Nuance 15

I was having a chat yesterday with the friend of one of my clients. He is about my age, early sixties, and works in a physically demanding trade. Like almost all working Canadians, he is basically stuck in his occupation until he turns sixty-five and can then begin to collect his full old age security and other benefits. like a lot of people of a certain age, he isn't as robust as he used to be and his work has become difficult and onerous. In this regard I feel lucky because I don't have to do a lot of physical work in my occupation, outside of going for long walks with clients. I am also in good physical condition, but I'm still doubtful that I could endure a full day, much less a full week, of being a plumber or a construction worker. There are limits that, being of a certain age, I am no longer interested in testing. Maybe I don't have a heart condition, but I still am aware that things tend to wear more quickly and heal more slowly after forty, and I am not about to end up in hospital just from wanting to prove something. To my friend, I mentioned that our government needs to enact policies that will help grandfather (pardon the pun) persons of a certain age into retirement. I don't see why they couldn't come up with the funding to help assist people older than fifty towards a gentler decline. If we want to take things a bit easier, then why not subsidize us for a shorter work week even before we hit fifty-five and the ravages of time really start to tell on us? There should be a universal suffrage program for gradually increasing financial support to older Canadians over fifty until they reach retirement age. This should include a full package of housing assistance, from rent subsidies to mortgage assistance that will ensure that no one in this country should end up homeless or hungry just because we are getting older. Maybe this would be expensive, at first, but the long term savings would make it all worthwhile: there would be fewer emergency and health care and shelter expenditures because we would already be much better cared and provided for. Neither should subsidized housing be the exclusive purview of people on low incomes or with disabilities. With the cost of housing being perpetually through the roof in this country, and especially here in that pretty dumb blonde of cities, Vancouver, there are going to be precious few individuals who are not going to be needing this kind of assistance. I still believe that anyone earning less than fifty grand a year should not have to pay any more than thirty percent of their income for rent, and if they are living in a high rental building, then the government ought to step forward with a program of subsidies in order to keep them housed which, in the long run, will still be less expensive to the taxpayer than the horrendous fallout of ending up homeless. We don't have to remain hostage to corporate greed in this city, nor anywhere else in Canada, but people's thinking is really going to have to change if we are going to see any significant developments or change. I have been, myself, incredibly lucky. Though my income is pathetically unliveable, my rent is cheap, thanks to BC Housing, and cheaper still, now that I am getting early CPP. Why cannot this largess be expanded and extended to anyone in this country who is needing it? Older working adults, for example. Earning low incomes in physically and mentally demanding occupations. Other low wage workers who, like anyone else, deserve a decent place to live. We really have to start holding our government's feet to the fire and the thinking of a lot of the people who vote them into power also needs to change. Especially now with this growing increase of food bank dependency and homelessness, and a lot of the people who make up this cipher are people older than fifty who have spent their entire lives busting their asses for this country. And for what?