Proceedings of the Special Senate Committee on Aging
Issue 9 - Evidence, May 13, 2008 - Afternoon meeting
MONCTON, NEW BRUNSWICK, Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The Special Senate Committee on Aging met this day at 1:06 p.m. to examine and report upon the implications of an aging society in Canada.
Senator Sharon Carstairs (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Welcome back to our traveling committee on aging to examine and report on the implications of an aging society in Canada. This afternoon we are very lucky to have two representatives from the Prince Edward Island Seniors' Secretariat, Acting Director Faye Martin and Co-chair Anna Duffy. I understand that the minister may be announcing something rather special about palliative care this afternoon. That is exciting.
Faye Martin, Acting Director, Prince Edward Island Seniors' Secretariat: Good afternoon everyone. It is a great pleasure to be here. We had a lovely drive over from P.E.I. this morning across the bridge. Anna Duffy and I will talk to you a bit about what we are doing in P.E.I. and we will be pleased to answer any questions that you might have for us.
I bring greetings from Doug Currie, Minister of Social Services and Seniors, who regrets that he cannot be here today. As we speak, he is announcing, along with our premier a new pilot project for the provision of drugs for palliative care in the home, which is new for P.E.I. We are very pleased about that so I am sure you will forgive him for being there and not here. However, he has read your report, is terribly impressed with it, and has asked me to bring along those comments to you.
We are in the very early stages of the evolution of our Seniors Secretariat. Up until 2005, our social services and seniors function was a part of the larger Department of Health and Social Services. At that time, the departments were divided and we were given our own infrastructure with our own deputies et cetera. I am sure you can appreciate a senior's file when you are in a department of health and social services. It is like sleeping with an elephant and every time it rolls over, you fall out of bed, so we have a lot of catching up to do. The Seniors Secretariat, which is a little bit of a misnomer, was created very shortly after the creation of the Department of Social Services and Seniors. The secretariat supports the work of an 11-member board co-chaired by Anna Duffy and Minister Doug Currie. It is comprised of deputy ministers from the Departments of Economic Development, Health, Communities, Cultural Affairs and Labour, the Population Secretariat and the Executive Council. The remainder of the board is made up of representatives from the senior's community at large.
At the moment, we are re-examining that structure. The mandate of the structure is found in the three primary areas of public education and awareness, communication and the exchange of information with the seniors' community acting as a gateway to government programs and services and influencing policy development in government. We have found that the present structure is not as effective as we would like it to be and we are presently looking at decommissioning the secretariat as it is and recommissioning it into another format. We are in the development stages of those changes. We are very impressed with the situation in Nova Scotia and we see that as the best practice around a seniors' function within government.
We consider the second interim report to be a very impressive document that addresses all the points that we would love to see addressed for our senior population. We have a way to go in P.E.I. but we have some best practices concerning Chapter 2 ``Active Aging and Ageism.'' I believe you have heard from our folks from the Seniors College of P.E.I. We are quite proud of that program and the secretariat continues to support it. In fact, this year we were able to offer increased support to the Seniors College.
The lifelong learning piece is important. The other side of that is that our senior population has very significant literacy issues. So, while on one hand we are able to offer a seniors' college model to a segment of our population, we are aware that many of our seniors are disenfranchised because of their literacy levels. These seniors are unable to partake in educational and learning opportunities and have difficulty reading their prescriptions. This committee is aware of all of the adverse impacts of not being able to read well.
In terms of social isolation, again my mind always goes back to literacy and how isolating it must be for folks who cannot even enjoy a good book. In the area of social isolation we have a challenge in P.E.I. in that we do not have a public transportation system except in the Charlottetown area and even it is limited. That is a challenge for us.
In terms of older workers' retirement and income security, we have some interesting initiatives underway. These initiatives are just starting in P.E.I. out of necessity more than anything else. Our workforce is migrating to Alberta. Our population is not shrinking. We have been making up for out-migration through in-migration but our population is aging. We have the third largest percentage of senior population in the country, very close to being the second. We hope to attract some of our workers back into the workforce and there are initiatives underway in that regard. Clearly, issues around taxation of income and OAS and GIS are of interest to us, or tax thresholds and I know there have been some advances made in that regard.
Concerning ``Healthy Aging'' Chapter 4, a huge area of concern for us in is our formulary and our drug program. Our hopes of a national drug strategy with federal-provincial-territorial, FTP, partnerships are fast fading. Minister Currie and Minister Clement will co-chair the FPT Geneva Health Forum next week. Minister Currie is going to speak with them about the national pharmaceutical strategy and where it is not going.
We have a lot of ground to make up in P.E.I. We are way below the national average on expenditures for drugs for our citizens so we are rapidly working on that issue. I am the acting director of the pharmacy program so I am painfully aware of the work that we have to do. It would be helpful to have our federal partners at the table with us on that issue.
We are re-working some of our dental programs to be more accessible to seniors. My dental consultant reminds me frequently that this is the first generation of seniors that will be entering their senior years predominantly with their own teeth so that comes with challenges. It is great, but not if you do not have a dental plan or do not have access to good dental care it can be a problem.
Concerning abuse and neglect, unfortunately we are no different in P.E.I. We may be the ``gentle province,'' but we do have issues concerning the abuse of our senior citizens. We do a great amount of work around this issue. We have spent the last year doing panels out in our communities on financial elder abuse which have gone really well. P.E.I., as I am sure many of you are aware, is unique in that we can really reach the grassroots if we put effort into it. It is interesting to go out to small communities with a panel of three or four. We take the adult protection officer, a public trustee, a fraud specialist from the RCMP, and usually a local bank officer and we go out and we speak to small communities. We hear very interesting comments from the seniors. This year, for World Elder Abuse Awareness Day we are using the panel format to go out with caregiver stress as our topic.
