Tell your Saskatchewan election candidates to prioritize older adult health care using Federal Retirees’ online tools.
The Saskatchewan 2020 provincial election will take place on Oct. 26. With this short fall election, Federal Retirees is focusing its efforts on making the biggest impact—and that means getting its members involved in sharing our message!
Send a letter to the editor now.
Federal Retirees needs your help to get the word out on the issues that are important to older adults and Saskatchewanians generally, especially as it relates to health care and older adult care. So, we’ve prepared a few tools to help you do just that.
Key priorities
“Saskatchewan 2020 Election: Stand up for older adult care and well-being” is a short document outlining Federal Retirees’ key priorities for health and older adult care in Saskatchewan. You’ll also find some questions you can ask candidates about health and older adult care.
Saskatchewan needs to respond actively to the needs of its older citizens in a manner that promotes positive aging within communities and establishes a health-care system that provides a full continuum of care, covering in-home care as well as longer-term care facilities. This will require the provincial government to create and implement a comprehensive seniors strategy to replace its current patchwork approach with an integrated and coherent set of policies aimed at positive aging.
This provincial seniors strategy should be based on three pillars:
- The development and funding of health and lifestyle policies, with an emphasis on the role of communities and enabling older citizens to live within their community and within their homes for as long as possible.
- Working with the federal government to develop and implement national standards for long-term care and home care across the continuum of older adult care, and ensure appropriate funding tied to meeting standards.
- The creation of an independent-from-government seniors advocate position, or greater power and more funding for the minister responsible for seniors, to make sure the needs and priorities of older adults are more effectively represented within and addressed by governments. This position would oversee the implementation of the seniors strategy and would hold current and future governments accountable for its outcome.
Download your copy of “Saskatchewan 2020 Election: Stand up for older adult care and well-being.”
Letter to the editor
We’ve also put together a letter to the editor tool, which you can find at the end of this post. Chances are you have a good understanding of local media outlets in your city or town—the papers and websites that are most popular or most likely to publish letters to the editor. These letters are a great way to highlight our concerns with the public and generate discussions about important election issues.
You may customize the letter to make additions of your own (keeping it respectful, factual and concise). You may also copy the text, paste it into a document on your computer and submit it electronically to your local newspaper by email or through newspaper webpages.
Even with a short election cycle, we can have an impact by working together to get the word out on these important issues!