Seniors – A Changing British Columbia
Ralph Sultan was appointed Minister of State for Seniors on September 5, 2012. This is what became evident.
On my first day on the job as Minister of State for Seniors I learned three things:
1. I have become appended to Health, a ministry which dwarfs all others, has about 1,000 persons in its Victoria headquarters alone, accounts for about 10% of our provincial GDP, and expends about half of its resources looking after seniors.
2. In not many years, seniors (persons 65 and over) will account for one quarter of our population – a nirvana already achieved here in West Vancouver-Capilano – with profound effects on every nook and cranny of our society.
3. Seniors are vulnerable in a number of different ways:
Financial: It is one thing for persons at the more junior end of the age spectrum to lament the burden of student loans. For them, a lifetime of income beckons. At the other end of the age spectrum, the money one has managed to accumulate is pretty much fixed – and often a dwindling lump sum. When the bank offers 1.5% interest, hardly equal to inflation, and when your RRIF is under water, the glorious retirement vistas painted by mutual fund salesmen 25 years ago are but a hollow memory.
Transportation. At some point, either one’s faculties go or one’s judgement goes, and when they go so does your driver’s licence. No car, no mobility. Public transit is OK, HandyDart better – to a point. But with transportation options declining, so too does one’s circle of friends and activities. Isolation is a killer.
Kids and family. So won’t the family look after our needs as we age? You clearly haven’t talked to recent graduates lately; they are off to Australia, Poland, and Timbuktu – where, as often as not, they will meet somebody and settle down. Lots of luck Dad, see you around.
Housing. At least on the North Shore, many seniors can count on the ultimate asset of home equity. So they painfully dispose of their household effects and memories, sell the house, perhaps pay off that reverse mortgage, downsize, and, when the partner is gone, ultimately wind up in a residential facility – where with luck their capital might last another five years. Then what? Twenty-five years ago, nobody reckoned we would live so long!
So ask for help. Yes, and join the queue with the other one-quarter of the population who, shortly, will be in the same age bracket and facing many of the same issues as you do.
This is the shape of vulnerability.
What to do? I believe the development of caring and sustainable seniors policies will be one of the most significant public policy debates of the decade. There is no lack of ideas, facts, figures – or pie-in-the-sky recommendations. But politicians are inclined to tap dance when the subject is broached. We must start asking – and answering – the tougher questions.