Housing is a huge issue for us as it is everywhere in the country. In my capacity as director of housing, tomorrow morning, I meet with the minister to brief him on a newly developed strategy around our housing issues. Seniors housing is right up on the top of the list. The ways of the past are not working any more with respect to housing for seniors as you very appropriately address in your document. We are challenged with the creativity that we need to do the right thing. Throwing money at a situation is not always the best answer although we could use some financial resources, too
Our federal-provincial affordable housing agreements are expiring and we do not have intentions scheduled to re- sign them, which leaves us in a precarious position in that we rely on those affordable housing agreements with the federal government and our work through CMHC for some of our funding. Our FPT relationships concerning housing are a bit sensitive right now.
About 14 months ago, we reintroduced a program called the Seniors Emergency Home Repair Program, which has been hugely successful. The program is for seniors who are still in their own homes and enables them to renovate their homes to be more energy efficient. The goal of the program is to enable such seniors to stay in their homes longer and more comfortably. The program was a huge success this past winter. We are looking at revising that program so that maybe we can put some more money into it and expand the criteria a little bit.
Concerning Chapter 6 and regional distribution for health care costs, I like all of the ideas. Certainly, on the equalization formula, the comprehensive fiscal needs component is very attractive to us.
On the health transfer, both the needs and the costs pressures formula would be of interest to us and the social transfer, the supplementary, to allow for uneven aging. Without bringing along a very knowledgeable economist to go into the details, the options addressed in those areas would be of great interest to us. I think the reasons why would be evident and obvious to the committee.
We sort of hate to say this but we are a have-not province. We have so much in P.E.I. but we face the challenge to look down the road to see how we are going to keep with the economy and advance it further. Our primary industries are changing. We are challenged with moving toward more value-added ways of developing our economy and unless we are able to do that, we will not have the tax base to afford what we need to keep what we have and to advance it. Our health care system alone is a very scary business. We have challenges
Anna Duffy, Co-Chair, Prince Edward Island Seniors' Secretariat: Our workforce is diminishing while our senior population is increasing.
I would like to commend the committee on its recommendations for credits for volunteerism. We have the highest per capita rate of volunteerism in Canada. Our volunteers depend on infrastructure assistance. Through the New Horizons for Seniors Program, we have been able to access funding for seniors clubs, organizations and non-profit organizations. The tax credit for volunteerism is an attractive recommendation and ensures the multi-year funding for volunteer activities. I think they apply to many people on Prince Edward Island.
The Chair: Ms. Duffy, let me begin with that specific issue because we have had some criticism concerning that recommendation.
The criticism comes, not because they do not want to get more money into the hands of volunteers. They think that aspect is a good one; however, they say that the tax credit system benefits only those people who pay taxes. They point out that lower income volunteers who do not pay tax would not benefit from the tax credit.
They have charged us with finding something that would reach the volunteers but not in terms of paid tax credit, per se. We have heard a variety of suggestions. One for example is to provide bus passes or, in areas without bus transportation, a grant equivalent to the bus tax to all people over the age of 65 years. The suggestion is that those people, who own their own cars, are upwardly mobile and have average or above average incomes and would probably not apply for the free bus pass. However, the people without automobiles, or thinking about giving up their cars, would access the free bus pass option.
Another suggestion is to provide volunteer organizations with some kind of pocket of money, which they could use for their volunteers to pay for transportation, gas, meals et cetera.
I would like your comments about that because I must say, we like the idea of a tax credit for volunteers. That is why we put it in the interim report, but then we started on the road we began to get all this criticism of how inequitable it would be for some seniors.
Ms. Duffy: I was just wondering how the free bus pass system operates. Does that mean that seniors would not pay bus fare? Who would fit the bill? Would the government or some other institution pay? In Charlottetown if the seniors were not using the bus system, the bus system could not exist. Students and seniors keep the system working so there would have to be some type of compensation for the transportation system. It would have to receive compensation in some form or it would fail.
The Chair: We have not drawn up the details, but I think most of us envisage that the federal government would in fact grant funds to the community in terms of the number of seniors who applied for a bus pass.
Ms. Duffy: It certainly would be helpful and it would help in the isolation of seniors because many seniors within the Charlottetown area like to go to their clubs to play cards, et cetera. There are times that these seniors cannot enjoy these forms of entertainment and socialization. Such a program would certainly help the volunteers and people who want to get out and improve their social life; there is no question about that.
The Chair: Do you have any concerns that the tax credit would not be fair to low-income seniors?
Ms. Duffy: I had not even thought of that aspect of it. I really had not.
Ms. Martin: I am wondering if this is probably not a one-size-fits-all solution. We have a volunteer-related program for students who are about to go on to post-secondary education. The community development boards run the program. The students volunteer in communities during the summer and they get credits toward their tuition at a post- secondary institution. There is an infrastructure in place to monitor the registration of volunteers and somehow compensate them. I think if there were a number of alternatives to compensate senior volunteers that there would be a way that we could administer that type of program, which is already in place.
We had a meeting of the Seniors' Secretariat the other day and we were talking about volunteerism. One of the representatives pointed out that the baby boomers want something in return for volunteer hours, so, we might have to get serious about this issue sooner rather than later.
Ms. Duffy: It may not exist among the seniors right now but it is coming.
Ms. Martin: Yes, it is coming. I think that with the help of some creativity we could find a number of different ways to handle this situation. Most of our senior population is in the Charlottetown area. Most of us have our own vehicles or access to them and many seniors will ask others to drive them in a private car, however they do not like to ask if they cannot compensate the driver or car owner. Of course, with the price of gas going the way it is, it is even more critical.
