Canada ranked among best countries for older people

Canada is among the top five best places in which to be a senior according to a ranking of 96 countries by HelpAge International.

Released today in connection with the United Nations International Day of Older Persons, the organization’s Global Age Watch Index 2014 rates the wellbeing of older people on the basis of income security, health, personal capability and enabling environments.

Norway ranks at the top of the index, followed by Sweden and Switzerland, with Canada in fourth place.  The U.S. comes in at eighth place, with the U.K. out of the top ten at number 11.

Canada rates high in all four categories, although satisfaction with the state of public transportation is lower.

Afghanistan is the worst place for an older person, according to the index, while just above it are Mozambique (95), West Bank and Gaza (94) and Malawi (93).

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

HelpAge is also taking the occasion to further its Age Demands Action campaign in support of seniors’ rights and issues, taking place in around 50 countries worldwide. Activists plan to use the index in meetings with policy makers. They are also calling for a UN convention on the rights of older people.

October 1 was designated the International Day of Older Persons by a resolution the United Nations General Assembly on December 14, 1990. The theme of the 2014 commemoration is “Leaving No One Behind: Promoting a Society for All.”

"Older persons make wide-ranging contributions to economic and social development,” stated UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “However, discrimination and social exclusion persist. We must overcome this bias in order to ensure a socially and economically active, secure and healthy ageing population."

In Canada, October 1 is also celebrated as National Seniors Day.

In a statement marking the day Minister of State (Finance) Kevin Sorenson focused on federal government moves benefiting seniors financially, including targeted tax relief, including pension income splitting and a doubling of the pension income credit eligibility level.

In addition, Sornenson highlighted plans to help older Canadians better manage their financial affairs.

“Over the last number of months, our government has been consulting on a national strategy for financial literacy, with the first phase focused on seniors,” he said. “This strategy will engage more Canadians in preparing financially for their senior years; help seniors to plan and manage their financial affairs; improve the understanding of and access to public benefits for seniors; and increase the tools to combat financial abuse. I expect to unveil this important strategy soon.”

International Day of Older Persons was also being observed with a rally in Windsor, Ontario. The event was organized by the Unifor Retired Workers Area Council, the Seniors Advisory Committee-Windsor, National Pension Reform Committee, National Pensioners Federation, CARP Windsor-Essex, Municipal Retirees Organization Ontario and Life After Fifty.

"On this day, we not only celebrate the effort of our elders to build a better society for all of us, but also commit to fight for pension and decent health care so future generations can retire with dignity," said Len Hope, chair of the Unifor Retired Workers Council Executive and member of the Unifor National Executive Board.

"Older persons are among the first to fall victim to a downturn in the economy or the effects of globalization."

Getting the word out on caregiving

Rick Lauber knows a lot about caregiving for older people and much of that knowledge is based on personal experience.

Lauber, an Edmontonian, acted as caregiver for both his mother, who had Parkinson’s disease and leukemia, and his father, an Alzheimer’s sufferer.

Since then he has been attempting to help other caregivers by sharing what he learned as a result of his experiences.

In 2010, Self-Counsel Press published his book the Caregiver's Guide for Canadians.

In the book, Lauber describes his own caregiving experiences and provides recommendations for other prospective, new and current caregivers (including adult children, friends, spouses and/or partners).

“I like to think that my book has been written from a very personal perspective,” he has said. “There are other books on the market about caregiving and a number of conditions, but a lot of them are written by professionals. So my book offers a more everyday, anecdotal experience.”

The book is intended to provide encouragement and support for caregivers, along with practical advice on how to care for elders in need. It deals with issues such as balancing caregiver responsibilities with personal life, applying for guardianship and/or trusteeship hire a professional caregiver should the need arise and when a move to assisted living is necessary.

The Caregiver's Guide for Canadians is available at Chapters bookstores, at Amazon.ca, and from the Self-Counsel Press web site. The price is $17.95.

In addition to promoting the book, Lauber also works to get his message about caregiving out through writing articles, giving interviews, a blog and a twitter account, @cdncaregiver.

