It’s about time someone called the screening of patients aged 65 and older for mild cognitive impairment–unless they have symptoms like memory loss–a total waste of money and time.

The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (CTFPHC) was established by the Public Health Agency of Canada(PHAC) to develop clinical practices guidelines in delivering preventive healthcare.

The following was reported in The Canadian Press by Sheryl Ubelacker,  November 30th, 2015.

TORONTO: – “Updated guidelines for doctors say there is no benefit in screening patients aged 65 and older for mild cognitive impairment unless they have symptoms like memory loss.

The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care says a review of international studies found no evidence that screening is beneficial, and it may have possible harms.

Dr. Kevin Pottie, Chairman of the Task Force working group that updated the 2001 guidelines, says a quarter of patients given standard tests for mild cognitive impairment are misdiagnosed.

Pottie says the diagnosis can create anxiety and cause some patients to change their living arrangements or give up jobs for fear they are developing dementia.

But while some people with mild cognitive impairment go on to develop dementia , others remain the same and some actually improve over time.

Pottie says there’s no evidence that dementia drugs, vitamins and supplements improve memory or other brain-related deficits in people with the condition, but exercise and cognitive training may have a minor benefit.

“While the task force recommends against screening older community-living adults for cognitive impairment, physicians should investigate if patients or their family members express concern about possible memory loss, ” he said.

” This recommendation is for adults without symptoms, not for people with concerns.”

The new guidelines were published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal and are available online at http://www.canadiantaskforce.ca  “

It is therefore all further proof that the Ontario, Alberta and B.C. Governments should review their discriminatory practice of requiring older drivers to undergo special and often secret cognitive tests in order to avoid losing their drivers licenses.

Reporting for SEDA
Ed. Rockburne, RCMP, Sgt. Retired.

After ignoring discriminatory testing  of older drivers by the Provinces of Ontario, Alberta and B.C. for approximately two years, senior advocacy group CARP has finally come out and stated that this is discrimination.

In fact, CARP not only ignored the abuse of senior drivers, but Susan Eng, Director of CARP actually commended the Ontario Minister of Transportation on his discriminatory actions:

“Driving plays an important role in helping seniors maintain their independence. These
changes strike the right balance in keeping everyone safe on the road by using evidence based methods to test the ability to drive safely.* 
Susan Eng
CARP vice-president, advocacy.

With so-called advocacy association leadership behaving this way and claiming that such discrimination is not only justified, but that the actions are ‘evidence based’ when in fact the experts and researchers in aging all state that the ‘testing’ is discriminatory and based on non-peer reviewed nonsense, is really scary.

One has to wonder whether, if, instead of advocating for more age-based discrimination like this, Susan Eng, in her position as a paid advocate for senior welfare, could have instead helped to end this discrimination before it started and saved thousands of innocent senior drivers much distress.

Here is a letter from a CARP member to Susan Eng that went ignored until finally enough CARP members said ‘enough already’ and CARP has started to assist CARP members in BC:

From: kmaclennan7@xxxx
To: community@carp.ca
Sent: 30/08/2014 10:12:40 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Attention: CARP Board of directors

For your information on June 27, 2014 I mailed a letter to Susan Eng, Executive Director seeking moral and financial support of CARP in my Notice of Motion for Leave to appeal the Ottawa Divisional court ruling dismissing my Notice of Judicial Review of s. 16(a) of O. Reg. 340/94 of the Ontario Highway Traffic Act .

The essence my application, acting presumptively on behalf of the citizens of Ontario , alleged that the Ontario government is guilty of age discrimination in violating the Charter’s  Section 15 (1) Equal Protection and Equal Benefit of the law in requiring that those 80 and over are subject to an individualized program every two years in order to renew their driver’s license.

I regret that Ms. Eng, as Executive Director for an organization that pretends to represent seniors has not responded to my June 27, 2014 letter requesting moral and financial support.

