New data reveals Canada’s senior population is expected to exceed 11 million people by 2043. This rapid rise in the number of older Canadians will have wide-reaching implications on sectors such as health care and employment, with experts sounding the alarm that Canada is not prepared to handle an aging population.
No, because we’re still refusing to tax at the level needed to maintain services. We’ll try anything–anything–except returning marginal tax rates to 1960-something levels and building things directly.
Because doing the right thing would mean the 30-year-plus neoliberal experiment was a failure, and all we did was make rich people richer.
Considering the situation with old-care homes we’ve been hearing these last five years, not even close. Everything from school to medical care, retirement homes and normal homes is a half-century behind in what’s needed. Instead of change we need, we’re constantly fed all the damn feel-good measures that amount to things that should’ve been done decades ago, and no longer fix current issues.
Doesn’t help that an entire political party and their associated generation is allergic to paying for the infrastructure needed to care for their elderly asses. Elder care is first and foremost a funding problem, but no one wants to actually pay for it, elders included… until, that is, they suddenly realize that, fuck, no one else will pay for their mobility aids and home care.
I know I look at the state of healthcare in my province (NB, but I figure it’s the same across the country) and get worried every time I see my parents. Unlike many, they’re lucky to have a good family doctor, but he’s nearing retirement himself, and then what? Their hair keeps getting grayer, the wrinkles add up on their faces, and the outlook for senior care keeps getting bleaker and bleaker. It feels like I’m inevitably going to watch them suffer to their graves.
Both my parents are gone now but the way you’re describing things … we’re next in line for that elderly care.
My worry is, what the hell is going to be left for people who are soon to become elderly?
I’m in northern Ontario which often times feels no different than our Maritime cousins as all our services are going down the tubes.
No matter what anyone says … I’ll always vote NDP … even as they wheel me away to my hallway to leave me to drool for hours, I’ll always vote for humanity no matter what anyone says.
Which is why immigration is still important, as long as we’re focusing on bringing people who will be filling needs to help with our various crises.
Doctors, nurses, builders, etc. Not business students.
It doesn’t really take into account the fact that many seniors are going to die horribly from liver disease, or commit suicide.
Seriously. I’m in my mid-50s, and the bleakness of my generation is staggering. Nobody wants to be alive anymore.
Seriously. I’m in my mid-50s, and the bleakness of my generation is staggering. Nobody wants to be alive anymore.
I’m a decade younger. I thought Gen-Xers were doing decently well, at least compared to younger generations.
What sorts of problems are you folks having? I’d love to learn more.
I meant to answer this the other day, but forgot.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m living comfortably, I own a house (small and shitty but paid off), I have an interesting job, and things are about as good as they could be.
But on the one hand, being in your 50s has always been hard - the kids are close to leaving or have left (empty nest syndrome), our parents - if they’re still alive - are starting to wind down their lives, our bodies no longer are capable of things we used to do, and never will be again. There’s not a lot of “this gets better in the future” to look forward to. We’ve lost a lot of close friends over the years through the normal rigours of life, and it’s almost impossible to make new ones.
So that’s just being 50-something, and has been like that probably since the industrial revolution. It’s hard and it sucks, but I’m not going to whine about it.
What is different is the realization that this may be the best we ever get to, as a species. We’re destroying the planet faster than we can hold summits about it, politics is turning into a bipolar hate-fest across the entire globe, life expectancy is decreasing for the first time in human history, and end-stage capitalism means that our kids will never be able to afford what we have (house, education, etc.). Surveillance capitalism means that every movement they make - and before too long, every thought they think - will be monetized, exploited, and (if necessary) penalized.
In short, what has always been the bright spot in this hard point in our lives - the knowledge that the next generation will be able to do more and live in a brighter world than us - is no longer true. Right now (or maybe a decade ago even) is likely the apex of humanity, and it’s not really that great.
Consider the Homer Simpson conundrum. 35 years ago, Homer was the classic low-class uneducated shlub (Fred Flintstone, Ralph Kramden, Al Bundy, etc.). Now he’s living an impossible dream - being a single-income homeowner and head of a family, without extensive post-secondary education (which is only marginally helpful anyway.)
Are my kids going to see the extinction of polar bears? Will the human population be decimated by floods and wildfires (and war, for that matter)?
I just don’t see anything getting better anymore, and that tends to resonate with my generation - at least the compassionate ones.
Edit: Also, we drink. A lot. The people I know who don’t drink excessively are the ones who stopped drinking entirely, because they were…drinking excessively. Hence the liver failure comment.
About one in four Canadians will be 65 years of age or older by 2043
They’re making a bunch of bold assumptions there.
Don’t worry, the most populated province in the country re-elected a government that spends all its time making stupid decisions and then backtracking. Maybe we can get around to building more LTC facilities in 2026
They will reap what they sowed. They had housing, cheap education, high paying jobs, and they created a society that gave none of it to future generations. We can’t provide for the aging population? We can’t even provide for the younger generations.
The people who will be old in 2043 are middle aged now. Sure as fuck we didn’t get those things…
You’re confusing the Boomers, who are currently tipping over the line into seniorhood if they haven’t already (the last of them will turn sixty-five around 2030) with Gen-Xers like me, who had to navigate a somewhat different landscape. We didn’t get the high-paying jobs or the cheap anything—that all went to our parents’ generation instead. So what were we supposed to do, invent a time machine so that we could go back and unsnarl the seeds of the future economy?
