.

I suspect that there's probably a huge amount of what we would term financial abuse going on, yet you can't.... One of the witnesses we had the other day was suggesting that there was a particular clause in Bill C-13 involving the banks that they had some concerns about. You don't want to take away the independence of an individual, and usually it's family involved. I think we're caught, in some ways, in trying to help and trying to protect them from themselves. Sometimes they don't want to be protected and helped either, yet we call it...and it is financial abuse in many ways. It's very difficult to help everybody.

[Jacques Paquette]

I cannot agree more. This is part of the issue. The reason it's so difficult is that very often it's a relative, a member of the family, who is involved, and very often that's why it's important to break the isolation. You have people who are really isolated and depending on the one person and so on, who are, by definition, vulnerable. I would say that the key player in this—and I was referring to the FPT forum—is that the provincial ministers also are asking exactly the same question and trying to see what the solution should be and what tools they have. It will work only if all of us, with the different tools at our disposal, use a concerted approach to see how we can approach it.

On our side at the federal level, we are concentrating on awareness at the national level and also on developing tools for the service providers, while the provinces are dealing with a lot of front-line issues. It's a combination of these efforts that will make a difference. But as you said, it's a very complicated and difficult problem. It's not easy to solve.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

That brings us exactly to seven minutes. Thank you very much, Ms. Sgro.

Now we'll move for five minutes to Mr. Holder.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Paquette, you scared me deeply when you gave a statistic in which you said that by 2036 one in 13 Canadians will be 80 years of age or over. I did the math and I will be one of those. That makes me somewhat concerned, so I take this subject quite seriously, I might tell you.

One of the things you said as well in your opening remarks, or close to them, was that between 4% and 10% of older adults experience some form of abuse, and it's estimated that one in five incidents of abuse is reported. We've had variations of that, but not too far off that, from previous guests who have testified.

What I'm trying to understand is how we go from real numbers, which presumably come when charges are laid or through various reports within the system in place currently, to this obviously much more significant challenge whereby we go basically to one out of five being reported. How do we know that?

[Jacques Paquette]

Do you mean how do we know that it is under-reported...?

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

How do we know that four out of five incidents aren't reported? I ask that honestly because I'm trying to get my head around it.

[Jacques Paquette]

Right. I think that when you talk to service providers, for example, and some of the people who are on the front lines, that's an estimation; it cannot be more than that. Very often, they may have encountered some situation in which the person is not willing to talk about it, but you can guess that there's something.

That's part of it. I don't know how much this was discussed in the meeting in January when you had everybody together. But it is only an assumption. The situation could be worse and that's probably what the issue--

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Well, you see, that would be point. It could be worse than that or it may not be.

When we as a government and prior governments before us have dedicated moneys to increase awareness and provide education and the like to deal with what is a very real issue, is that as good as it's going to get? A kind of “best guess” scenario...? I don't know how you can get it any more finely tuned, but when you say that one out of five is reported, that means 80% aren't. That's significant. If it's more than that...oh my goodness, that's really bad.

I'm asking the question as to how you substantiate that, especially when the governments of the day, at whatever level—federal, provincial, or municipal, for that matter--and in their various roles provide support. How do we know how real that number is? I don't denigrate anybody who suffers from any kind of abuse at all, but how do you substantiate it?

[Ellen Healey]

Initially, it would be anecdotal. I've heard someone say to me that a bad family member is better than no family member, which leads me to my previous comment about community response models.

To try to bring the rate down, you have to first of all empower seniors to actually act, when they're able to act, with confidence and courage. But you also need that community response to come in behind them. In the form of a community involvement model, one would hope—and that could be the hypothesis—that you would see the reporting rate go up, and then down because the solutions are coming in behind.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Isn't there an irony to this, too? The more education we provide and the more accepting we are that it's okay to report on abuse, the more the statistics will go up, which makes it look as though abuse is increasing, when in fact we don't know that. What we want to do is create an environment—and this is one thing I've seen in the collaborative efforts of the federal government with provinces—to increase education and to make it not only acceptable but more compelling to report.

Aren't we in a bit of a catch-22? We could probably anticipate that the numbers are going to get significantly higher as people are more comfortable with reporting various types of abuse. Do you have a thought on that?

[Jacques Paquette]

Yes. I would say two things.

The first is that awareness can have two impacts. One is that people will be ready to report because now they will recognize it. In fact, what the campaign really did was put a name on it. Before, people didn't necessarily think in terms of abuse. Now—according to the campaign, it's pretty clear—everybody knows about it. Nobody can say “I didn't know that” or “it doesn't exist” or whatever. So on the one side, there might be additional reporting.

On the other side, when you start putting names on things, it is possible that people will realize that some of the things they were doing were not right. They might stop doing them. What we hope when we have these campaigns is to achieve both: that on the one side, people will talk about this, and on the other side, people will stop doing what they were doing.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

We're basically holding it out there so that people can see that it's there and then respond.

[Jacques Paquette]

Exactly.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

We're over our time.

Thank you very much, Mr. Holder.

Merci, monsieur Paquette.

We will now move to Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate the information and also the effort you have gone to.

I have a question. On Tuesday we heard from Judith Wahl. She's the executive director of the Advocacy Centre for the Elderly. Madam Wahl told us that the ad hoc nature of new horizons grants meant that organizations were busy putting together proposals and were so busy doing short-term proposals that the real work wasn't being done.

I'm wondering, why not give some core funding? One of the things we've heard over and over in this committee—I've been here for almost six years—is that the ad hoc nature of funding undermines what organizations can do on the ground and that there has to be core funding. It seems to me that this would apply to elder abuse as well.

Could you comment and tell us why there is no core funding? Why is there nothing substantive so that something real can happen?