Update from our Annual Report

Seniors Task Force Report in PIA's 2010-2011 Annual Report

Click here for the Seniors Task Force Report in PDF

Click here to access our full annual reports

Plain text of the Seniors Task Force Report:

Seniors should have the support they need to stay in their homes as long as possible and to get quality public care provided for them as their health requires. Even though there are a growing number of seniors, the province is not investing in building a public seniors’ care system. Rather, the government is continuing with its policy of transferring the delivery of seniors care to private, expensive and largely unregulated home care and assisted living facilities.

While the province brought in the new Health Act, public pressure from the task force and others seems to have successfully delayed the government’s plans to consolidate the various pieces of health legislation, including the elimination of the Nursing Home Act. Noel Somerville and the Seniors Task Force members have done an excellent job educating the public about the privatization of seniors care through public events, rallies, media interviews and opinion editorials. The task force continues to mobilize our volunteer base of “MLA Contact Teams” to engage the politicians in their constituencies to address seniors care issues.

The Task Force will be actively involved in the Join Together Alberta campaign as it advocates building a quality public seniors’ care system. The latest provincial budget does not provide enough funding to address the lack of qualified staffing to meet the growing seniors population. The stories of the impact on seniors and communities of the underfunding and privatization of seniors care need to be brought out into the public discourse if we are going to succeed in our efforts to change the direction this government is going with seniors care. The Task Force is also developing a strategy to reach out to all of the leadership candidates and existing leaders of the main provincial political parties to see where they stand on seniors care issues.

Also available: Last year's (2009-2010) Task Force Report in PDF