A seniors advocate is blasting the $75 million Healthy Seniors Pilot Project as smoke and mirrors, and a waste of taxpayer money.
Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights Executive Director Cecile Cassista says it’s annoying that seniors continue to be ignored in this province.
“What are we researching?” Cassista fumes. “There’s been so many studies, we don’t go forward, we just go backwards, I’m saying they need to put in place a vision with an action plan, why are they continuing to study?”
Cassista says years of research, and studies by governments, councils, and committees have already been done, so why reinvent the wheel?
“Every government that gets elected, whether it’s federal or provincial are studying, and studying, and studying with no action plan,” she says. “This is just a waste of taxpayers money what they’re doing, let’s put it into homecare!”
Cassista says it’s “actually annoying that we continue to do all these things and they’re not listening to us,” adding that the voices of New Brunswickers are being completely ignored.
Cassista says seniors have already made it clear they want to live at home, and stay in their community near their friends and family.
She says that $75 million could be far more effectively spent on homecare, and helping seniors continue to live in their own homes instead of suffering in hospital beds, or in tiny cubicles in care homes.
