Status of Women committee  There are so few resources in this country. It shames us if we look at the comparative jurisdictions in the G20. There is not one place for older adults to call. We've been advocating for a phone line. We already have a national crime prevention phone line that could be used as a

Status of Women committee  We strongly support having either a seniors advocate or a seniors ombudsman at the federal level. We see this in other comparable countries as well. Canada has been lagging behind. We even see our provinces and territories have either a seniors ombudsman or seniors advocate. The

Status of Women committee  Thanks very much. I cannot overemphasize how important it is for us to modernize some of the rules that are holding women back from being able to have financial security across their life course, but more specifically as an older person. When we look at what's top of mind, If I

Status of Women committee  Financial security is one of the most important issues when we're looking at older adults broadly and in particular older women. Currently, 76% of unattached older women live in poverty. When we look at the TFSA, we see it can be a helpful tool. I would offer that in our experie

Status of Women committee  Many people generally do. Many women do. I'm just saying that when people are thinking of top-of-mind financial security, it does tend to get lumped in more generally. I think they can be extremely useful tools, but they're rarely culled out for specific financial planning for ol

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. When we're thinking about financial literacy, we look at a life course approach. We've seen that some tools have been created for women, and I'll point to the tools created by the FCAC for older people. But, taking a life course approach, helping women understand the

Status of Women committee  No, it depends on life stage issues. I think that some of the concerns that we see are really prevalent to family caregiving norms. We have heard time and time again older women say that it just didn't occur to them, because they were too busy raising their kids or they were hop

Status of Women committee  Hunger and nutrition and how that intersects with health is one area that CARP has been looking at. We know that users of food banks are often seen as young families. Not to take away from that real and pressing need, we know that the sharp increase in food bank users tends to be

Status of Women committee  Indeed. Urinary tract infections, bladder infections and kidney diseases are some of the biggest challenges associated with cognitive impairment in older adults. Very often what we see is that people are being diagnosed with dementia when actually they lack proper nutrition and a

Status of Women committee  One of the areas that we've actually identified as a growing area of elder abuse is the area of cultural elder abuse. I am speaking very much to what my colleague was saying. I would also offer that being taken out of your community and brought down south would be a cultural form

Status of Women committee  Elder abuse is an issue of gender. There's no question about it. When we look at the proportion of people who are subject to elder abuse, it's approximately two-thirds women. Similarly, the portrait of an abuser about three-quarters of the time tends to be a man, with the excepti

Status of Women committee  Yes, we do.

Status of Women committee  Without question, they are financial security and abuse prevention.

Status of Women committee  What we know is that older women are under-studied as a cohort, so in many of the studies we bring in demography only in a way of weighing out different aspects, but not the experiences of women themselves. I commend to you the research report, which we support, by the Canadian C

Status of Women committee  Our platform is called "The Faces of Canada's Seniors: Making Canada the best place to age", which you see here, and it has five key pillars: financial security; abuse prevention; caregiving and housing support, and those are together for so many of the reasons that my colleague