As B.C.’s and Canada’s first independent seniors’ advocate, Isobel Mackenzie took over a Victoria office 16 months ago that was empty except for a computer, stapler and pencil sharpener.
Now she’s knee-deep in everything from affordable housing to overuse of anti-psychotic drugs, elder abuse and the failure of government subsidies to reach those who need them most.
“My office has been working over this past year to gather the data necessary to begin producing an annual monitoring period,” she writes in her just-released first annual report.
“This will essentially be a scorecard for government and service providers to see how they are doing in a number of key service areas.”
She also plans to check out the challenges of Fair PharmaCare — seniors need to have filled out their income tax, for one thing, and not all elderly do so — the efficiency of home-support programs and the first survey of all residents of long-term residential care homes on quality of life.
Mackenzie said she is already preparing for the Oct. 19 federal election by sending out word to HandyDart staff to ensure they ask seniors taking lifts to voting stations to pack proper ID, given voting cards long used by seniors are no longer accepted.
Looking back over the year, Mackenzie said she is “too old to be stunned by anything,” but was surprised to hear the degree to which housing is an issue with seniors. Even though 80 per cent of seniors own their homes, they may struggle with low incomes and the ability to meet their expenses, she said, and do not know they can defer their annual property taxes.
“There are 820,000 seniors in B.C., and 150,000 of them are in economic need and 80,000 of them in real economic need,” she said.
Sixty per cent with incomes under $30,000 did not know about tax deferment, compared to 25 per cent of seniors with incomes over $60,000.
She would also like to see a “Homeowner Expense Deferral Account” program to help them defer costs such as home insurance or a new roof or even hydro bills, which could be collected by the province after the house was eventually sold.
For the 20 per cent of seniors who rent, the way the provincial Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters subsidy is applied is “a real problem,” she said. The subsidy is based on a maximum rent of $667 for a single person outside Vancouver, even though rents in Victoria are higher, she said.
The majority of seniors over age 75 did not know even know about the SAFER subsidy. B.C. Housing estimates that 7,000 seniors eligible for the SAFER subsidy do not apply for it, she said, with a survey by her office confirming that “awareness is lowest among those the program is most designed to help.”
Despite the need for more action on behalf of seniors on many fronts, one of Mackenzie’s strongest stances is that the rest of society must remember that seniors know what they want and are entitled to have those wishes respected.
“We have to do a better job of listening to seniors, especially when it comes to their decisions or desires to live at risk,” she said. “So even though we may think we know what’s best for them, they know what they want and in the end what’s best for any of us is that we can have what we want.”