Ken MacLennan
Cornwall, Ontario
(613) 932-xxxx

In the June 2015 Zoomer Magazine, page 92, Bruce Bird, Chair of the CARP’s North Fraser Chapter, Argues that ” B.C. should scrap it’s regulation that requires all drivers over 80 must complete a DriveABLE medical test.

There is no evidence to prove senior drivers are any worse drivers than any other group.

Congratulations to Bruce Bird, and maybe now, the general membership of CARP will demand they be treated fairly, and with justice by the Provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

How about contributing to the legal fund to help stop this?   www.StopElderDriverAbuse.ca 

How about signing MPP Hillier’s Petition if you live in Ontario?  Petition

Now here’s proof that the Ontario Ministry of Transportation ‘special’ senior driver testing is a scam…it is now trying to design yet another age-based driver test, but this one intended to justify the targeting of even more senior drivers.

The Ontario Ministry of Transportation is now asking those senior drivers 55 years old and over, with a valid driving licence, to take part in a mini-study of older drivers. This mini-study, conducted by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation even offers a $100 participation fee and CLAIMS that the outcome of the testing will not be used against the participant!.  This new mini-study was not listed on their website as of the time of writing of blog post and it was restricted to Ottawa residents only.

What does the Ministry hope to achieve from this, considering there have already been a number of major studies done on older drivers in Canada, the U.S.A. and Australia?  These major studies of some 1,000 senior drivers each, over 5- and 6-year periods, concluded that the older drivers are the safest on the roads, and special testing of them, cannot be justified. See the many studies here. 

Do you remember, a little over a year ago, before the Ministry of Transportation brought in it’s latest driving test for seniors, I said that the Ministry was preparing to bring in dementia testing of senior drivers, and that the Ministry in reply to inquiries from MPP’s stated “We are not considering a dementia test at this time“?

And what did they do? The Minister of Transportation introduced two segments of a dementia test, consisting of drawing a clock, and picking the letter “H” from amongst some numbers.  They claim that from this humiliating dementia test they can tell whether you are able to drive a car safely or need medical follow up.  What baloney!

What they did was to introduce the first of two stages of a dementia test.  “Draw a clock”, is taken directly from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Dementia test.  Look it up on your computer, and you will see what is yet to come.

Apparently it is not bad enough that the Ministry has discriminated against older drivers, but due to the lack of real push-back from senior drivers, they now feel it’s politically safe to proceed with their original plan–to reduce the age for dementia testing to 55 years of age!

Is it not suspect that they should set the cutpoint for discriminatory testing at 55 years of age and over, but exempt those that cause most of the accidents and fatalities — those between the ages of 18 and 54 years of age?  This under 54-year old group are also those who suffer the most mental illnesses (85.1%), including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada and the Kim Institute on Mental Illness.

It would be foolhardy for any senior with a valid Ontario Driving Licence, to participate in this façade of a mini-study to design a new driving test.  All volunteers would be used to legitimize age-based discrimination and contribute to this massive scam, now being perpetrated in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

Dementia testing is a medical procedure and not a driving test, and growing old is not a disease or medical condition.

Please circulate this far and wide in Ontario, so that those now 55-years of age and above, will be aware that they are next to be victimized by their Provincial Government, as indicated in their Official correspondence.

Ed. Rockburne, RCMP, Sgt. Retired.

Please contribute generously to the Legal Fund set up to challenge this discrimination in Court by clicking here.

Please sign Ontario MPP Randy Hillier’s Petition.

The following is from a subscriber to our website, who wanted to share this sad story. His name has been changed to protect him from retribution by a government out of control.  Senior Drivers Testing is a scheme designed to fail entirely innocent senior drivers.

