Minister Sonia Bélanger has just announced an addition to her work team in order to carry out her strategy, which involves several initiatives to be implemented immediately in order to improve the offer of services to seniors and to fulfill her commitments. We hope this time is the right one! At the recent symposium on Quebec’s plan in preparation for aging, Aging and Living Together 2024-2029, held in Quebec City last May, Minister Bélanger was present all day, which is rare from a minister and which was greatly appreciated.
In 2017, in Quebec, there were 1,553,112 people aged 65 or over, or 18.5% of the population, and 1,668 centenarians. We are witnessing a rapid aging of the population.
In an individualistic society, centered on the acquisition of fortune, on the means of countering the signs of aging, a society in which the daily newspapers devote several pages each day to automobiles and sports, we speak much less often of the elderly, their desire to stay at home, to no longer face ageism, to be able to circulate in safety or even the means of remaining employed, and so on.
But it is a tsunami that awaits us when we wake up, because a large cohort of heads and arms likely to contribute further to the development of our economy, our social services, and our research will be unable to do so. We know, and the reports are piling up to prove it to us, that we can do much better. The examples of what is happening in several countries, we know them. We know that models of home services, accessible housing, training upgrades and the adaptation of workplaces to their needs exist, but little is happening.
However, there are hundreds of initiatives emerging on the subject, particularly in several neighborhoods of Montreal, but we don’t talk about them much! When we look at the history of aging, we find that their perception of aging is a social construct that has changed for better or worse over time, from respect for older people in certain regions of the world or certain social groups to their exclusion, particularly that of women.
So, do we give ourselves the means to act by associating the so-called elderly people with the images that this conveys and, whatever the way of qualifying them, in the construction of public policies that concern them, let us worry more about health which, in a hospital-centered society, does not receive the human and financial resources commensurate with the crying needs that are there. Let’s avoid policies, measures, standards, etc., that set them aside!