The B.C. budget, unveiled on Tuesday, impacts everyone in the province, and the B.C. seniors advocate says the aging population is facing some new challenges.
“These projects aren’t nice-to-haves,” Dan Levitt told Global News.
“These are needed beds that are urgently needed from family caregivers who are really being pushed to the edge caring for someone.”
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B.C. Seniors Advocate on province hitting pause on long-term care home projects
As part of the budget, B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey announced the province is pausing some infrastructure projects, including seven long-term care facilities in Abbotsford, Campbell River, Chilliwack, Kelowna, Delta, Fort St. John, and Squamish.
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Levitt said someone is already waiting an average of 10 months to get into long-term care.
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“We need to urgently build long-term care,” he said.
“We’re currently short 2,000 beds, while 7,000 people are waiting. You fast forward a decade from now, when one in four British Columbians will be over the age of 65, and by then the Ministry of Health predicts we’re going to need 16,000 beds.”
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Levitt said now is not the time to be slowing down investments in long-term care or home supports.
He said the province needs to be supporting children and growing families, but also supporting the aging demographic.
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“We certainly understand that some of those projects were quite expensive, almost $2 million a bed,” Levitt said.
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“In some cases, around $1.8 million a bed. The new numbers they’re closer to $1 million in some cases. But it’s still more expensive for government to build their owned and operated than for the private sector, for example, for for-profit or non-profit to build.”
Levitt said the province should be building homes that feel like a house, not an institution.
“There’s much more we need to do to have a provincial robust seniors plan that includes aging a place where you live,” he said.
Levitt said that over the past decades, the province has not built enough beds to supply the growing demand for seniors.
“If you think about it, in the past five years, we built five per cent more additional beds at a time when the population of seniors increased 19 per cent,” he said.
“Over the next decade, we’ll have 26 per cent more seniors and only 3,000 additional beds, about 10 per cent new bed stock.
“Family members are the ones who are hurting the most by the lack of investments in seniors care and their family members who are waiting for those beds are the ones really who are paying the price.”
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