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.

• Over $60 million was spent this year for over 2,900 of these projects across Canada.

• 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.

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 2024-2025 Call for Proposals was open from August 1, 2024, to September 12, 2024. It resulted in 5,831 applications representing more than $121M in total funding requested. A total of 2,905 community-based projects were ultimately funded, for a total investment of $60.32M.

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.

• The most recent Call for Concepts for the Pan-Canadian stream of the New Horizons for Seniors Program was held from October 4 to November 15, 2023, with the theme of increasing the social inclusion of vulnerable populations of seniors.

More than 500 applications were received under this Call for Concepts. In March 2025, the Government announced up to $61.9 million over five years for up to 20 collective impact projects.

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