“Heard of Randy Hillier’s petition from a very good friend who was a F18 jet pilot and team leader during the first Gulf War.  Since he retired from the RCAF, he flies for Air Canada, but if he failed this DriveABLE test, he could not drive a car, but still would be qualified to fly Air Canada jet aircraft  with hundreds of people on board, on international flights.  This DriveABLE test is ill-conceived and discriminatory.  Please pass the petition on to others, who will hopefully sign it.

Did you see the video summary of the DriveABLE test on their website? This test is designed to fail.

If you have arthritis or a stiff arm on the day of the test and cannot lift your hand off the button fast enough to touch the computer screen quickly, it will lower your score for being too slow to react.

In another part of the test, if you touch the screen, but not in the very center of the object, your score goes even lower due to inaccurate locating of the center of the object.

In another part of the DriveABLE test, they direct you to touch a box on the left or right while showing an arrow directing  you to the incorrect box.  In another part of the test, they show you several boxes on a screen where an x quickly flashes once, inside one box at a time, and they tell you to touch each box where the x flashed.  You must then do this again, but are told that when the x flashes, you must touch the box where the x previously flashed, instead of where the last one actually just flashed.

The results are transmitted immediately to the Ministry of Transportation by internet, and they know within seconds if you have failed or not.  This is why they tell you to have someone else drive you to your test.  (You won’t be allowed to drive your car home).

Have a look at the video of the sample test on the DriveABLE  website home page.  Notice that the narrator in this video cannot even pronounce and enunciate his words correctly.  For the word ” cognitively” he says “cognally” and for the word “test” he says “tess”.  Perhaps he also should be tested for dementia and rewarded with a loss of his right to drive.

The Government should stay with the standard road test they use now if they question anyone’s ability to drive properly, instead of focusing on senior drivers alone.  They should stop discriminating against people on the basis of age (or language, gender, skin colour, religion etc.) which violates our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  They should not be illegally labeling seniors as “cognitively impaired” on the basis of an unfair test administered by non-medically certified laymen, and which was discredited by legitimate researchers repeatedly.

A friend of mine who has a cleft palate and cannot speak clearly was called in for a test in Ottawa when she turned 80 years old.  As soon as they heard her speak, they assumed she had dementia and confiscated her licence on the spot with no test.

My friend does not have dementia, but gave up without a fight.  She had been driving without an accident her entire life,  and routinely drove between Ottawa and North Bay with no problems whatsoever.  She has been dealing with discrimination due to her speech impediment(cleft palate) her entire life.  The MTO victimized her once again.

She was forced to give up her independent lifestyle and move from her home to a nursing home.  She died shortly thereafter.  This is the kind of subjugation we can now expect from ill-informed, under-educated bureaucrats  who can’t spell, speak properly,  or use grammar correctly, but who are busy mapping out restrictive, life-changing controls for well educated baby boomers in their senior years.

What’s next?  Legalized euthanasia on the basis of age to lower Ontario’s skyrocketing health care costs?”

Ronald – a concerned senior and taxpayer in Ontario.

Almost three years ago I began  gathering statistical evidence to prove that the Province of Ontario had introduced discriminatory special driver testing of senior drivers under false pretences.

The Province introduced this legislation by inferring that Senior Drivers have more accidents than any other drivers and therefore constitute a traffic risk, while knowing this to be untrue.  The government’s own statistics have indicated, year after year, that senior drivers have fewer accidents than any other age group, and as they age, have fewer still.

Senior drivers are the safest drivers on the roads and have been catalogued for years as such in Canada , the United States, Europe and Australia.  The Federal government sponsored Candrive Research Team that is finalizing a five-year study of senior drivers.  It has publically stated, more than once, that senior drivers are the safest drivers on the roads.

All of our evidence has been circulated widely, including to the Premiers and the Transport Ministers of three violating Provinces, Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia.  None have refuted the evidence against them, but none of them have reversed their discriminatory legislation.

Having introduced this discriminatory legislation under false pretences makes this law against the seniors illegal.  To correct this miscarriage of justice, Court action is required now.

