Sep 21, 2015
By Jane Brown
Will the federal government leaders react by coming up with an election plan to deal with the cost of aging?
A new Conference Board of Canada study says it would cost the federal government $3.3 billion in the next year to implement three strategies to cope with the wave of aging baby boomers. The report says that price would increase to $17.5 billion in the next five years.
The study’s authors say the first strategy would be to give provinces and territories additional money for healthcare based on the age of their populations. This would require the feds to boost funding to the Canada Health Transfer. Conservative Leader, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is promising to renegotiate the terms of the CHT when it expires in 2017. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau says if elected, he would negotiate the terms of an adjusted Canada Health Transfer with the provinces in 2017. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says he would reverse Conservative cuts to provincial health transfers.
The other strategies recommended in the report are to pay for the cost of medications for all households that currently spend at least $1500 a year on drugs and making two key caregiver tax credits refundable.
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