Advocacy - CARP

Advocacy Priorities

COVID-19 exposed the dreadful inadequacies in our Long-Term Care. But the truth is Long-Term Care has been broken for decades.

Long-term care in Canada needs to be re-built from the ground up, with home and community care as the foundation.

View the campaign

The Canadian Cancer Society says that cancer, which is the leading cause of death in Canada, will strike more than two in five Canadians, and that approximately 90% of those who develop cancer are aged 50 and over.Providing quality and timely cancer care therefore has to be a health system priority, whether there is a pandemic or not.

View the campaign

Seniors across Canada are dying every year from highly preventable illnesses. We know that taking a proactive approach to preventative health care is the best way to ensure seniors live longer lives at home, where they want to be.

CARP is demanding that best-in-class vaccines for seniors be publicly funded, and easily accessible, in all provinces and territories.

View the campaign

Current laws don’t protect pensioners, leaving many seniors destitute should their former employers declare bankruptcy.

CARP has been advocating with allies to safeguard defined benefit pensions for retirees.

Find out more

Seniors who have RRIFs are concerned about their retirement savings due to declining markets and projected losses for an extended and unpredictable period of time. This issue is compounded by the fact that seniors are living longer than ever before, and many depend on their RRIF to provide sustained income throughout their later years. Seniors deserve to be in control of their retirement savings.

View the campaign

Featured Video

Message from our Chief Policy Officer

Actions speak louder than words (and the words can be deafening)

In the advocacy world, we have a saying: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” It’s an oldie but a goodie, and has never been more true than it is today.

Governments and bureaucrats love to talk. It’s what they do, and it’s not inherently bad (plans have to start somewhere). Talking has its time.

But that time has passed.

When we watched with bated breath as Ontario released it’s 2020 budget (more on that here) we wanted to see a tangible action plan to protect seniors in long-term care. We got a ton of words (and token promises that won’t manifest for four years).

When we finally saw the first real step toward establishing a national standard of long-term care (read more here), it took the form of more talking (presumably over Zoom, where most talking seems to now take place). We’re still waiting for the next step.

When the Ontario Independent Commission into Long-term Care released its interim recommendations (see them here), which it released ahead of the full report out of due urgency, we got a strong sense of deja-vu. It was like listening to our own words being recited back to us—demands we’ve been bringing to the government for years. 

More noise.

C.A.R.P. is about action. Our job is to cut through all of the talk—promote equitable access to health care, financial security, and freedom from ageism—and demand those changes happen.

Luckily, with your support, we’re doing that every day. Sometimes it’s hard to hear your own voice above the chatter but, rest assured, C.A.R.P. is making the politicians listen to our members, because that’s what we do.

Thank you for lending your ear to our updates and your voice to our cause.

Warm Regards,

– Bill VanGorder, Chief Policy Officer (pro tem)

Advocacy News