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home / 世界杯决赛2022

ford: we knew baby boomers were getting older but we did nothing to prepare for it

isn’t it rich that it took a pandemic to focus on what was right under our noses for all these years?

by calgary herald

may 4 2022
read time 3 minute read
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ford: we knew baby boomers were getting older but we did nothing
by: catherine ford

let me apologize if the latest canadian census about aging comes as a surprise. but under what rock have you been living?

perhaps generations x, y and z haven’t paid much attention to the fact of canada’s aging population, especially to the percentage of seniors still having the effrontery to be alive, well and vocal. count me in that latter group.
anyone over the age of reason and with a whiff of sense knew this was coming; knew at some point the pendulum would swing to the over-65 side. anyone, that is, who was or is now a politician, identified usually as those men and women who think in four- or five-year chunks of time. their focus is on the next election, not on what is better for everyone in the long run. they have turned their backs on the tsunami and some of them are now hypocritically wringing their hands at the state of elder care in this country.
alberta has promised 1,515 new care spaces and $3.7 billion in operating funds with $204 million in capital expenditure over the next three years.
isn’t it rich that it took a pandemic to focus on what was right under our noses for all these years? until now, planning for the future by spending money to build and maintain quality old-age care never ranked high on the getting elected popularity scale.
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let me be as plain as possible: the pandemic may have shown in stark and ugly relief how abysmal elder care is in canada if you lack the means to buy better treatment, but none of this is new or news.
i can certainly understand if those born in the last 22 years remain blissfully unaware of the generational burden coming their way. they will eventually have to face the ugly fact there might not be enough of them of working age to support the ever-growing numbers of seniors. even more serious, the fact that modern medicine, vaccines and such things we take for granted, like clean water, have helped add two generations of people at the older end of life.
it is not unusual these days to read of someone celebrating a 100th birthday and when the world’s oldest person, 119-year-old kane tanaka died in japan last month, few paid attention to the fact more will follow her into extreme age. we are not only getting older but getting healthier and thus, living longer. in the 2021 census, statistics canada shows the number of canadians aged 100 or older has increased from just 1,065 in 1971 to 9,540. most of those (7,705) are women, so that explains my increased interest.
i’m not blaming generation z for their ignorance. i’m not sure i understood when was 21 or 22. i knew i would get older, but was unaware of the wave of people pressing on my back, as the baby boomer generation — which author landon y. jones described as a “pig passing through a python” — was growing up. my two younger siblings belonged to that cohort.
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the question is not “who” but “why”? it has been painfully obvious since the canadian baby boom started in 1946 or so (later than the u.s.) that at the end of their lives, there would be a greater need for elderly health care, accommodation and a host of other necessities for the last 25 or more years they will live.
we knew this and did nothing.
scholars and social scientists (they could be one and the same) have been warning of this for as long as i can remember. there are scores of studies and books on canada’s changing demographics and the challenges such present.
david k. foot and daniel stoffman’s boom, bust & echo (1996) outlined exactly what to expect and do about the generational shift we are in now. consider this prescient statement: “the major need is affordable nursing homes.”
the book is subtitled “how to profit from the coming demographic shift” and its lessons were there for all politicians as well as capitalists. guess which group foresaw possibilities?
catherine ford is a regular columnist for the calgary herald.

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