We at Stop Elder Driver Abuse have been trying to obtain donations to take Court action. However, at the rate of donations, no immediate plans can be undertaken.  Meanwhile, senior drivers in Ontario have suffered the loss of their driving licence, heavy testing fees for faulty tests, emotional stress, inconvenience and health, all unfairly.

We have reached the point where one or more of the senior drivers who have been victimized, must step up and recover their licence, money and dignity by laying Criminal Charges under Section 718.2.a of the Criminal Code of Canada, against the Province for elder abuse.

The Province of Ontario has introduced special testing of senior drivers under the false pretence that ‘Senior Drivers have more accidents than any other drivers and therefore constitute a traffic risk’, while knowing this to be untrue.  It has violated Section 718.2.a of the Criminal Code of Canada.

Laying charges under the Criminal Code by a Citizen of Canada is a right, because this is a Crime against the State, the same as if someone had robbed a bank–and it is the responsibility of the State to Prosecute such Crimes.

To lay a charge under the Criminal Code, all a Canadian Citizen has to do is to attend the local Police Station or Court House, swear the information is true, and provide the evidence that it has occurred.

There are no fees for this service, and if you should be denied your right, I recommend that you engage a prominent Criminal Lawyer.  Legal fees may be recovered through the Court.

All the evidence needed is located on our website at Statistics.  No more evidence than that is needed.

What is needed now is Court action, or prepare yourself for more abuse to follow, as the Province tightens driver testing, as was their original plan.  Bonnie Dobbs, the advocate of the Dementia test for seniors, still sits on the Provincial Committee’s advising the Province what should be done to you, while her husband Allen Dobbs, owner of DriveABLE, reaps the rewards by testing seniors with their faulty tests at $700.00 each.

The Province has signed a ten-year contract with another for-profit testing company, called Serco, which is International in scope, and is being investigated for corruption.  Serco has already mandated that it’s testers must fail at least 20% of the people. This is the profit motive, and they will not listen to any complaints just as Hydro Ontario refuses to act properly on complaints.

The Information and the vehicle for justice is there to correct this fraud against seniors, let’s use it.

Sincerely, Ed. Rockburne,RCMP, Sgt. Retired.

Sign MPP Randy Hillier’s Petition

Contribute generously to the legal fund at Stop Elder Driver Abuse

Why are so many resources of the Provinces and the Federal Government being wasted on discrimination of senior drivers, when they admit that this cannot be justified?

Now we have a federal, taxpayer-funded project claiming that senior drivers are the safest on the roads, but still, they are looking for a new tool to test them!

Why is Candrive looking for a new tool (cognitive or otherwise) to test senior drivers’ memories and cognitive function, when they are the safest on the roads, by any standard, and are self regulating.  This is a gross waste of time and money, considering that the most dangerous drivers on the road are those between the ages of 18-54 years.

In a recent article in the Ottawa Citizen dated June 8th, 2015 and entitled ‘Research Project Aims to Help Keep Older Drivers on the Road‘,  Candrive spokesperson Sylvain Gagnon,  confirms yet again, that senior drivers are the safest drivers, and all major statistics confirm this, year-after-year.

Candrive is a federally sponsored 5-year study of senior drivers, but many  wonder why it is focussed on senior drivers, when it is known,  that it is the 18-54 year old drivers that are causing all of the accidents, and there are no special testings for them.  Many medications cause cognitive and memory issues, yet there are no efforts to address these quite unsafe medical situations in all age groups.

Seniors can’t win; they are discriminated by the Provinces, who falsely accuse seniors of having the most accidents, then discriminated by the Federal sponsored project, for having the least accidents.

Notwithstanding that Premier Wynne, as recently as June 16, 2015, in mainstream media, claimed that her government will not support any discrimination on the basis of race, color, or age, and yet, we see the Provinces of Ontario, Alberta and B.C. continuing to discriminate against  senior drivers, through the requirement for special testing based on age.  The Premiers of these provinces continue to perpetuate the myth that senior drivers cause more accidents than any other age group, when in fact, it is the exact opposite, as stated by the Federally sponsored project , Candrive.