Ms. Duffy: I know we do not have a public transportation system except in Charlottetown so it might benefit the people in that area but in the rural areas and in the other communities, it really would not have any effect.
Senator Cordy: These are all such interesting issues.
Senator Cools and I were talking earlier and saying before we started we thought this is sort of going to narrow it down but we have been hearing so many interesting things that we will now have to write an encyclopedia, I think. It has really been fascinating for us to leave Ottawa and to come to come to the Atlantic region. It is special for me as I come from Nova Scotia.
I am interested in your comments, Ms. Martin, about the Seniors' Secretariat and that you are looking at public education and communication and influencing policy development. As you mentioned earlier, you are from a smaller province so in some ways, getting information out is not as challenging as it is from the national perspective when we are trying to get information across the country.
Have you found effective communication tools, because we hear about seniors who are not aware of programs, such as Canada Pension Plan as an example?
Senator Callbeck has done a lot of work in this particular area. Many seniors are not getting CPP, to which they are entitled. We have heard of seniors who do not know that after the death of their spouse that they are eligible to their spouse's pension.
Has your secretariat found effective ways of communicating and getting through to seniors all over P.E.I.?
Ms. Martin: Well we are so early on that just about everything we do is effective.
Senator Cordy: That is a positive thing, is it not?
Ms. Martin: We are at that stage in our evolution where we can do no wrong. That is kind of glib but one of the things that we have done that has proven to be hugely successful is produce this compendium of all the seniors' programs and services available in the province including community services, government services and lifelong learning opportunities. We cannot keep that guide on the shelves. We are in the second reprint and if you bear in mind that our population is 136,000, the first 4,000 copies were gone in a matter of three or four weeks and we just published it this winter. We are in the second reprint. I get calls at my office every day for copies to go to Access P.E.I. sites, libraries and community centers. A network of seniors from our P.E.I. Senior Citizens Federation distributes them. We get calls from family members who live out of province who want copies sent to them so they can help their parents in P.E.I. That has been very effective. However, I keep going back to the issues around senior literacy and making the information we send to them meaningful. That has been particularly effective. We find the community panels a good way to communicate on specific matters and very often it is not the first time we go that we have success. It is when we are invited back maybe the second or the third time that the word has spread and they will come back and listen. I will give the example of the issues surrounding financial elder abuse, which is a sensitive subject.
Ms. Duffy: Voice for Island Seniors is a monthly publication distributed through The Guardian. We have had some trouble with the editorial board, but Faye is a great mediator and I think it is being resolved. It certainly has improved in the last few issues. We were able to include articles pertaining to health issues and senior abuse.
Senator Mercer: ``It covers Prince Edward Island like the dew.''
Ms. Duffy: That is right. An insert is circulated with The Guardian.
Ms. Martin: We have had a little tussle with the editorial board around the content. The present editorial board is more —
Ms. Duffy: A folksy group. They like folklore stories.
Ms. Martin: They like recipes and stories but other seniors want something more substantive. This winter we had a terrible ice storm where some homes were without power for four or five days and it was on the verge of being categorized as an emergency. After that storm, we included an essay on emergency preparedness, for which we received a lot of feedback.
These are significant matters for seniors. You know the ones who do read well read the newspaper and read those supplements and they are a very useful way to get the news out.
Ms. Duffy: I think we have struck a balance between folksy stories and the recipes and the information articles.
Ms. Martin: The folksy and the serious, yes.
Senator Cordy: You touched on a few issues concerning isolation and certainly, those seniors who subscribe to the newspaper will get the information. You also touched on the whole issue of literacy. Those who are unable to read these brochures or this information whether it is on television or whether it is a brochure or your guide, they are certainly at a disadvantage. Are you putting measures in place? A year and a half ago there were tremendous cuts made to literacy programs across the country and I am just wondering whether you are picking up the slack in literacy.
Ms. Duffy: Our peer program funded through the New Horizons for Seniors Program was piloted first in the Charlottetown area where we have retired counsellors and a social worker who is retired also, who train seniors to work with other seniors and that has been very successful. It has also been implemented in Prince County and now there is money available for Kings County so we are hoping that that may alleviate some of the isolation and help seniors who have low literacy levels that they may be able to become more involved in the community and that type of thing.
Ms. Martin: In a former life, I worked with the Department of Education and the Literacy Initiative Secretariat around adult education and the issue of adults with low literacy skills, regardless of their age. Getting them out or getting to them is a huge challenge, no matter where you are because these folks are the least likely to self-identify as having problems.
I do not have an answer to your question in terms of what we are doing to address the issues with seniors other than what Anna has mentioned. I think we are still at a point where we need to raise awareness amongst our population around the issues because the seniors that we tend to interact with most of the time are highly literate. They are not the ones that I am talking about. It is the same with the general population. It is a challenge to get to those folks and certainly, in our literacy programming through the Literacy Initiative Secretariat and the National Literacy Secretariat funding, we have targeted some programs for seniors as well as the rest of the population. However, we do not have the answer to that question other than to keep at it and work at raising the awareness around the spectrum of problems that begin with literacy issues.
Senator Cordy: As a former teacher and in the community involvement work that I have done my experience is that people often mask the fact that they cannot read.
Ms. Martin: Oh, no question, absolutely.
Ms. Duffy: Oh yes, very much.
Senator Cordy: You were not even aware of it.
Ms. Martin: Yes, they are very skilled at hiding their illiteracy.
Senator Cordy: We have heard about abuse and neglect from a number of concerned groups. There are different types of abuse. There is the neglect. There is physical abuse and financial abuse.
