As we start to age, it’s fatal, we start thinking about the future, about the options that await us when our health deteriorates. The least we can say is that the options are not numerous and frankly depressing. Besides, it is one thing to worry about yourself, but it is much worse when you consider this decline together.
On top of that, all of this can be even scarier depending on where you live in Canada. In Newfoundland and Labrador there is no guarantee that a couple will enter a home together, especially if one spouse needs more care than the other.
Early in my career as a columnist for this newspaper, I remember hinting at a couple so torn apart after more than 50 years of marriage. Imagine that nothing has changed! Some recent examples demonstrate this. However, in Nova Scotia, a law, passed in 2021, prohibits the health care system from separating couples who must enter nursing homes. As far as I know, it is the only one of our four provinces to protect our elders in this way.
Which brings me to the broad subject of care for the elderly, which varies according to the provinces, the governments in charge, their goodwill or their expertise in the matter. While I understand we live in a federation, I find it hard to understand that you can be treated differently depending on whether you live in Quebec, Alberta or Prince Edward Island. Apart from the certainty of being treated, like everyone else, in any hospital in the country in an emergency, why do services for the elderly vary so much from province to province? And, an even more pressing question: why are there so few national standards in this area?
After all, aren’t we equal in the face of sickness and the burden of an aging body? Ah, I already hear someone exclaiming “it’s a question of the financial means of each province!” Which brings me to one last observation: the model followed in the countryside for the care of the elderly no longer holds: they are crammed into increasingly large, impersonal and depressing buildings, they are cut off from their families, from their environment, and prevented from continuing to contribute to the community. However, we know that in other parts of the world there are models that are much more humane AND more economically efficient than ours.
As long as provinces continue to protect their sacrosanct “provincial jurisdictions,” as long as the Canadian government fails to enforce national standards and a pan-Canadian model of aged care, we will remain at the mercy of a nightmarish end-of-life. This difficult debate is long overdue. And as the aging population continues to grow, it undoubtedly falls to us, members of the so-called (wrongly!) ‘Golden Age’ club, to launch it!
