The fall economic statement lands Tuesday and, soon enough, Budget 2024 will be upon us. Both must address a national seniors strategy.
This article was originally published on Nov. 17, 2023, by the Ottawa Citizen.
The fall economic statement will land on Tuesday. There are several items on our association’s agenda that should be addressed, and which should also be on the radar of the federal finance department for inclusion in the 2024 budget.
To start, the National Association of Federal Retirees has been calling for a national seniors strategy for years. In 2017, Liberal MP Marc Serré introduced a motion calling for such a strategy and ordering a parliamentary committee to look info advancing it. That committee heard from 65 stakeholders and was to reconvene in January 2018 to discuss a draft report. It’s now November 2023 and we’re still waiting.
What would be part of a seniors strategy?
Our members are looking for more commitment to older Canadians. We need guarantees that long-term care standards will be mandatory, not voluntary, so that the possibility of inspections and enforcement can lead to real quality improvements and accountability.
Most Canadians want to age in place, making informal caregivers more important than ever. As such, our second recommendation is to support caregivers with training, peer mentoring, financial compensation and opportunities for respite. The federal government currently offers a Canadian caregivers’ credit, but it is non-refundable. We urge the government to make it refundable.
We also ask the government to act on equitable outcomes for veterans. Budget 2023 announced $156.7 million over five years and $14.4 million ongoing to help reduce backlogs and support service delivery, but we have almost no detail on how these funds are being used. Meanwhile, a lack of sound data focused on veterans’ needs could continue to perpetuate harm for some groups, particularly women and francophone veterans, who have been shown to receive systemic unfair treatment.
We are also calling on the government to pass the Pharmacare Act, which was to be passed by the end of 2023, though we learned this week that the NDP refused to support its first draft. Leader Jagmeet Singh still says passing the act by Dec. 31 is possible, but Canadians in need wonder if that’s true.
Meanwhile, 7.5 million Canadians don’t have prescription drug insurance or have insufficient insurance to cover their medication needs, and nearly one in four households can’t afford medications. Many end up either going into debt as a result or skipping meds, leading to poorer health outcomes and pressuring the fragile health-care system.
Further, there is the Phoenix system. It’s bad enough that active public servants continue to be affected, but so do federal retirees. A December 2022 survey of Association members who had retired since 2016 found that 70 per cent had experienced problems, the most common of which were being overpaid, underpaid or having severance not paid out. This is simply unacceptable. Fixing Phoenix must be a higher priority than it has been.
Thanks to budget commitments in 2022 and 2023, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board will have two seats added for employee representatives, but no seat yet exists for a pensioner representative — and retirees have a lot at stake when it comes to their pensions and pension fund. Our association is seeking to rectify this, and adding a seat for a pensioner representative on the investment board seems the simplest solution.
Finally, with record inflation over the past two years, seniors’ purchasing power has eroded and more than two million Canadians are on the guaranteed income supplement (GIS), meaning their annual income is lower than $20,832. A full 49 per cent of senior renters are spending more than they can afford on their housing while being fearful of eviction, which is happening regularly in provinces without safeguards against it. One solution would be for the government to prioritize a strong policy environment for more — not fewer — defined benefit pension plans.
More than 7,000 of our members have added their voices to our campaign for the 2024 federal budget, by telling their elected officials that these are their priorities. I hope other older adults will support our calls for a better way forward for aging in Canada.
It may seem like many asks, but this is a time of great need, especially for older Canadians.
Anthony Pizzino is the CEO of the National Association of Federal Retirees.