{"id":465,"date":"2008-09-25T16:44:55","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T21:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=465"},"modified":"2008-09-25T16:44:55","modified_gmt":"2008-09-25T21:44:55","slug":"their-favourite-outing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=465","title":{"rendered":"Their favourite outing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monique Muise<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forget the early-bird special and bingo night. When it comes to popular activities among seniors in Canada, nothing beats a trip to the ballot box.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a survey conducted last year by Statistics Canada, seventy-seven per cent of Canadians aged 65 to 74 said they had voted in the last federal, provincial and municipal elections, according to a Statistics Canada survey.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Stephen Harper may have had this figure in mind when he addressed a crowd of seniors at a retirement home in Trois-Rivieres, Que., last Thursday. During his speech, the Conservative leader promised to increase the amount of income that seniors can claim tax-free under the senior age credit by $1,000. The proposed change would mean that seniors could claim up to $17,673 of their income tax-free, said Harper, saving them an average of about $150 a year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The government, \u201cshould do more to allow seniors to keep a larger part of the money that they have worked hard to earn,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s announcement should not come as a surprise to anyone paying attention to demographic trends in Canada. The sheer number of seniors in the country, coupled with their high rate of political participation, means that they are playing an increasingly significant role in elections. According to Statistics Canada, the number of Canadians over the age of fifty-five now rests somewhere around 4.5 million, and that number is expected to double to almost nine million over the next quarter-century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By 2030, seniors will likely account for a full quarter of the country\u2019s population. As the baby boomer generation begins entering their retirement years and birth rates continue to stagnate, what has been dubbed the \u2018grey tsunami\u2019 shows no signs of abating.<\/span><\/p>\n

At a news conference in Winnipeg held less than an hour after Harper\u2019s address in Quebec, Jack Layton took a different approach, attempting to woo older Canadians with the promise of a $1 billion home-care program that would allow 100,000 more seniors to remain in their homes.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA generation of Canadians is burning out, caring for their parents as well as their kids,\u201d said Layton.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Conservative\u2019s tax-free income promise reflected the kind of fiscal caution that has been a central theme in the party\u2019s election campaign, but incumbent Liberal candidate and former critic for seniors, Carolyn Bennett, said that the pledge doesn\u2019t get to the heart of the difficulties facing older Canadians.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a litany of pretending that they care,\u201d she said. \u201cOn the income side, Canadian seniors are doing much better than before\u2026it doesn\u2019t matter what you do on the income side, unless you are really dealing head-on with things like affordable housing.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, St\u00e9phane Dion\u2019s Liberals have yet to make many major announcements aimed at senior citizens and their families in this election campaign. The one exception came last week when Dion mentioned off-hand during a speech that his government would increase the income supplement for seniors by ten per cent. According to the Liberal platform, released on Monday, the change would provide the nation\u2019s poorest seniors with up to $800 more a year in their pockets. Beyond that, the platform does touch on improvements to transit and housing for all low-income Canadians, but scarcely mentions <\/span>older Canadians as a separate group.<\/span> Party spokesperson Marc Roy explained that the Liberal Green Shift plan already includes tax breaks \u201cwhich benefit everyone, including seniors.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While last Thursday\u2019s sharp focus on seniors in the Tory and NDP camps was welcome, it was also likely fleeting, said Marie Smith, president of the United Senior Citizens of Ontario. According to Ms. Smith, issues pertaining to seniors are often glossed over in election campaigns, reduced to a few targeted promises and a smattering of news items.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are the grey power, but the government is ignoring us as seniors,\u201d she said. \u201cI think they\u2019re just concentrating on getting one-up on the other parties\u2026and how far do their promises go anyway?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Smith added that governments need to pay particular attention to widows like herself, who must pay the same bills they did when their husbands were alive, but with far less income.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt always seems to stop at the top\u2026and the money goes to the wrong people,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can try to put their feet to the fire after (the election), but you know how that goes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Monique Muise is a student in the Master of Journalism program at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monique Muise Forget the early-bird special and bingo night. When it comes to popular activities among seniors in Canada, nothing beats a trip to the ballot box.\u00a0 In a survey conducted last year by Statistics Canada, seventy-seven per cent of Canadians aged 65 to 74 said they had voted in the last federal, provincial and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-student-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":467,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}