When you are in a population of seniors, they are often embarrassed to let anybody know their concerns. They are afraid that if they are living with a family member that they will be taken out of the home or their family will stop visiting them. Often in a small province where everybody knows one another or they are related to one another there are few secrets.
Ms. Martin: We have our secrets too.
Senator Mercer: Not many.
Ms. Martin: They are well kept.
Senator Cordy: It is also even more challenging because you are afraid that if you tell a social worker or your doctor that everybody in your community is going to know about your problem.
How do you work within those confines that are part of human nature, to ensure that our seniors are not open to abuse? You spoke about going into a community so that they know what programs are available to them.
Ms. Martin: What we are learning from going into the communities is that some people are willing to discuss these problems. When one or two people come forward it seems that many others will follow with their stories and concerns. This type of abuse happens a lot. It happens at the hands of family, friends and neighbours and it is not just that type of financial abuse, but includes fraud and telephone fraud abuse.
Seniors are home alone and they are vulnerable. They are lonely. Some of them will talk on the phone, as you know, and give away. They are trusting. In P.E.I., and I am sure it is the same other places, we are mannerly. Hanging up the phone in somebody's ear is not an option.
The expert's advice is that we have to handle these issues with discretion and quietly do something about it. We have to let the seniors know that shame has nothing to do with the problem, that the people who should be ashamed are the people who are doing it to them, and that this type of fraud happens everywhere. Over time that will have an effect. It is really quite amazing how family violence and I see this certainly when it is at the hands of a family member. Whether it is financial abuse or mental abuse it is on the spectrum, on the continuum of family violence and we treat it that way.
Senator Cordy: My last question has to do with federal-provincial affordable housing agreements. When are they set to expire?
Ms. Martin: They are starting now. One of the ones that you mention in your document is the RRAP program and that is expiring.
Senator Cordy: How will that affect you?
Ms. Martin: That was a very popular program. In fact, it was so popular I think the waiting list was about seven years. It is an emergency program, which kind of flies in the face of a seven year wait. It is a very popular renovation program that helps people to stay in their homes. It is just one example of the agreements that are expiring. We have not received an indication of whether this and other programs will be replaced.
Senator Cordy: Are there any discussions taking place?
Ms. Martin: The discussions are about getting everybody to the table. They are not about what we will discuss when we get there.
Senator Cordy: Is that coming from the feds or the provinces?
Ms. Martin: The provinces have been meeting as a PT forum for three and a half years without the federal government and April 1, the ministers from all the jurisdictions met with Minister Solberg to try to reconstitute the FPT forum and it is has not happened yet.
Ms. Duffy: Another concern we had with housing is with the income level. It is up to $30,000. Beyond that, seniors do not get assistance and what we are seeing is that $30,000 is too low. A couple living on $30,000 a year cannot afford to do many renovations to their home. We are hoping that the amount might be raised or the 50 per cent that the person pays would be lowered to make it easier for the senior to do renovations.
Senator Mercer: You mentioned the Seniors Emergency Home Repair Program and then we were talking about the disappearance of the RRAP. Are they complimentary programs?
Ms. Martin: They are separate programs, as one is provincial and the other federal.
Ms. Duffy: The Seniors Emergency Home Repair Program is provincial and provides up to $1,500. We hope that the amount will be raised.
Senator Mercer: Ms. Martin, other than my good friend, Premier Ghiz, you must be the busiest woman on Prince Edward Island because if I have heard you correctly, you are the acting director of housing, the acting director of the drugs and the acting director of the Seniors' Secretariat.
Ms. Martin: Yes, and the dental program.
Senator Mercer: And the dental program. Oh, I have got to get that down here, too.
Ms. Martin: I have a lot of good staff.
Senator Mercer: I certainly hope Premier Ghiz is paying you enough.
Ms. Martin: He is not. Is that on the record?
Senator Mercer: Oh good, do we have that on the record? I will send it to him.
Ms. Martin: That is why I am acting. It is not acting; it is pretending.
Senator Mercer: Those are a lot of hats to wear but it is interesting that they are all complimentary.
Ms. Martin: I appreciate that you have noted that senator. It is an experiment putting them together like that and that is why I am acting. I am experimenting with those programs which, in our province, are predominantly used by seniors.
Senator Mercer: You both indicated that you have a lot of ground to make up. What triggered the start of you making up this ground?
Ms. Martin: That we have the third fastest-growing senior population in the country and the political pressures that come along with it started the ball rolling.
Ms. Duffy: Do you mean in regards to the secretariat?
Senator Mercer: Yes.
Ms. Duffy: We had an advisory council to the minister and that was not too successful. It was more or less a political appointment by whichever government happened to be in place at the time and they did not have the freedom to influence policy too much. The structure itself was not working and, as they indicated, when we looked at the Nova Scotia structure and their secretariat established we saw the success they had in getting grassroots information from seniors. They had representation from senior organizations on the secretariat that we did not have.
Faye indicated that we are restructuring in the hope that we have representation from senior organizations that will become the liaison between those organizations and the secretariat. In that way, when we receive information we will be able to advise government on what policy is required to serve their needs.
Senator Mercer: So those changes sort of happened with the change in government?
Ms. Martin: More or less. It was coming about, yes. I think we are now looking through the lens of community development as opposed to a lens where some of us bureaucrats sit in government, have a dialog, and take what we want. We are now working in an effort to create a partnership with our senior's community. We are hoping to support them in bringing their concerns to us right from the grassroots in a way that is more meaningful than in the past. I do not know if that makes any sense.