“I do see that more resources are becoming available,” he remarked. “That’s a good thing. But I think a lot of the resources are still difficult to connect with for family caregivers. I’m not sure why, whether it’s a lack of advertising or a lack of public knowledge, but it is unfortunate because the resources are there to help.”

Senior projects tackle bullying, isolation and abuse

Bullying, social isolation and elder abuse are not what we have in mind for our latter years, but they are realities older people face.

"Bullying in senior residences is a common response when the give and take of communal living is not properly addressed,” according to Karen Sheridan of the South East Edmonton Seniors Association (SEESA).

To address the problem, the association has created the Senior to Senior Anti-Bullying project. The project recently received funding through the Government of Canada's New Horizons For Seniors Program for development an anti-bullying toolkit. The toolkit will be used to educate and equip elderly persons living in seniors' residences, as well as residences' staff to better deal with offensive behaviour and confrontation.

“SEESA began the for-seniors by-seniors project to explore how residents can co-create the kind of communities in which they want to live," said Sheridan.

Social isolation among senior caregivers is the focus of the Caregiver Connection Centre project of the Alberta Caregivers Association, which also recently received New Horizons funding. It will provide a centralized gathering place where caregivers can connect with each other for mutual support and information sharing.

“Caregiving can be a very rewarding experience, but it can also be very challenging and isolating,” said Anna Mann, executive director of the Caregivers Association. “Connecting with fellow caregivers makes a huge difference - you can almost see a burden being lifted off their shoulders."

The two Alberta organizations are receiving a total of $42,890 through the New Horizons program.

Meanwhile in Toronto, the Bernard Betel Centre is tacking the problem of elder abuse through art.  

As part of its Empowerment and Expression: Senior Voices through Art initiative,

the centre will organize town hall meetings to promote the social inclusion of seniors through art projects that will focus on elder abuse awareness.

The centre's activities include designing and creating an arts-centred elder abuse awareness curriculum based on best practices. Other activities focus on recruiting and training experienced senior volunteer artists, creating outreach materials to disseminate information about elder abuse and displaying seniors' arts projects to make them widely available to the public.

The Bernard Betel Centre was awarded $22,000 in New Horizons funding for the  project.

Memory worries prompt thousands to take online test

If you worry that your sketchy memory might be a sign of imminent Alzheimer’s disease, you are not alone.

Some 20,000 people have done an online memory test since it was launched in May by Cogniciti Inc., the company reported yesterday.
The free 20-minute assessment, available at www.cogniciti.com, is intended to help aging adults worried about their memory determine whether or not they need to discuss their concerns with a doctor.

"A great many Canadians are finding it tough to decide when to bring their memory concerns to their doctors," said Cogniciti president Mike Meagher. "Our mission with the test is to get the right people in to see the doctor and reduce unnecessary visits by the worried well."

The test was developed by clinical neuropsychologists and cognitive scientists at Baycrest Health Sciences, affiliated with the University of Toronto, and its Rotman Research Institute. Designed for adults aged 50-79, it comprises a series of game-like mental challenges that tap into memory and attention performance, including remembering the location of hidden objects and matching names to faces.

People who take the test receive an immediate brain health score upon completion to see where they rank compared to other adults with same age and education.

According to Cogniciti, the vast majority of test takers scored in the normal, healthy range for their age/education, with only two percent having below normal results.

The company also noted that 41 per cent of participants were in their 60s, 64 per cent were women, and 64 per cent had a college or university degree.

Close to one-quarter (24 per cent) of Cogniciti test takers stated on the pre-test health questionnaire that they had significant memory concerns, yet only 2.1 per cent had cognitive score results below the normal range for their age and education. This finding confirmed how widespread memory concerns are in Canada with older adults, said Meagher, and how difficult it is for most adults to determine on their own whether their forgetfulness is simply normal aging or a more serious issue.

Those who do score in the low range are encouraged to print their report and take it to their doctor to start the conversation about their memory concerns.

