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The need to prepare is real


We have been told for over a decade that we will have to deal with a spike in the number of people over the age 65. Since the early 1990s, the Government of Canada has been making small changes in order to deal with that demographic reality.

As a Financial Professional, though, it is just as important to look for other examples of what effect this will have on my clients. Consequently, I have been very interested in the dispute between New Brunswick Nursing Homes and their staff.

For some context, New Brunswick has one of the oldest populations in the country. Approximately 16 per cent of them are over the age of 65. Or put differently, given that there are 755,000 New Brunswickers, about 122,000 of them are of the age that Long Term Care matters. To put this into context the national average is 14%.

As a Financial Professional working in a province with a younger average age, this dispute shows me what might happen a decade or two from now and what I should recommend to my clients. The situation is simple: 46 non-profit nursing homes in New Brunswick involved in the labour dispute. Given that there are only 68 licensed nursing home in the province, one can see the scope of the problem is not small.

The workers at 46 nursing homes – which includes practical nurses, resident attendants and support service workers (such as dietary and laundry workers and some clerical workers) – are demanding one simple thing: a raise that will allow them to continue to be practical nurses, resident attendants and support service workers; a raise of more than 1%.

The only problem is who should pay for it. The Government of New Brunswick doesn’t want to. The Government has already said that they will not tax the people of New Brunswick more nor would they increase their Long Term Care budgets. Furthermore, the economy of New Brunswick will experience a meager 0.6 per cent in 2019 and growth is hampered by labour shortages in aquaculture, forestry and energy sectors; while the population continues to age. With not enough young people and not enough growth, there is very little new money for such an endeavour.

So, as many media outlets and commentators have noted, New Brunswick is either on the cusp or experiencing a nursing and nursing home staff shortage. Those shortages will be exasperated by more people to look after and less resources. For, while, After all, while, 16% of New Brunswickers are over 65, 36.8% are over 55 years in age. So cuts or no growth will continue to hamper the Long Term Care budgets, as the needs for Long Term Beds will continue to increase.

So what does this portend for aging Albertans? They need to prepare. According to the Alberta Continuing Care Association (ACCA), as of 2019, there are approximately, 470,000 seniors over the age of Alberta. That number will grow to 804,000 in 2025 and 1.13 million in 2035.

When the NDP came to power, they had goal of adding 2,000 beds. In 2016, after the NDP had been a power for a little over the year, Dave Campanella of the Parkland Institute said that “the NDP government’s proposal of 2,000 new beds is much too modest to be able to make a real significant difference in this sector.”

At the time, the NDP government had created 851 continuing care beds. Of those beds, 75% were geared to residents with few needs. This is called “supportive living”. What makes this worse was that of those same beds, 55% were provided by for-profit facilities whose operating funding was provided by Alberta Health Services (AHS)

Consequently, aging Albertans have to prepare not only for 20 to 30 years of retirement but they also have to prepare for the cost of transition and potentially Long Term Care after that. While, it is true that the AHS subsidizes some patients – as an example, a subsidized ward rate is $1,188.60/month – it is also true that waiting lists are getting longer. In many cases, it makes sense to prepare for to pay for some level of private care. Some private facilities can start as low as $3,000 and move to $10,000/mth. So either way, preparation is key.
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