OTTAWA – POLITICS – In Thunder Bay, more than one in five residents are 65 or older, which means federal debates over income supports, housing costs, health-care access and ageing policy have immediate local relevance. A Conservative Party press release points to genuine concerns, but the strongest version of the story is the evidence itself, not the exaggerations wrapped around it.
The Conservative Party says older Canadians are being squeezed by rising costs, weaker retirement readiness and gaps in health-care access. Much of it draws on real findings from the National Institute on Ageing’s 2025 Ageing in Canada Survey, but several claims blur the difference between Canadians aged 50 and older and seniors, or stretch what the underlying data actually says.
That matters in Thunder Bay, where 27,045 people — 21.9 per cent of the census metropolitan area population — were 65 or older in 2021.
What the numbers behind the release show
The NIA survey was conducted online from June 27 to July 24, 2025, with a representative sample of 6,001 Canadians aged 50 and older. It found that 31 per cent named the cost of living as their top concern.
It also found that 20 per cent met the survey’s material deprivation threshold, meaning they could not afford two or more essentials such as regular new clothes, adequate heating or an unexpected expense. But the release’s wording that 20 per cent are “below the poverty line” needs context: the survey says that finding comes from the Material Deprivation Index, while Canada’s official poverty measure is the Market Basket Measure.
The opening partisan line about “more than a decade of Liberal mismanagement” is political opinion, not a fact checkable economic measure.
The inflation portion is directionally supported, though it needs a timeframe. Statistics Canada said prices for food purchased from stores rose 5.0 per cent year over year in December 2025 and 4.8 per cent in January 2026. Reuters also reported that Canada had the highest food inflation rate in the G7 in December. Still, the release does not specify the period it is referring to, and the inflation data alone do not prove a single political cause.
Retirement figures are mostly supported
On retirement readiness, the Conservative release is largely backed by the NIA survey. The report says 43 per cent of Canadians aged 50 and older who were still working said they could not afford to retire when they wanted, up from 37 per cent in 2022. It also says 29 per cent felt they could afford to retire at their desired time, down from 35 per cent in 2022, and that 22 per cent had saved $5,000 or less for retirement. Those figures are in the survey.
Health-care claim needs a correction
The health-care section overstates the evidence. The release says almost half of Canadians aged 50 and older were unable to access the medical services they needed because they could not get an appointment. The NIA report says something narrower: 70 per cent of respondents who needed care said they got it when they needed it in 2025, while nearly one in three could get care only some of the time, rarely or never.
Among those facing access problems, 47 per cent said the main barrier was being unable to get appointments with health-care providers. That 47 per cent figure describes a reason among people already struggling to get care; it does not apply to all older Canadians.
The home-care line also needs a qualifier. The survey found that 41 per cent of respondents who were unable to get needed home care said long wait times were the barrier, up from 23 per cent in 2024. That supports the release’s “almost doubled” wording, but not as a measure of all seniors.
Social isolation findings are broadly accurate
The release is on stronger ground when it points to social isolation and reduced social participation. The NIA report says weekly participation in social, recreational or group activities fell to 33 per cent in 2025 from 39 per cent in 2024.
It also says 49 per cent felt they could participate as often as they wanted, down from 52 per cent a year earlier. Loneliness remained high, with 57 per cent of Canadians aged 50 and older reporting they felt somewhat or very lonely, unchanged since 2022. Positive feelings about ageing also declined to 57 per cent in 2025 from 62 per cent in 2024.
Feed Ontario reference is real, but Ontario-specific
The line about seniors “choosing between groceries and medication” does appear in Feed Ontario’s Hunger Report 2025 material. But it is advocacy language on an Ontario hunger-report webpage, not a national survey result about all Canadian seniors. Feed Ontario says more than 1 million people used a food bank in Ontario between April 2024 and March 2025, and its full report says seniors remain the least likely age group to use food banks, even as the share of Ontario seniors relying on food banks has doubled since 2019-20.
Why it matters in Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario
For Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario, the larger issue is not the partisan packaging but the underlying pressure points: affordability, retirement security, home care and access to primary care.
