2024 Federal Budget Roundup: Initiatives to Support Older Adults
On April 16, the Government of Canada tabled its 2024-2025 budget. Under the theme of “fairness for every generation,” Budget 2024 promises, “a fair chance to build a good middle class life—to do as well as your parents, or better—that’s the promise of Canada. For too many, especially for younger Canadians, that promise is at risk.”
While this framing centers millennials and Gen Z as top priorities for the federal government, in practice Budget 2024 makes significant investments across the life course that will address not only inequalities between generations, but also within generations.
Here are some of the highlights of Budget 2024 for older adults:
Housing
The landmark investment of the Budget 2024 is the new Canada Housing Plan, which aims to tackle Canada’s growing housing affordability crisis by unlocking 3.87 million new homes by 2031. The most substantial investments here focus on spurring more housing development by leveraging federally-owned public lands for housing development, increasing loans for purpose-built rentals, initiatives to accelerate construction, and investments to ensure critical infrastructure is keeping pace with housing development. There are a number of initiatives that benefit older adults, including:
$15 million over five years for a Tenant Protection Fund to enhance access to legal and informational services to tenants, the development of a new Canadian Renter’s Bill of Rights, and stricter regulations to prevent renovictions and promote transparency between landlords and tenants. The budget notes that these initiatives will benefit Canadians aged 24 - 34, 54% of whom are renters, but it is equally important to recognize their value to the 25% of households led by people aged 65+ who are renting. Many of these older adults are relying on a fixed income, making them particularly vulnerable to the impacts of steep rent increases and displacement through renovictions.
$976 million over five years under the Affordable Housing Fund to significantly build more affordable housing, supportive housing, and shelters, and $1.5 billion over five years for a Canada Rental Protection Fund to protect the stock of affordable housing. These initiatives are particularly important given that 17% of Canadians over the age of 65 are living in unaffordable housing.
$410 million over 4 years for a new Canada Secondary Suite Loan Program, providing $40,000 in low-interest loans to add secondary suites to homes. This is in addition to the Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit announced in 2022. The overwhelming majority of Canadians want to stay in their own home as they age. These initiatives could allow older adults to age in place by bringing in family members or tenants to assist with the cost of maintaining the home, and even potentially providing care and comradery. These programs also open up the possibility of older adults moving in with their adult children, with similar multi-generational living benefits.
Supporting caregivers and the care economy
Budget 2024 contains some exciting announcements to support caregivers and the care economy. This includes launching a Sectoral Table on the Care Economy to provide recommendations for how to better support the paid and unpaid work of those caring for our ageing population, children, and people with disabilities and chronic health conditions.
Additionally, the federal government will be initiating consultations on the development of a National Caregiving Strategy. The NIA looks forward to participating in these important consultations to advance both financial and non-financial supports for caregivers as outlined in the NIA’s Ageing in the Right Place report.
Home and community care, and long-term care
We are pleased to see the federal government will be introducing the Safe Long-Term Care Act to support new national long-term care standards. The NIA took an active role in developing the long-term care standards, including having Dr. Samir Sinha, the NIA’s Director of Health Policy Research serve as the Research Chair for the Technical Committee that developed the new HSO Long-Term Care Services Standard. NIA supported this work by conducting a series of evidence reviews, summarizing the findings of the national consultations that engaged close to 20,000 Canadians in three What We Heard Reports. Finally, after the release of the new Long-Term Care Services Standard, the NIA was invited by the federal, provincial and territorial governments to conduct and publish a jurisdictional review to understand the extent to which provincial and territorial governments were in alignment with the new national standards. We look forward to participating in the development of the new legislation and supporting its adoption and implementation across Canada to further advance Canada’s new National LTC Standards.
Budget 2024 also contains a summary of the Aging with Dignity agreements signed thus far with British Colombia, Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Nunavut, Yukon, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island and Québec between February and March 2024. This bilateral funding, which was originally announced in 2016 then topped up in 2021, provides $5.4 billion to improve home and community care and long-term care. We look forward to seeing forthcoming announcements from the remaining provinces and territories to ensure this funding is implemented rapidly to support the growing need for care for older adults in our communities who need these vital supports.
Health care, pharmacare and dental care
The federal government has made a number of recent announcements that are echoed in Budget 2024 that will improve health outcomes for older adults. These include:
In 2023, the federal government announced $200 billion over ten years for health care and Budget 2024 confirms that, as of March 2024, bilateral agreements are now in place with all provinces and territories to roll out this funding. This funding will improve access to primary care, acute and urgent care, diagnostics, medical technologies, and will support health human resourcing.
$1.5 billion over five years to launch the National Pharmacare Plan, beginning with contraceptives and diabetes medication. Given that over half of all prevalent cases of diabetes are among Canadians aged 65 plus, we are particularly pleased to see this investment in ensuring access and affordability to critical diabetes medications, as recommended in NIA’s report, Addressing the Silent Epidemic of Ageing with Diabetes in Canada.