Senator Mercer: Yes, it does. I want to go back to Senator Cordy's other line of questioning on the issue of physical abuse in particular. I was up North in Yellowknife wearing my other hat as a member of Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry while we were doing a study on rural poverty. We came to Prince Edward Island during that study. That is why I was using my Blackberry. I was not ignoring you. I could not remember a word a witness used so I had to email the clerk of the committee so she could send me the word that I learned up there. I wonder if the word applies to Prince Edward Island because of your size.
A woman in Yellowknife told us about ``mobbing.'' She related to us that in small communities, everyone knows everyone and in some places in northern communities, everyone may be related to everyone in one way or another. The woman told us that when a woman reports her abuse what happens is ``mobbing'' because the mob mentality sets in. The abuser is obviously a member of one of the families or one of the people in the community. The mob circles the wagons around the abuser and not the abused. This makes the abused person even more isolated. Do you see that phenomenon on the Island?
I am from Halifax and I have spent a lot of time here over the years and I know the people and I know how good they are but there are unfortunately bad people everywhere.
Ms. Martin: In the past 15 to 18 years, we have had 8 homicides involving women killed at the hands of their spouse or family member. That is a fairly high number for such a small population. We have issues around abuse of women and elder women and family violence.
Prince Edward Island is an interesting place. We have a small province but we have the most densely populated province in the country, not to be confused with the ``densest population'' in the country. We do not really have small isolated communities. We are really one large community, which is our new government's motto, ``One Island, One Community.''
We have the Premier's Action Committee on Family Violence Prevention, which has done an excellent job in bringing the secrets of family violence out into the open. We have gone great distances to educate our justice system, our policing services, our social work system, our churches and our ecumenical community. There has been extensive work done in getting the word out to communities that it is not all right to keep family violence a secret and that there are measures that can be taken rather easily to get something done.
We have some very progressive legislation where if it is reported that the male partner is abusing the female partner, he is the one who is taken away from the property. He is the one that has to be taken by law. The courts can issue a bond to have the police take him and not the woman and the children. Many measures have been taken over the past 17-or-so years to try to mitigate that very real phenomenon.
I cannot state this as a fact but I would like to think that it does not happen as much in P.E.I. I am sure it does happen to some extent and I know it happens on our reservations, but those communities tend to be isolated not geographically but culturally from us. We do not really have a good system there. I cannot claim that but I think we have made some progress with our rural communities.
Senator Mercer: Is there a shelter for abused women?
Ms. Duffy: Yes.
Ms. Martin: Yes, we have the Transition House Association, which is a province-wide organization that includes outreach services to communities. In fact, their focus is public education, and as part of that system, we have shelter provision.
Ms. Duffy: We find there is more financial abuse than physical abuse among seniors, which is becoming more evident due to the workshops on elder abuse.
Senator Mercer: Your outreach programs have impressed me and by virtue of your size and that you are doing something new, it makes it easier to do that outreach. You also mentioned a program, if I heard you correctly, is it peer health program?
Ms. Duffy: It is a project called Peer Helping Seniors program, which is a partnership between the secretariat and the P.E.I. Senior Citizens' Federation. Older people are trained to go into homes and work with other seniors who are living in isolation. In some cases, they may just read to the person for an afternoon, or take them to the doctor, or shopping for groceries. The seniors are trained to work with other seniors who live in isolation. It has been going very well. We have had a project and now we have had two other projects branch off it.
Senator Mercer: Is it volunteer-driven?
Ms. Duffy: Yes, it is strictly volunteer driven. It is through the New Horizons for Seniors Program. The people who give the training — the gentleman is a retired high school guidance counsellor and his wife who is a retired social worker receive some money for their training sessions. They are the only people who received any compensation. The seniors who volunteer as peer helpers receive only the satisfaction of helping somebody out.
Senator Mercer: Exactly, that warm, fuzzy feeling we get when we help people. Now how does that relate to the Seniors College? We met with somebody from the college two weeks ago, we were quite impressed by what he was saying, and yesterday in Nova Scotia, we heard about programs at Acadia and St. Mary's.
Ms. Duffy: Well there is no relationship between the Senior Peer Helping program and the Seniors College. They are both doing wonderful things but they are not related in any way.
Ms. Martin: Do you know there is another program that we have that you might be interested in and it is on the literacy side obliquely? We have a program called Project LOVE. The word love stands for ``Let Older Volunteers Educate.'' The National Literacy Secretariat and the province fund it. Retired people volunteer and receive training and are assigned elementary-age children identified with reading difficulties. These seniors go into the local schools and work with the children who need help. It is an inter-generational approach to the literacy challenges of the child in this case. That is a bit of an aside.
Senator Mercer: It would be an interesting program because it is an activity that seniors can do and we know that seniors work extremely well with younger children.
Ms. Martin: Interestingly enough, the children respond extremely well to the seniors. Sometimes a grandparent- grandchild bond happens and it is heart-warming, and children get help with their reading at the same time.
Senator Cools: I must share with the committee that I have found your testimony delightful and you have a very pleasant sense of humour, which enhances the situation.
I am very interested in what you have had to say on literacy and as you were talking I found myself trying to see if I could perhaps understand the causes of this literacy. Can you tell us about the nature of this literacy? Let me just tell you what I am thinking, not the nature of literacy but literacy problems, the deficiencies. Is this something that is just a maturing of an ongoing problem, a lifelong problem? I do not know if we would call it literacy. Maybe we should call it illiteracy, I do not know. Is it an abiding problem that has been in existence since youth, or is it a problem that has come on with the onset of aging and loss of capability around mature and older people? Is it something that has been brought on by disability? In other words, is this something that has been lifelong and from an insufficiency in education early on in life? Could you tell me something about the nature of it and the underlying causes? I must say I have been surprised by this information.
Ms. Martin: I can try to answer that question.