One February 2015 study by the United States Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, studied senior drivers over a 6-year period.  Those  findings concluded that although more seniors obtained drivers licences during this test period, with each annual test during the study period, the participants had improved more than any other age group of drivers.  The study’s  final conclusion was, ‘ We were wrong in thinking that with an ageing driving population there would be more accidents. In fact, seniors are the safest on the roads‘.

Lest you believe the myth that seniors become mentally impaired with Alzheimers disease because of age, the Canadian Alzheimers Society’s website states ‘In Canada we have 747,000 people impaired by one form of mental illness or other, including dementia and Alzheimers disease.  Of these, 14.9 % are over 65 years of age, while 85.1% are under 65 years of age‘.  These findings are reconfirmed by the Kim Foundation on Mental Health, who do Canadian and American studies.

Retired RCMP Sgt. Ed Rockburne has been researching this travesty of democracy for 3 years.  His many statistical findings can be seen here.

Recently Rockburne wrote an excellent letter to the researchers of the Candrive study.  He clearly expresses his concern that Candrive’s efforts to come up with something new will result in the designing of yet another faulty test, like the Simard, MD and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and declare it better than those already discredited.

Rockburne is concerned that if the federal study claims researchers have a ‘new testing tool’ the Provinces will implement this discriminatory practice against all senior drivers in Canada.  This would then create one of the greatest travesties of justice executed against any segment of our population in history by their own Governments .

Rockburne claims that if the government is serious about making our roads safer, they need to test those that cause the accidents and carnage by using the only true test of driving — a road test conducted by trained Government employees.  It is not appropriate, that something as important to one’s well being and health, is decided by a private firm owned by a man and wife, using tests designed to fail,  are making millions unfairly, while simultaneously acting as consultants for the Provinces.

Where are those advocates of Civil Liberties, Human Rights and Elder Abuse?

Sign MPP Randy Hillier’s petition.

Contribute to the Stop Elder Driver Abuse legal fund designed to start fighting back in the Courts against discrimination of those who are guaranteed innocent until proven guilty by the Constitution.

The answers given by the B.C. Government to questions about senior driver testing are like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

It’s interesting that the B.C. Government and the Transportation Minister, Sam McLeod, accept the Simard MD cognitive test.  Bonnie Dobbs, the author of this faulty test, admits it is at best 50% accurate.  She also admits that her test has never been peer-reviewed, except by her husband Allen Dobbs, who may be just a little biased.

So it doesn’t matter to our elected officials how many seniors (up to 50%) could unfairly lose their mobility and be placed in exile from society, as long as the B.C. Government keeps DriveABLE happy and prosperous.

To see just how much it doesn’t matter how unjust the senior driver testing scheme is and how many people it affects severely, you only have to read this short transcript of a recent question period in the BC legislature here.

By comparison, the Lie Detector Test is probably closer to 90% accurate, yet the Courts are hesitant to accept it, and the Police have to use it as an investigative tool instead.

The B.C. Government makes reference to other cognitive tests the Doctors can use, like the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.  It’s equally inaccurate and the truth is, according to researchers ‘There is no cognitive test in existence  accurate enough to be accepted and used   to  measure mental impairment’.

But the main issue in all of this is that the Provincial Government has no justification for discriminating against senior drivers, because all major statistics in Canada, USA, Europe and Australia, including the Provincial Government’s own statistics, show that senior drivers are the safest drivers on the road.

The Province appears to have  violated at least four Federal Acts in discriminating against senior drivers: the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Criminal Code on Elder Abuse, the Criminal Code on Breach of Trust and the Criminal Code on Conflict of Interest.

