Early in the year I like to hit what I call the reset button.
Forget about what happened with the seniors file in 2015. It's time to look forward.
I'm not sure the Supreme Court of Canada did us a favour when they ruled that Ottawa could have an extension to craft legislation on assisted death. Parliament, through their dithering, fumbled away the right to make the decision on this issue.
Thanks to a ruling from the Supreme Court, Canadians now have a right to assisted death. Parliament has until June 6 to get a new law in place.
Jane Philpott, the federal Minister of Health, wants to wrap up a new health accord with the provinces. The provinces want more money.
The challenges the provincial ministers face are threefold. By international standards they haven't done a great job with the $40 billion they received from the first health accord. They all have different priorities and for the first time since the 1930s the federal Health Minister, Philpott, is a physician who knows how the health-care system is supposed to work.
The Office of the Seniors Advocate is scheduled to release four new reports in 2016. When Isobel MacKenzie was appointed as the first seniors advocate in Canada, observers - myself included - wondered how the relationship between the advocate and her boss, the Minister of Health, would play out.
Now we know. The advocate makes recommendations (lots of them) and the government ignores most of them. Sooner or later one of them has to blink.
What a difference a few months makes. Pension reform, a key plank in the Liberal election platform will now be "studied" by the government for the next 12 months and if they decide to move forward it could take years to get the program up and running.
Canada is the only industrialized country with universal health insurance that does not have a national drug coverage policy. Philpott has said recently she wants prescription drug plans to be affordable but it's too soon to commit to a national drug plan.
There's better news on the veterans file. Veterans Affairs Canada is drawing up plans to offer ex-solders the choice of lump sum pension or lifetime pensions when they leave the military.
I'm less hopeful that service cuts to Veterans Affairs centres and counselling staff made under the previous government will be reversed.
I've heard from a number of seniors in the last few weeks who are upset with their property assessment notices.
There is another way to look at it. If you are a senior in your 60s, 70s or older and you have an asset that is worth a couple of million dollars that is not a bad place to be.
What's the number one complaint I get from my readers about hospitals? Wait times, cleanliness or lack of it, the food or problems around discharge planning? Nope. It's the charges for parking.
Readers will be interested to learn that Ontario hospitals that charge more than $10 a day for parking have been ordered to immediately freeze rates and to start offering multi-day discount passes by October. By the fall, Ontarians are looking at a savings of at least 50 per cent on hospital parking charges.
So what have we learned? Looking at the seniors issues that dominated the news last year with a fresh set of eyes brings a little more clarity but not a lot of resolution.
For that we need some action.
Let's hope we see more of that in 2016.
Tom Carney is the former executive director of the Lionsview Seniors' Planning Society. Ideas for future columns are welcome. [email protected]