First, the International Adult Literacy Survey will tell you a great deal about the literacy levels of adults in Canada as a country and by province. One of the things that you will note in the results of that survey is that as we go from east to west, literacy skills improve. For our province, the underlying literacy issues of the generation that we are talking about would be common in any resource-based economy. In an economy where people can make a good living in resources such as tourism, agriculture and fishing those people do not need to read well to make that living. Those are our three primary industries, and at a time when the resources were rich and could command a good living, the people who made a living from them did not have to read well. So, unless you came from a family that valued learning for the sake of learning, the chances are you proceeded along life and you lived comfortably and you made a good living and reading and all that goes with it was probably not a pressing issue. Even for those who perhaps did develop some literacy skills, if they did not use them they lost them. We see this trend in this generation that is reaching its elder years. Some of them never acquired reading skills. Unfortunately, it has become an abiding problem with following generations and we have some of the worst scores in the country in 15-year-old children. We have some of the worst scores despite the fact that we have over 70 schools for a population of 136,000. It is counter-intuitive. The bricks and mortar are not in and of themselves enough. The inter-generational nature of literacy and literacy skills and valuing learning are mixed together. You cannot really parcel that out; I think is part of what we see in P.E.I.
We are well aware of the issue and now we are looking at what does it take to change it? Give me 40 acres and I will turn this thing around. It is a huge issue for us for when it comes to prosperity we have to move from a resource-based economy to a value-added, knowledge-based economy. In making that move to a different economy, we have to change these issues around learning and they have little to do with intelligence but with what has been learned. We have people who are coping very well and we have 35,000 Islanders in the workforce. That is a big chunk of our workforce, with less than Grade 12 that today are working and productive but as the knowledge needs of their jobs increase, they are vulnerable. We are trying to move our economy from a resource-based to a knowledge-based economy so we have many challenges around literacy.
Senator Cools: My question comes from the fact that I was born in Barbados. This little island has the highest literacy rate in the world. I am always amazed when I hear this sort of thing because I never encountered an illiterate person until I came to Canada or people who are supposedly literate but cannot read a paragraph.
Ms. Martin: Yes, and that is a lot of what we have. They can read but they cannot comprehend.
Ms. Duffy: Comprehension would be down.
Ms. Martin: Anna spent years in the public education system and brought up and educated very well 10 children.
Senator Cools: Could you explain a little bit?
Ms. Duffy: Just as Faye said, growing up in a rural community or a fishing community, at one time Grade 8 was considered the required education for boys if they were going to farm or fish for a living. I taught school for many years and if you could keep the boys in school after Grade 8, you did well because they just thought that was all the education they needed for farming. Farming was quite productive and fishing was bringing in a good income so they left and went out fishing or farming. Those boys are now fathers and some of them do not see the need for their children to stay in school to finish high school. Some children are staying in school until the end of Grade 12 but their comprehension level probably will not be more than Grade 8. We are having difficulty in breaking this cycle.
The Chair: I a former teacher and I remember going to school in Halifax in exactly the same situation. We had a group of kids who left after Grade 8. We had another group of kids who left after Grade 10. And then we had a group that went on to university. If you got all the way to Grade 12 you probably went on to some form of post-secondary education. When you left in Grade 8 you could become a telegraph operator, you could work in the hotel industry, and if your father owned a fishing boat you went into the fishery. And looking back, it did not start with them in Grade 8. They often had made that decision when they were in Grade 6, that ``I only have to stay here two more years so I do not really have to study very hard because I have only got two more years to go.'' So, it was cumulative in terms of if you came from a family, Anna, and I am sure you know this well, that education was not an option. Education was something you do. Education was your job. Education was your responsibility and ``Do not come home with anything less than A's.'' We did it because that was the expectation. If there was no expectation because the family members, the father, the mother, they had never done this so why would they think there was a need for an expectation?
Ms. Martin: Exactly. The family is the first teacher. We still, here today at home, some people will say, ``Well why should I bother going out and pursuing an expensive university education? My father fished,'' Michelle would know, ``. . .in Rustico or Souris or wherever and made a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year and had Grade 6.'' Well that is not going to happen any more because the fisheries is depleting and we all know it.
Ms. Duffy: The farming is in dire straits.
Ms. Martin: Even our farms, I mean you cannot run a farm anymore without a business degree. I mean it does not work. It is all wrapped together.
Senator Cools: Madam Chair, I have been thinking about another issue that keeps coming up again, this is the whole question of abuse, I have been looking at page 29 of our report, and I think that we need to do some work on that section.
I think we need to crystallize out, physical abuse from emotional abuse and mistreatment and insensitivity. I noticed this earlier on when I first read it and I was going to let it go, but I think that we cannot let it go because the title is, ``Options to Combat Abuse and Neglect.'' I do not know if anybody is aware but the terms, ``abuse'' and ``neglect'' come out of the child maltreatment field where the term was ``CAN'' being the acronym for ``Child Abuse and Neglect.'' There is a whole literature around child abuse and neglect deaths, child abuse and neglect maltreatment and it is not sufficient to do the task here because abuse and neglect here is connected to people being the custodians of children, guardians and the necessities of life.
I think that we should just amend that a bit and then see if we can tease this out to be able to respond to the variety of concerns. I think it can be done quite easily but the more I hear, because you know you have to deal with violence against elders not just like family members, which is family violence because there is also violence from neighbours, caregivers and institutions, right? There is often abuse from relatives. I heard of a case recently of a grandchild being very abusive and so on and so I think we have work to do on that issue.
Senator Mercer the image for many for family violence is always the man hurting the woman but all the data and all the literature shows that it is a symmetry and mutuality that women attack and initiate violence and do it as frequently as men. The literature shows that.
