Health care wait times should be the most important issue for CARP to focus on right now, according to respondents in last month’s CARP ACTION ONLINE survey.

Based on just over 1,500 responses, health care wait times was far and away the priority issue for our readers.

54 per cent chose health care wait times as the #1 issue, and a further 8 per cent said access to drugs should be the top priority.

The next highest score was for pensions, with 19 per cent of respondents choosing this as the issue that should be CARP’s top priority. Other scores were: environment, 7 per cent; LIFs, 5 per cent; mandatory retirement and grandparents’ rights, 1 per cent each; and “other”, 5 per cent.

Respondents made it clear that their main reason for belonging to CARP was that CARP advocates for issues that are important to them. 69 per cent chose this as the main reason for belonging, while 20 per cent cited the CARP magazine and 10 per cent cited the savings and other value-added benefits they get as CARP members.

Regardless of their main reason for belonging, respondents agreed that CARP does offer a strong line-up of savings and value-added benefits: 30 per cent said these are better than other associations or affinity groups, 62 per cent said they are about the same as other organizations, and only 8 per cent said they weren’t as good as other groups.

Respondents also agreed that CARP has done a good job of influencing government to bring in policies and programs that address their concerns: 84 per cent somewhat or strongly agreed, 13 per cent weren’t sure, and only 3 per cent somewhat or strongly disagreed.

99 per cent of the respondents said they were members of CARP.

CARP plans to undertake a more formal, statistically valid survey of its members in the fall.