City of Toronto’s new website dishonours seniors

In December 2017, the City of Toronto proudly unveiled their revitalized website, designed to be service-focused and citizen-centric, visually appealing, action-oriented and easy to navigate. What a great opportunity to showcase the age-friendly city that Toronto is trying to become! So I was eager to check out the section on Seniors. I was in for a shock.

Feel free to follow me along on the tour. The new homepage, https://www.toronto.ca, has a link called Community & People. That sounds like the place to find Seniors, so let’s click on Community & People. We get a drop-down menu with a grab bag of topics including, among others, Children, Youth & Parenting; Animals & Pets; Health & Wellness; Housing & Shelter; but no Seniors. It took me a little while, but I eventually I found it, tucked away under Housing & Shelter. See it for yourself; it’s all about finding housing, long term care, or home help. One of the Housing links, called Seniors & Disabled, mentions seniors in the title, so let’s take a look at it. More about home support, with just two additional senior-relevant items under Related Information: a falls prevention program that caregivers can sign up for, and a link to the Toronto Seniors’ Forum. Other than that, the City of Toronto sees us as nothing but a housing issue.

It’s hard to believe that this is a city that took the trouble to create a Seniors’ Strategy back in 2013. Using the framework provided by the World Health Organization’s Guide to Global Age-Friendly Cities, they proclaimed some lofty goals, based on equity, inclusion, respect and quality of life. The report covered health, housing, transportation, recreation and community programs, safety and security, accessibility and civic engagement. So where are the links to resources for seniors in these areas? Even the Strategy itself is hidden away under the Toronto Seniors’ Forum. And if you’re lucky enough to stumble on it and click on the Toronto Seniors’ Strategy link, all you get is the decision to adopt the strategy in 2013. What’s happened to it since? Well, there have been progress reports, but there’s no sign of them here. And there are efforts underway to create a new strategy, but there’s no mention of that anywhere either. In any case, regardless of what the Seniors' Strategy may say, it's obvious that word has not gotten out.

It’s pretty discouraging to see the City of Toronto present this narrow, reductive view of seniors to the world in 2018. Many other cities have adopted a much more welcoming, holistic approach on their websites. To see how it’s done, just check out Hamilton or Vancouver or Ottawa or Edmonton or Mississauga or Laval.

I can’t imagine what the Toronto Seniors’ Forum members have been doing with their time, but they might as well stay home. Judging from their website, an age-friendly Toronto couldn’t be farther from anyone’s mind at City Hall.