Scantlebury Wealth Management

The field is quietest just before dusk, when the long shadows of the goals stretch across the grass. For Sarah, that patch of green had always been a sanctuary. It was where she had out-sprinted her anxiety during final exams, and where, during a fierce co-ed match in her university days, an accidental collision led to an apology, a post-game coffee, and eventually, a wedding band. Now, that same love of the game lived on in the frantic, joyful energy of her two sons. Watching them chase the ball from the sidelines, she could still hear the precise, familiar thwack of a perfect strike. Sarah’s life had been defined by that kind of momentum. She possessed a quiet, unstoppable drive, earning her Bachelor of Science and started her Masters, before pivoting and securing her doctorate. As a researcher at a major medical facility, her days were spent unweaving complex human puzzles, dedicated to finding answers that would save lives. She was successful, fulfilled, and deeply grounded by the ...

The Government of Ontario recently announced that they are making significant changes to the  availability of high-cost cancer medications.  Under its “Funding Accelerated for Specific  Treatments” (FAST) program, selected cancer drugs will get more public funding a year faster than is  already the case. A three-year pilot initiative, the FAST program aims to fast-track seven to ten high-priority cancer treatments each year. Currently, the following drugs are being funded through this program: Tagrisso ([osimertinib] for lung cancer), Scemblix (for a leukemia variant), Nubeqa (for prostate cancer), Calquence ([acalabrutinib tablets] for lymphoma), Opdivo with Yervoy (for colorectal cancer and for liver cancer).  To this we say, hurray.  However, in our view, this change highlights a few of the problems that cancer patients have to overcome when they receive a cancer diagnosis in Canada. The first problem is access. In Canada, provinces have a hard task: bri...

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. Th...