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By Connor Gunn

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: Latest census results carry bad news for young and old alike

Apr 30, 2022 | 6:40 AM

‘WE’RE GETTING OLD,” I said as a friend and I sat in the coffee shop this week.

“Tell me about it,” he said. “It’s scary.” I had another birthday a few days ago; he had one last month. “Look at it this way,” I told him.

“We have, maybe, 15 years left. That’s not much when you think about it. Just think how fast the last 15 have gone.” “I know,” he said. “I think about it a lot.” It’s bad enough looking at yourself in the mirror in the morning and seeing an old person with wrinkles, thin hair and age spots staring back at you.

Now we find out we might not have a place to live when the time comes to give up our homes and our driver’s licences. The day after our conversation, Census Canada released some of the results from the 2021 census that show a shift in demographics towards the aged.

Apparently, we Boomers didn’t have enough children, which means there are now too many old folks and not enough young folks to take care of them. My mom had 10 brothers and sisters, my dad almost as many. I have five children.

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Most couples today have one or two. In the meantime, we’re all living longer. You can see where we’re heading.

The census shows that the number of people over 85 has grown twice as much as the overall population since 2016. And there are more than twice the number of people over 85 alive today as there were in 2001.

Over the next 25 years, it will be triple. And there are more Canadians between 55 and 64 than there are between 15 and 24. More people are leaving the work force than entering it. “Older Canadians are a growing economic and politically influential group,” according to Statistics Canada.

“They are staying healthier, active, and involved for longer.” That’s the positive side of it. To those in younger age brackets, seniors are a burden. Somebody is going to have to look after them, and with fewer pre-seniors to spread the cost around, the already over-stretched healthcare system is going to cost each taxpayer even more.

Long-term care will be harder to come by unless there’s a major acceleration in building new facilities, and that will put even more burden on those who are still working. Right now, it costs thousands per month for a good assisted living, or even independent living, apartment in a care facility, and there’s always a wait to get in. Some are subsidized, some aren’t.

Seniors who can’t afford it, or can’t find such a place, have to make due on their own, often relying on family to help care for them. (Caregiver burnout is a major issue in itself.) Those who need 24-7 care due to severe physical issues or who suffer from dementia are often housed in depressing facilities that offer tiny rooms, modest recreation programs and once-a-week showers or baths. They’re more like hospital wards than anything like home.

That, at least, is my impression from having visited in some of them. What I’m saying is that not only are more long-term care facilities needed, but they have to be made much better than they are now. One answer to the money problem is to step up immigration in order to expand the work force but Statistics Canada says even that won’t get us to where we need to be.

In response to the census numbers, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons says long-term care “must be reimagined and recreated with an innovative, emotion-based model of care with smaller, homelike environments and well trained and supported staff who are empowered to care for the residents with compassion and that all-important ‘human touch.’”

Of course, most seniors would rather “age in place,” that is, remain in their own homes, and CARP says home care and community based care solutions are critical in resolving the long-term care challenge.

That involves more support for front-line home care, respite care, and day programs, plus expanding tele-health. All of this means spending more and more on a healthcare system that already accounts for the biggest share of provincial and federal budgets. I don’t envy my kids and grand-kids having to pay for it all. Maybe there are creative solutions nobody’s come up with yet. I sure hope they figure it out.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.