Question Period Note: NEW HORIZONS FOR SENIORS PROGRAM

How does the New Horizons for Seniors Program community-based stream support Canadian seniors and their communities?

The Government of Canada is committed to enhancing the inclusion of seniors in all aspects of Canadian life.

The New Horizons for Seniors Program supports local projects led by and for seniors – making a difference in communities and helping to improve seniors’ quality of life.

An additional $20 million was invested in the program -- $10 million a year for two years -- beginning in 2022-23, to support more community-based projects.

Over $61 million has been spent this year for over 3,000 of these projects across Canada. A new Call for Proposals is open now and will close on September 28th.

The New Horizons for Seniors Program is a Grants and Contributions program created in 2004 to help ensure that seniors can benefit from, and contribute to, the quality of life in their communities through the following program objectives:

promote volunteerism among seniors and other generations;

engage seniors in the community through mentoring of others;

expand awareness of elder abuse, including financial abuse;

support social participation and inclusion of seniors; and

provide capital assistance for new and existing community projects and/or programs for seniors.

The program funds both community-based and Pan-Canadian projects with an annual budget of $70 million:

The community-based stream’s annual budget is $50.04 million;

The pan-Canadian stream’s annual budget is $13.1 million; and

The administration of the program is $6.86 million.

Budget 2022 announced $20 million over two years, beginning in 2022-23, for an expanded New Horizons for Seniors Program to support more projects that improve the quality of life for seniors and help them continue to fully participate in their communities. This additional funding is being invested in more community-based projects.

Community-Based projects:

Projects are led or inspired by seniors and address one or more of the five program objectives.

Program Terms and Conditions allow maximum funding per community-based project of $100K over two years. However, funding is typically allocated through an annual Call for Proposals, which funds grants of up to $25K over one year.

To ensure that the distribution of funded projects reflects the distribution of seniors across Canada, spending is allocated across provinces and territories using a simple formula: a base amount of $325K per jurisdiction is applied and the rest of the funding is allocated based on the proportion of population of Canadian seniors living in each jurisdiction.

Recommendations on funding are based on provincial/territorial funding allocations (according to senior populations), project merit and national priorities.

The 2022-23 Call for Proposals resulted in 4,713 applications representing more than $103.3M in total funding requested. A total of 3,074 community-based projects were ultimately funded, for a total investment of $61.07M.

Pan-Canadian Projects:

The Pan-Canadian stream funds multi-year projects that use collaborative and innovative approaches to build community capacity and increase seniors’ social inclusion.

A Call for Concepts for the Pan Canadian stream of the New Horizons for Seniors Program will be launched in October 2023 with the theme of increasing the social inclusion of vulnerable populations of seniors.

The last funding call in this stream was a Call for Concepts held in 2018-2019. These Collective Impact projects were funded for up to five years (starting in 2019-20) with an average value of $2.6M. Over 200 concepts for projects to increase the social inclusion of seniors were received and 22 Collective Impact plans were funded.

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