"For those who score poorly on the test, it doesn't necessarily mean you have dementia or Alzheimer's. Getting checked by a doctor is the best way to rule out other health problems that could be causing your cognitive issues," said Dr. Angela Troyer, program director of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Health at Baycrest, and a lead member of the project team that developed the online test.

"If it turns out that you do have a significant problem with your memory, then early diagnosis along with science-based education and interventions will help you maintain your cognitive health and independence for as long as possible, and enable you and your family to plan for the care and support you'll need in future." 
Founded in 2010 by Baycrest Health Sciences and MaRS Discovery District, Cogniciti Inc. is a for-profit company that provides brain health assessment, diagnosis, treatment and coping tools.

CARP comes out against proposed Fair Elections Act

CARP, the national seniors’ advocacy group, has come out in opposition to the Fair Elections Act, Bill C-23, put forward by the Conservative government.

Susan Eng, the organization’s vice-president of advocacy, stated its position at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in Ottawa last week.

Major provisions of the bill include the elimination of vouching as a means of establishing eligibility at the polling booth and the requirement for more identification, having political parties select poll officials, disallowing Elections Canada from promotion of voting and diminishing that body’s ability to investigate electoral financing irregularities.

Eng said a poll of CARP members to which some 3,600 members responded showed 80 percent disapprove of the Fair Elections Act, with two-thirds opposing it in the strongest terms.

“They see it as diminishing democracy and they want it withdrawn or amended significantly,” she stated.

While the rationale for elimination of vouching, along with the use of the mailed voter identification card as ID, is to fight voter fraud, CARP members see reduced voter participation as a bigger problem than voter fraud by a factor of four to one,  63 per cent to 15 per cent.

Seventy two per cent do not think that vouching is a source of voter fraud and 75 per cent think that banning vouching will suppress voter participation.

According to the poll results, 10 per cent of CARP members have either had to have someone vouch for them when they voted (4%), or knew someone who had to be vouched (6%). One-third (34%) used the voter identification card the last time they voted.

“Given the commitment to voting from CARP members and older Canadians generally, it reasonable to suggest that CARP members themselves would be inconvenienced by the elimination of vouching and use of the voter identification cards but not disenfranchised – they would find the necessary identification to allow them to vote,” said Eng. “However, they are clearly concerned about others, especially those in seniors’ homes or long term care.”

Eng referred to a letter received by the Edmonton CARP chapter from a woman on behalf of her 97-year old mother in long term care. The mother is frail but fully capable of voting and did so regularly with the home’s workers vouching for her.

She no longer has a driver’s licence, the Alberta Health card does not have her address and her daughter handles all her banking and other needs so all her mail goes to her daughter. To be able to vote, she now has to ask the home to issue an attestation of residence document for her, which will also be necessary for every other resident of the Home wishing to vote.

“The option of vouching in such a case has the obvious advantage of leaving little to no opportunity for fraud, especially as many nursing homes and seniors’ residences have a polling station right in the building,” Eng said.

CARP is recommending that vouching be reinstated and the use of voter identification cards be made permanent. Having well trained and non-partisan polling officials will protect against irregularities.

CARP is also recommending restoration of Elections Canada’s mandate to make the electoral process better known to the public, particularly to those persons and groups most likely to experience difficulties in exercising their democratic rights.

We recommend that this mandate be restored. 

Another recommendation are that “robocall” political telephone marketing companies be required to keep records of the script and to whom the robocalls were directed for five years, not just one year as in the current bill

In addition, the group wants all election officers to be appointed based on merit and not be nominated by candidates, electoral district associations or parties.

“CARP members are avid voters and clearly see this bill as detrimental to voter participation, detrimental to a fair and transparent electoral process and to democracy itself,” declared Eng. “As such, we believe that at a minimum, the bill should be amended to reverse the provisions highlighted above. Otherwise, Bill C-23 should be withdrawn.”