From what I’m hearing, the government being in bed with DriveABLE and the Dobbs family in this senior driver testing scheme based on age, seems to most observers, to be a gross violation of the Criminal Code on Breach of Trust and a major conflict of interest situation.

The cornerstone of the Canadian Judicial System is that a person or persons charged with an offence are considered innocent until proven guilty.

However, with this age-based testing with a faulty memory test and a further questionable driving test,  the senior driver is treated as guilty before having done anything wrong and the monetary penalty is applied immediately upon turning of age by the levy of ‘testing fees’.

Ed. Rockburne, RCMP, Sgt. Retired

Please be certain to assist us in building a strong legal fund to push this injustice back in the Court of competent jurisdiction by contributing at Stop Elder Driver Abuse

Consider signing Ontario MPP Randy Hillier’s Petition.

The Rand Institute for Justice, 2007, as catalogued in the Library of Congress, provides more evidence that the older drivers in Canada are being discriminated against by their own Provincial Governments.

The Rand Institute’s conclusions regarding the accident risk of older drivers is:

• Relative risk of accident by older drivers actually diminishes with age.

• The relative risk of older drivers changed little between the early 1970’s and 2003, despite a continually aging population.

• As the population ages, the number of injuries, especially fatal ones, sustained by older individuals in car accidents will rise.  However, the research concludes that this increase in injuries will occur, not because older drivers are more likely to cause accidents, but primarily because their likelihood of injury is high, when they are involved in an accident.

• The research also concludes that the middle age driver group, those between 25 and 64 years of age, are involved in 85% of all accidents.  And the younger drivers, those between 15 and 24 years of age, are involved in 45% of all accidents.  While older drivers, those between the ages of 65 and beyond, are involved in 23% of all accidents.

The Rand research states that ” The good record of the older drivers is likely due to experience of age, and self regulation, than any licencing policies, in reducing risk”.

Reference (https://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2008/2008_365.pdf)

Sincerely, Ed. Rockburne,RCMP, Retired.

Doctors routinely do not first obtain their patient’s informed consent to subject senior drivers to unreliable tests as is required by the Health Care Consent Act.  As a consequent many have lost their drivers licence unjustly.  BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN TO TELL YOUR DOCTOR WHEN YOU WALK INTO HIS/HER OFFICE THAT YOU DO NOT CONSENT TO ANY MEMORY, ART, DEMENTIA OR OTHER TESTING…you have a right to refuse ‘treatment’ of any kind.

There seems to be a trend developing in Ontario, where seniors go for routine medicals, either from a Doctor or hospital and end up being given some form of dementia test without the doctor first having provided them with full disclosure that the test is unreliable and that this is for drivers license purposes.

Continue reading Senior Drivers ” Be Careful What You Tell Your Doctor” →

Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia have instituted special testing of senior drivers based on the false pretences that ‘elderly drivers constitute a traffic risk’.  I  (the undersigned) have spent the last two years gathering statistics from Canada, United States, Europe and Australia.  All of the major statistics including the Provinces’ own statistics show that, year after year, SENIOR DRIVERS ARE THE SAFEST ON THE ROADS.

These Provinces have dismissed all major statistics.  In addition, they refuse to provide the statistics they relied upon when instituting this discriminatory practice.  However, once further research was done by the undersigned, it was learned that the 3 pilot studies done by the Ministry of Ontario (2 undertaken by in-house staff) were completed AFTER the harmful legislation was brought into force.

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario is helpless because the Province of Ontario very conveniently exempted itself.  You have to wonder what happened to Canada when it’s Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms no longer apply to the government itself.

Many senior drivers already have lost, and many more will lose, their licences by unfair and faulty testing.  8000 have lost their driver’s licences in Alberta alone.  Health Canada states that ‘when a senior loses his licence,  mobility, poor health, depression, alcoholism and suicide soon follow’.        Continue reading Senior Drivers Lose Human Rights: Discriminated Against By Three Provinces →