Senator Mercer: Unfortunately, we have two or three very prominent cases of that in Halifax in the past year so I understand exactly what you mean.
Senator Cools: Absolutely, and at some point because we have to consider the families of these individuals, the caretakers, in other words, family members, who, in some cases are provoked to unspeakable levels. I received a phone call from a particular woman about 40 years of age and her mother was spitting at her and being very unpleasant. I mean she got a bit angry. She did something she should not have done but I do not know that we want to complicate the problem by calling the police. I do not know. I am just saying I want us to make those couple of paragraphs more responsive to what we are actually hearing.
The Chair: We will do that, Senator Cools.
Senator Cools: You will look after it? Thanks.
The Chair: In addition, of course, I think we need to recognize that the abuse in terms of seniors is unique and we cannot use vocabulary that is attached to children so I could not agree more on that.
Senator Cools: Yes, because we are not dealing with children in this case.
The Chair: I would like to focus for a few minutes on the issue of financial abuse. We have had some real discussions in our committee about the competency issues and that often relates directly to the financial abuse issues.
Senator Cools, as you know, used the example of a taxi driver taking advantage of an older woman but fortunately, the son had put some limits on how much his mother could withdraw from the bank at any one given time. That is fine, but the other problem can ensue. My husband was the power of attorney for his father and he did not abuse the process. It turned out a bank teller did and took $72,000 out of his account but the bank of course immediately returned it with interest so it was no significant loss as soon as the auditors found what happened. However, in essence, had my husband chosen to, he could have stripped every single asset from his father. We have to balance those two things. My information is that many seniors do not know what they are signing when they are signing these powers of attorney, that they trust their family members and in 90 per cent of the cases, even 95 per cent of the cases, that trust may be justified. How do we put supports in place for the 5 per cent, however, that are not trustworthy?
We heard of a woman who was living in a home and when she said she did not have enough money to have her hair done, she began an investigation into her finances. The poor woman had property worth well over a million dollars, which her daughter had sold without her knowledge. She was broke and after some appropriately strongly worded legal letters, she managed to get a little bit of allowance. The problem was she did not want to sue her daughter. She did not want to cause that kind of aggravation. All she wanted was enough money for a haircut.
We must try to find the proper balance concerning the competency issue. We are dealing with other competency issues concerning the privilege of driving. We are dealing with the competency issue concerning the placement of a person in a nursing home. For example, when is it appropriate to say that the privilege should be removed? We must find a balance. We are not talking about someone with mental problems, we are talking this is a person with a physical well-being problem but he or she is saying, ``I do not care. I want to live in my own home and if that means that I do not get the services that I would get in a nursing home, I want to be able to make that choice. I want to remain competent of my own decision making.'' It is not an easy area to grapple around with and I wonder if you have any thoughts to contribute, Faye and Anna, to this issue.
Senator Mercer: You answered all the other questions today, now come on.
Ms. Martin: The whole issue of choice is huge, whether you are 85 years of age or whether you are 25 years of age. I mean some of the most significant challenges around human rights decisions and individual rights in this country have been around choice, and when you are a senior, it is no different. The types of choices are what are different so I certainly do not have an answer to the question.
Concerning the earlier part of your commentary around financial abuse and supports, I think about a slogan that we use when it comes to dealing with elder abuse. We had an item on our FPT seniors' agenda. It was called ``Combating Elder Abuse'' and we thought that the language was very bad so we dropped the word ``combat.'' The minister said we were not going to talk like that anymore. So in coming to terms with elder abuse, the slogan that comes to mind is ``No effort is too small.'' I mean there are huge things that need to be done but when we are talking about going about the countryside talking about financial elder abuse, clearly we are talking to the seniors that are able to come out and understand what we are telling them so we are informing them. We are talking to them about power of attorney and what that means, competency and what that means. All of those things and clearly most of them that are there are there because they are interested and the can comprehend the message. How to get messages to people who are not in a state of mind to fully comprehend I do not know. I know our Public Trustee talks a great deal to people in terms of whether they have family members for which they might want to think about a power of attorney. That works okay for some folks.
In terms of predators, I do not know what to do about evil. There are people who will knowingly take advantage of the vulnerable and seniors at some point do become vulnerable. I guess we are all vulnerable at certain times in our lives. I do not know what to do about evil. It is there and how you stop it is beyond me, but in terms of what we are doing, we are getting the word out and hoping that the majority of people who hear it are well intended and will take advice and do the right thing. We hear stories where that is not the case for sure.
Ms. Duffy: I find it encouraging that some banks are training their staff to be alert to financial abuse. In my own example, I withdrew a little larger sum of money than I usually did a few months ago and the next time I was into the bank the teller, when she looked at my bank she said, ``You know, such and such was removed from your account back on such and such a date. Is that okay?'' I mean she was alert enough to know that a larger amount than normal had been withdrawn and I thanked for her observation. It is good that they can spot the irregularities in that type of thing.
Ms. Martin: The local bank manager will join us on the panel with us and we have heard stories about banking and seniors. One manager told us about a grandchild who accompanied her grandmother to the bank to get a loan for her tuition. In this case, the loans offer sensed that the grandmother was not as comfortable with the proposed loan as the younger person was portraying it. In this case, the officer postponed the loan to the next day and after having a private conversation with the senior, said, in the presence of the younger person that she would not approve the loan. That took the onus off the senior and put the denial onto the loan officer. It is a little cagey but it worked so talk about smaller communities, you know, that was a small community where they noticed the dynamic because they knew the people.