Susan Eng will be the guest speaker at the CARP Edmonton Chapter annual general meeting on May 2 at the Norwood Legion. Non-members are welcome. For further information call 780-450-4802 or email carp.edmonton@gmail.com.

Seniors in Laval, Quebec to ride transit free

Seniors in the Quebec city of Laval will enjoy free public transit as of May 1.

Mayor Marc Demers announced the new Horizon 65+ measure for Laval residents 65 years of age and older at the beginning of April.

Laval is providing free transit for residents 65 and older.

Located on Île Jésus, just north of Montreal, Laval is the 13^th largest city in Canada with a population of more than 400,000. Seniors make up more 15.6 per cent of the population according to the 2011 Canadian census.

Provision of free transport by the Société de transport de Laval (STL) dovetails with the city's recent positioning as a Senior Friendly City (Municipalité amie des aînés), stated Demers.

"We estimate that approximately 2,300 seniors in Laval currently benefit from reduced fares with the STL,” he said. “In addition to giving them a little more financial leeway, this measure will also help our seniors to be more mobile and independent. It's also a step forward in ensuring equality between individuals and generations."

To ride free seniors need an OPUS electronic transit card, which will be loaded with a fare that is valid throughout the entire STL network. The OPUS card costs $15 and is valid for seven years.

"We are doing everything we can to facilitate access,” said STL general manager Guy Picard. “Seniors will be able to go to various locations on selected days in April to have their photo taken and to obtain their cards. Seniors who already have an OPUS card are simply required to present themselves at one of the specified locations to have their cards encoded for the free fares."

The measure is expected to cost $600,000 per year.

Driver testing challenged on human rights grounds

The issue of whether mandatory testing violates the rights of elderly drivers is to be addressed in an Ontario courtroom.

Kenneth MacLennan of Cornwall launched a court challenge against the Ontario Ministry of Transport last September.

MacLennan claims the testing Ontario drivers aged 80 and over must undergo under the province’s Highway Traffic Act is discriminatory on the basis of age, a human rights violation.

"My case is basically this, when the government requires a person 80 and over to pass the test, they effectively violate me under the Ontario Human Rights Code," MacLennan told the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder at the time of the initial court hearing.

MacLennan believes the testing legislation relies on suspect evidence that suggests drivers over 80 are more likely to cause accidents.

According to information from the Elder Advocates of Alberta, a further hearing of MacLennan’s case before the Ontario Superior Court in Ottawa is scheduled for April 7.

In Alberta, Elder Advocates has been concerned for some time about testing of older drivers that the organization considers unfair and discriminatory.

At age 75, drivers must have a physical exam. Another is required at 80, and every two years after that.

In addition to the basic exam, doctors may also require cognitive testing using the Simard MD test and refer drivers for a DriveAble computer simulation driving test, which is administered by a private company and costs $250 plus GST. Failing these tests may lead to drivers being unable to renew their licenses.

Elder Advocates is skeptical about the tests’ fairness and accuracy.

“Please be aware, according to Alberta statistics, seniors are the safest drivers on Alberta roads,” the group stated in a letter to Wayne Drysdale, Alberta transportation minister. “It is well known they have the lowest casualty rates, they are not causing the often carnage on Alberta roads.

“Obviously, there is no justification for this testing. We are being abused by this protocol, our rights are being violated. We are respectfully asking to have this protocol put to an end.”

In a further letter, the group queried Drysdale about statements made at a March 12 seniors driving information session in St. Albert. Speaker Bonnie Dobbs said all doctors will soon be electronically hooked to Alberta Transportation Driver Fitness and Monitoring. This would prevent “doctor shopping” to avoid Simard MD testing.

“Please advise us of the intent of this protocol and the attending cost to taxpayers,” the letter stated. “Some seniors are suffering total neglect in long term care facilities, skin rotting and blackening on their bodies resulting in deadly septicemia as became recently public in Calgary.  However your government is concerning itself and spending scarce resources and effort to unfairly target, destabilize and humiliate independent, functioning Alberta citizens.”