BC FORUM News - reprinted from The Tyee

Beware the Solange Denis Effect, Prime Minister

By Tom Sandborn
Reprinted with author’s permission

November 12, 2014 - It is safe to assume that Brian Mulroney still remembers Solange Denis, and probably with some chagrin. The current prime minister should remember her too, particularly the painful lesson she taught his predecessor.

Denis was the fiery 63 year old who confronted the then prime minister on Parliament Hill in 1985, calling him a liar because his health minister, Michael Wilson, had announced government intentions to de-index old age pensions, effectively allowing them to be eroded by inflation. Denis accused the PM of reversing campaign promises not to solve government budget problems by going after pensions.

The Mulroney government eventually caved in to the resulting storm of protest from angry seniors across the country and rescinded the planned de-indexing.

The moral? Canadians over 65, who vote more often than any other age cohort, are a potent force in political affairs, and they can be mobilized to defend their own perceived interests. No federal party that wants to sit on the government side of the House can afford to ignore those interests.

If the 70 mainly white-haired but vocal and vigorous citizens who showed up last month at a West End round table discussion about health care for seniors sponsored by Liberal health critic Hedy Fry are a fair sample of their demographic, health care policy may well be a decisive factor in determining how Canadian elders, previously strong Tory supporters, vote next election.

The panelists and voices from the audience were united in the view that Canada’s current government was not doing enough to develop and implement a health care strategy for seniors robust enough to meet the challenge of the demographic changes that will see the percentage of Canadians over 65 nearly double by 2036.

The 14.4 per cent of us currently over 65 already consume half the nation’s health care expenditures.

The event, held at a senior friendly afternoon timing, featured speakers from the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), the BC Health Coalition, and the BC Centre for Elder Advocacy and Support, who all echoed the CMA’s recent call for a coordinated national strategy to address what has been described as an ongoing crisis in care for seniors.

A recently released CMA paper reads in part:

“The CMA is concerned that Canada is ill-prepared for the demographic shift already underway... According to an Ipsos Reid poll commissioned by the CMA, a majority of respondents (83 per cent) said they were concerned about their health care in their retirement years. This poll found that nine out of 10 Canadians (93 per cent) believe Canada needs a national strategy for seniors health care that integrates home care, hospitals, hospices, and long-term care facilities into the continuum.”

If the CMA and other advocates for seniors are successful in persuading Canadian seniors to view health care strategy as a key issue for the next federal election, it could well have a decisive impact. Canadian voters over 65 gave the Harper team 50 per cent of their votes in 2011, but current polling shows Tory support in that age group has fallen by fifteen points in 2014, according to the website Threehundredeight.com.

According to commentary on the site, if the Harper team cannot again win the elder vote, it will not win the next election. And if the Harper government is successfully portrayed by its opponents as more interested in budget cuts, foreign military adventures and advancing its neoliberal agenda than in developing and funding a full court press on senior care, elders may move their support to other parties.

Whoever wins the next federal election, decisive steps must be taken soon to address the hydra-headed crisis facing Canadian healthcare for clients of all ages, but particularly for those Canadians like this writer who will never see 65 again.

We need to take robust steps to support elders’ ability to remain at home whenever possible. Too many seniors end up in inappropriate and highly expensive acute care beds when better funded home care and expanded public sector long-term care homes could provide better and more economical care.

Dramatic new investments are needed in providing low income seniors with decent and affordable housing and to fund programs that address the social isolation that does so much to exacerbate the sorrows of old age.

The aggressive campaigns being conducted to shift more health care delivery into the demonstrably more dangerous for-profit sector need to be defeated. And many more publicly funded, multi-professional, team-based primary care clinics, which we know shorten wait times for treatment and improve patient outcomes, need to be established across the country.

If the objection is raised that we cannot afford the public expenditures implicit in these proposed reforms, perhaps it is time to reconsider the over-generous tax cuts that have been the Harper team's ongoing gift to corporate and high income Canada.

The money for the urgently needed changes in senior care suggested above would be available if the tax system had not been re-jigged in favour of the rich. Fixing that scandalous set of giveaways and using some of the government revenues returned for public use to improve health care delivery would be a kind of symbolic social healing in itself, and would provide any further funding necessary to renew and repair our health care for seniors.

Canadian politicians regularly promise to do their best to meet the needs of their constituents when they ask for our votes. They all need to remember their promises.

And it wouldn't hurt if they remembered Solange Denis too.