The federal government doesn’t seem to understand that many of these veterans don’t have 18 months to wait, Layton said.
“That means some of them won’t make it. It’s tragic and we are calling on the government to move quickly.”
Layton and others emphasized that Sheardown’s situation is not unique. Veterans and other elderly Canadians are affected by a chronic shortage of long-term beds across the country.
“There are huge numbers of people who are facing this precise challenge and they don’t even have a war career to help them,” said Susan Eng, vice-president of CARP, an advocacy group for older Canadians. “The point is, if somebody like him can’t get the help that they need, then what hope do they have?”
New Democrat MP Paul Dewar, who holds the downtown Ottawa riding where the Sheardowns live, said governments of all stripes like to praise Canada’s war veterans “but those are just words and they mean little when a gentleman is trying to find basic services.”
“It is a national embarrassment,” he added.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government would rather spend $16 billion on new fighter jets “that Canada doesn’t need than make sure there are long-term care beds for veterans who we laud in the abstract but ignore in the particular.”
The measure of a country is how it looks after its soldiers when they come home, Ignatieff added.
“The test of whether you actually respect what this man did is whether you look after him when he has Alzheimer’s disease. When the shouting dies away and the flags are pulled down, he’s still in his hospital bed and that’s the test of whether you care about someone. They’ve just got to do something. It’s ridiculous,” he said.
“If people serve your country, you take care of them, period.”
Support for seniors
While the lion’s share of support for low-income seniors comes from federal programs, most provinces have top-up programs to provide extra support to those receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS).
Keywords: veterans, healthcare
