"Demographic terrorism" is being used to stall desperately needed programs such as home care, and to justify growing incursion of the private sector in Canada's health-care system, a new report says.

The notion that the aging population will bankrupt the publicly funded health system is bunk, the Canadian Health Coalition argues in a report being released today in Ottawa.

"The hysteria surrounding demographics seems designed to prepare the public for increased out-of-pocket expenditures for health-care services," writes Colleen Fuller, a policy analyst and consumer advocate.

"The argument that governments cannot afford to support the population of the country with social and health services adequate to its needs is a modern invention unsupported by both history and serious study."

Ms. Fuller argues that older Baby Boomers will place less of a financial strain on Canada's social safety net than they did as children. The baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s spawned massive expansion in educational and medical infrastructure, public housing and child benefits, she noted, whereas the future health and pension needs of this population will be less taxing.

"Numerous studies of demographics . . . actually predict fewer demands on public spending at the height of the Baby Boom generation in 2031 than were made in 1991," Ms. Fuller writes.

The 59-page report, titled Home Care: What We Have, What We Need, argues that, despite their protestations to the contrary, Ottawa and the provinces can afford to fund home-care programs from the public purse.

What exists now is a patchwork of programs providing uneven care whose cost to consumers varies widely, Ms. Fuller found, and she warned that the gaps are being filled by for-profit companies.

"The lack of federal leadership has created a vacuum that is now being filled by aggressive corporations in partnership with provincial governments determined to expand the market for health-industry investors," she writes.

The report says about 90 per cent of home-care services were publicly funded in the mid-1990s, but that has fallen precipitously in recent years.

Home-care spending is about $72 per capita Canada-wide, but that varies from a low of $33 in Prince Edward Island to a high of $124 in Manitoba.

Kathleen Connors, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses' Unions, said the Manitoba system -- publicly-funded and administered -- should become the norm for home care programs in Canada.

"The Canadian Health Coalition believes that publicly-funded, publicly-delivered and publicly-accountable home care program provides the optimum means to guarantee a quality continuum of care for in-home medical services and home support services," she said.

Nationally, governments spend $2.1-billion annually on homecare, a tiney fraction of the $95-billion in yearly health spending. According to Statistics Canada, 523,000 adults, or 2.4 per cent of the population received homecare in 1994-95, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The majority of users, 64 per cent, were seniors.

The report notes, however, that in recent years many governments have shifted the focus from providing long-term care in the home to providing short-term care to patients who would otherwise be recovering or treated in hospital beds.

On the Web: http://www.healthcoalition.ca

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