Senator Cools: Listening to you and Senator Carstairs, I think this is one of the wonderful by-products of this work. This committee is airing the subject matter, bringing it up, shining the light on it, and discussing it. This is a benefit to seniors and lets the would-be deviants know that more and more people are aware of the dangers. These are positive by-products because I think the list of the deviants is quite long. When you said it was a teller that stole from the women I went, ``Oh, my God'' in that instance. Everybody knows of cases in families where trust is violated. And also too as we go along I think we have to lead, too, in developing some of the language. We could expand the term ``abuse'' to talk about violations of trust among family members and to lead the way in finding the language because I think every family member has this fear that their loved ones will let them down. I tend to think for the most part, though there will still be deviants, the greater majority of people out here are far more scrupulous, you know? Anyway I think it is a good debate. It is a good discussion.
The Chair: My final question to the two of you has to deal with the whole issue of prevention. We know there are some strategies about falls prevention and that type of thing but I must say that it was brought home to us in a very stark way yesterday by a doctor who said there is a myth that seniors are going to be better off and they are going to live longer and his view was that neither was going to be the case, that this was probably going to be the generation of the best, well-off, or the most well-off seniors and that the next seniors were perhaps going to be less well-off. More importantly, he was very concerned about the rates of obesity, galloping diabetes, and other chronic diseases that are on the upswing rather than on the downturn. He encouraged us to address the issue of preventative programs.
Ms. Martin what is happening in P.E.I.? What does your secretariat envisage in terms of prevention programs?
Ms. Duffy: I do not know whether we have gotten to that.
Ms. Martin: Well we have an Active Living Alliance on P.E.I., which is a partnership of government and community organizations that work across the province with communities to tailor programs to communities' needs. I would have to say that at this point in time that is probably the most progressive step that has been taken. We have huge issues around type 2 diabetes in our province. We have all of the usual health issues around arthritis, heart disease and hypertension. As a population we are not doing as well as we might. We have very high childhood obesity rates in P.E.I. In my personal opinion that is where prevention starts. By the time you become a senior, the die is pretty much cast in terms of what your health footprint is going to be.
I guess in terms of answering the question that would be something that we have not looked at as much as we could have yet and we probably will get to it. Our issues around housing and Pharmacare are probably the most burning issues for us in terms of our population and our seniors' population. Everything that applies to our population applies to our seniors' population because we are at 14.7 per cent, the national average is 13.1 per cent, and we are exponentially climbing. So we are a little bit behind the 8-ball on some of those very fundamental programs that need to be shored up.
Ms. Duffy: Concerning prevention, before the secretariat came into existence, the P.E.I. Senior Citizens Federation sponsored a program through Canadian Pensioners Concerned in diabetic prevention and we were trained to go out to work with community groups, church groups and senior groups to give workshops on the prevention of diabetes. That was four or five years ago.
It is interesting that in a survey conducted on Prince Edward Island a number of years ago, we had the highest level of consumption of alcohol, we had the highest level of tobacco consumption and we had the highest level of satisfaction.
Ms. Martin: Smoking and drinking and happy.
The Chair: No, you are quite right. Obesity rates have to be dealt with and work it up into the seniors' issue, but it is going to be a huge issue.
In the previous panel, we were talking about Aboriginal communities in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and the fact that they are very small in number. Many of those concepts also relate to the Island because I know through my assistant that the rates of dementia here are not different from the rates of dementia elsewhere in the country. However, because you have fewer long-term care beds, dementia patients occupy many of them. As a result, the dementia patients are not separate from the non-dementia patients and that creates problems.
Yesterday, they said at Northwood Manor that all of the sixth floor and the entire seventh floor are occupied with dementia patients and they now think they are going to have to make the fifth floor available for dementia patients. This facility has other floors, but you do not have that luxury.
You might have a small personal care bed situation in which 80 per cent or 85 per cent of the patients are suffering from some form of dementia and you only have 15 per cent of the beds left for everyone else. This must be a huge problem.
Ms. Martin: There are many issues around that problem. I had a call about three weeks ago from a family whose mother was an Alzheimer's victim in a nursing care facility in Summerside and she needed to go to a secure unit. She was a flight risk. I do not know the medical terminology but there was definitely a security issue around her care. They did not have a bed available for her that was without a fee. The woman had to be transferred to a community 50 miles away to have a place where they could care for her properly and in a secure manner. Her family was distraught because they were accustomed to being able to see her daily, yet there was nothing they could do until a bed became available in the local facility. People are dealing with those heartbreaking problems.
The Chair: There is also the reverse situation, which is also a heartbreaking problem for the family members of a loved one who does not suffer from dementia. It must be painful for all concerned to have a loved one who is not suffering from dementia to be surrounded by people who are. That must be difficult. What does that do for the sense of isolation or sense of participation in the community?
Ms. Martin: Absolutely. We are in a situation right now where sometimes when you get behind you start to come out a little bit ahead of the situation. Our long-term care facilities are undergoing an examination and it is looking like many of them will have to be rebuilt and redesigned. We hope to be able to address some of those problems with the recreation of some of these long-term care facilities. We know so much more and our conditions have changed so much more since the facilities were built years ago. Yes, we have very large issues around those matters.
The Chair: I want to thank you both very much for being here today.
It is a delight to have you and we got on on a first name basis here, which does not happen except on the Island, I have to say, where it does happen on a fairly regular basis.
In addition, you both know that I have a long-term association with the island. Michelle MacDonald has served me very well in Ottawa. She not only left my employment on a full-time basis but she came back to the island.
Ms. Martin: And we are glad she did.
The Chair: However, she still works for me and Michelle would never let me forget about the island even if I tried to. So thank you very much.
Ms. Martin: Thank you very much. It was our pleasure.
The committee adjourned.