Continued roll out of the Canada Dental Benefit to those aged 65 to 69 beginning in May 2024. Canadians aged 70 and above are already eligible, and 1.7 million people have been approved for the plan. As of May 2024, those eligible for the Benefit will be able to visit an oral health professional.
Canada Disability Benefit
After considerable advocacy by the disability community, Budget 2024 announced a long-awaited funding commitment for the Canada Disability Benefit. At $6.1 billion over six years, the benefit will provide a maximum of $2,400 annually, beginning in July 2025, to an estimated 600,000 eligible recipients aged 18 - 64 who hold a valid Disability Tax Credit certificate.
Close to one in four Canadians aged 55 – 64 are living with a disability, making this a particularly important new program for older adults. While we are pleased to see the Canada Disability Benefit is moving forward, the funding level falls woefully short of achieving the government’s stated intent, which was to design a new benefit for working-aged people with disabilities modeled after the Guaranteed Income Supplement (which, by comparison, provides a monthly maximum of $1,065 for a single individual) that will reduce poverty.
Pensions
The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) is a critical pillar in Canada’s retirement income system. Budget 2024 announced the government will amend CPP legislation in a number of areas, including providing a top-up to the Death Benefit for certain contributors, introducing a partial children’s benefit for part-time students, extending eligibility for the disabled contributors children’s benefit when a parent reaches age 65, and ending eligibility for a survivor pension to people who are legally separated after a division of pensionable earnings.
Budget 2024 announces the formation of a working group to “explore how to catalyze greater domestic investment opportunities” among Canada’s pension funds, which hold $3 trillion in assets, according to the Government of Canada. Pension funds have a fiduciary responsibility to invest in the best interests of the pension plan members, which often involves international diversification of investments. The working group’s mandate will include exploring domestic investment opportunities and consider the implications of removing the rule that limits pensions from having more than 30% of the voting shares in a domestic company. The NIA will be following this issue closely to ensure that the financial security of pension holders is prioritized.
Improving benefit uptake and navigation
While Budget 2024 contains a number of important investments in programs and services aimed to improve the wellbeing of Canadians, it also makes investments in making sure people can actually access these benefits. With Canadians leaving $1.7 billion on the table each year in unclaimed benefits, we are pleased to see investments in benefit uptake, including:
$2.9 billion over five years to migrate Old Age Security and Employment Insurance (EI) onto a secure, user-friendly platform.
$60 million over five years to expand community-delivered financial help services available to Canadians.
$25.1 million over five years to create a single sign-in portal for federal government services
Beginning in summer 2024, implementing the previously announced automatic tax filing pilot for low-income Canadians.
Highlights of Provincial/Territorial Budgets
Provincial and territorial governments released their budgets throughout February and March. We applaud Newfoundland and Labrador for making older adults a central focus of their budget by committing to a Senior’s Wellbeing Strategy. With $10 million allocated, the Seniors’ Wellbeing Plan includes grants for support services such as snow clearing and grocery delivery, home modifications, financial benefits to caregivers of older adults with complex needs living at home, enhanced access to influenza vaccines, and greater service navigation support through 211. These initiatives strongly align with the NIA’s Ageing in the Right Place recommendations, and we encourage other provinces to follow suit.
Another notable announcement was Manitoba, which will be establishing a Seniors’ Advocate to identify, review, and analyze issues and make recommendations for how to improve quality of life among older adults. Manitoba is the fourth province to introduce a Seniors’ Advocate, joining the ranks of British Columbia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. Having a designated advocate can help ensure the human rights of older adults are being realized.
Other provincial and territorial announcements included:
Major investments in health care and housing: Every province and territory focused extensively on health care and housing. The major focus areas among most provinces and territories were improving access to primary care, reducing pressures on overburdened hospitals, and addressing health workforce challenges. With respect to housing, every province and territory committed to investing in accelerating housing development, with Alberta and Nova Scotia announcing specific housing initiatives specifically targeted at older adults.
Long-term care: Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, PEI, and Newfoundland and Labrador announced significant investments in long-term care, including capital investments to build long-term care homes, add more beds and invest in equipment and repairs, increases to operating funding, increasing care hours and enhanced trainings and support for dementia-inclusive environments.
Home and community care: Canada’s five largest provinces, Ontario, Quebec, BC, Alberta and Manitoba, all announced significant investments in home and community care including increasing wages and offering more training supports for community care practitioners, increasing service hours, and home modification supports.
Income supports for older adults: A number of provinces and territories included affordability measures to support older adults such as reducing service fees and offering energy rebates, but only a small number provided a direct increase to income supports for older adults. While PEI, Nova Scotia, and Saskatchewan committed to increasing social assistance rates for up to the age of 64, only Ontario and New Brunswick announced increases specifically to provincial seniors’ income benefits. Quebec announced an elimination of the retirement pension reduction, which previously imposed step penalties on seniors with disabilities.