Yours truly turned 35 last month and quickly thought boy I'm getting old. It takes me longer to run the same distance now, stretching before basketball is a 20-minute affair as opposed to a quick five-minute limber up a few years back and now the plan in the gym is no longer to become "big like Arnold", rather it is to simply keep the spare tire looking like a bike tire as opposed to something found on a tractor at the plowing match.

But my personal crisis with aging will surely pass (probably in the next hour) whereas the issues facing Canadians aged 65 and over, heck those over 50 years of age will shortly have profound and pronounced effects on Canadian society. Not only will these issues draw more media attention in terms of public discourse, but they will most certainly command a larger share of public resources (read: Tax dollars).

Indeed this was part of the discussion yesterday at a full day forum on seniors' issues on Parliament Hill. Co-chaired by St. John, N. B., Progressive Conservative MP Elsie Wayne and Victoria-area (Saanich-Gulf Islands) Democratic Representative Caucus MP Gary Lunn, it attracted an interesting mix of participants. Among the group of advocates were representatives from the Canadian Association for the Fifty-Plus (formerly C.A.R.P.), the Royal Canadian Legion, the National Advisory Council on Aging, Liberal MP John McCallum, former conservative cabinet Minister turned passionate seniors advocate Flora McDonald, and other noteworthy individuals whose names escape me.

The session focused around two main themes: finances and health care.

Finance issues covered the sustainability of public pensions, income support for low-income seniors, access to affordable housing and the concern about the wide variation of financial literacy amongst our seniors, not to mention the rest of the population.

On health care, the issues were very similar to those that dominate the public debate at this point: waiting lists for surgeries and diagnostic imaging, access to the latest and greatest medicines and the cost to the system as well as support for the Canada Health Act (CHA) which took on the status of an icon during the discussion. As well support from several participants was expressed for the concepts of pharmacare and homecare.
Readers may recall a few years back that these ideas (pharmacare and homecare) were also forwarded by the National Forum on Health in 1997 after four years of and $12 million worth of consultation.

The irony is that these groups continue to profess die-hard support for the CHA yet it would not apply to homecare or pharmacare and provincial governments - despite the signing of the social union accord - would still be vehemently opposed to such federal program intrusions. Nonetheless they made eloquent points and no doubt foreshadowed their interventions into the coming health care debate with Roy Romanow's commission on the future of medicare and other consultations now underway.

But getting back to the premise of the forum, that being seniors' issues, discussion also focused on some political realities. One school of thought developed that you need a Minister responsible for seniors' issues. Given the coming demographic shift and the costs it will entail, participants noted that the increased clout and size of Canada's seniors population would be something the federal government couldn't ignore. Others cautioned that romantic notions of policy driven and impact cabinet ministers, a la C.D. Howe, were not reflective of today's public service. Indeed, Donald Savoie in his book Governing From the Centre makes the point that policy is now driven by senior (pardon the excessive use of the word senior) mandarins and unelected advisors in Ottawa. The forum's panelists agreed to disagree.

Another issue where opinions diverged was the need for housing and income support. Some argued for increases to guaranteed income supplement (GIS), old age security (OAS) and Canada pension plan (CPP) entitlements while others noted that changing the tax treatment of this income in relation to other retirement income would be more beneficial. Yours truly attempted to ground the discussion by noting that all policy proposals would ultimately be judged on our collective ability to pay.

In this sense, if groups want to press for increases to seniors entitlement payments, they should also identify where this money would come from (increased taxes, cuts to corporate welfare, economic growth, etc.). Since this is the decision that governments are forced to make, a more enlightened public policy debate should demand that advocacy groups identify the preferred trade-offs to finance their positions as well.

Of course this column cannot do justice to the comprehensive and informative discussion that took place over the span of six or so hours yesterday. But it can be a start. The coming demographic shift will inject seniors' issues with more frequency into broader debates about budget priorities, economic competitiveness and it goes without saying, health care.

In the end, seniors' issues are also taxpayer issues. With a growing and graying population we would all do well to pay attention to groups like the Canadian Association for the Fifty Plus, the Royal Canadian Legion and the National Advisory Council on Aging for they will increasingly be offering comment and analysis on a variety of government initiatives affecting your folks and mine.