City hall extends consultation on seniors policy
Bending to public pressure, Mayor Valérie Plante announced on Friday that her administration is extending its public consultation on how the city can better serve senior citizens to March 15.
The city has also added two inperson consultation sessions in the west-end of the city, where seniors said they were being shut out of the hearings after city hall announced the process last month.
“We’ve heard the comments of our constituents who wish to take part in our participatory process,” Plante said in a press release on Friday. “It’s important for my administration to gather the opinions of the greatest possible number of Montrealers because their contribution will influence our future actions and make them more pertinent and beneficial to our seniors.”
The added consultation dates are in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough and Pierrefonds.
In January, the Plante administration announced its plan to consult the public as the city develops a new, three-year Plan d’action municipal pour les personnes ainées 2018-2020. The consultation, including an online survey and inperson consultation sessions, was to wrap up at the end of February.
However, the process was quickly criticized as failing to encourage participation by anglophone and immigrant seniors, many of whom are more comfortable in English than in French and many of whom live in the west end of the city.
The criticism included that the information on the city’s website was in French only, the online survey was in French only and none of the original four consultation meetings were located in areas where large numbers of Englishspeaking seniors live.
The Plante administration at first had the material translated into English in response to the criticism, and then added an English session at the Cummings Centre in Côte-des-Neiges–N.D.G. this coming Monday.
A second session in the west end has now also been added on March 7, at the Centre culturel de Pierrefonds, in the West Island.
The two-week extension of the entire process comes after organizations representing seniors called for the consultations to be extended into spring given that seniors have difficulty getting around in winter.
Concordia researchers Kim Sawchuk, who is director of Ageing, Communication, Technologies (ACT), and Dr. Shannon Hebblethwaite, who is director of the engage Centre for Research on Aging, wrote to Plante earlier in February to express their concerns with the consultation process.
Two-thirds of seniors have mobility issues and many have impaired vision or are hard of hearing, Sawchuk said at the time.
Montreal and hundreds of municipalities across Quebec are developing action plans and policies to improve living conditions for seniors as part of the province’s Municipalité amie des aînes (MADA) program.
Montreal city council is to adopt the city’s plan in May.
The next consultation dates are: Monday, Feb. 26 at the Cummings Centre, 5700 Westbury Ave., 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 27 at the Centre Jean-Claude Malépart, 2633 Ontario St. E., 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Feb. 28 at the municipal library in St-Léonard, 8420 Lacordaire Blvd., 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, March 7, at the Centre culturel de Pierrefonds, 13850 Gouin Blvd. W., hours not yet confirmed.
Registration is not mandatory to participate in the hearings.
The online survey is available at www.makingmtl.ca/seniors. A paper version is also available. To request assistance with the survey or to answer orally, call 438-3201298.