STEPHEN PATE
P.E.I. Disability Alert
Editor:
There are 9,000 seniors on P.E.I. living with a disability according to Statistics Canada. They are our mothers and fathers, our grandparents, neighbours and friends. We meet and see them everywhere.
The province of P.E.I. doesn’t help seniors with disabilities under the Disability Support Program like it does people under 65 years old.
Statistics Canada reports that more than 40 per cent of seniors have a disability. When you reach 75 years of age, every second senior has at least one disability. It doesn’t mean they are disabled and can’t get out and about.
Last week I had lunch with a couple who are 75 plus years old. They have been active mentally and physically all their lives.
As we were eating, he talked about using two hearing aids in a movie theatre. If you need a hearing aid, that’s a disability.
I looked at his glasses. Where he once only had reading glasses now he has thick lenses that indicate a vision disability.
Then he told me he has a pace-maker because his heart slows down. “It’s the thing that keeps me living,” he said.
“Our son calls him the Bionic Man,” his wife laughed. “His parts are worth more than he is.”
My senior friend has three disabilities, at least one of them very severe. If your life depends on an assistive device, that is a very severe disability.
He was also worried about the cost of all these things. He has been retired for a decade and a half. They were living on small pensions.
This is a typical senior couple — one of them has a disability and in this case three disabilities. Sixty per cent of adults with disabilities have three or more disabling conditions. They live on dwindling resources and find technical aids expensive.
The province promised to cover my friends and their fellow seniors under the Disability Support Program. Will it live up to its promise?
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