Paul Sharman has woven many threads into the fabric of his long career; he has worked as an accounting manager, finance executive, change management consultant, and is currently an elected Councilor in Burlington, Ontario, Canada—a position he’s held for 16 years—also serving as the Deputy Mayor for Strategy and Budgets in Burlington, and president of Halton Community Housing Corporation.

Sharman is also president of PACE Canada, and was instrumental in bringing PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly), started in the United States in 1971, to Canada. His motivation for finding better care choices for older adults—allowing them to remain in their homes whenever possible until the end of life—was his mother, Margaret, who died in 2015 after a troubling health journey.

In a recent interview with the Global Ageing Network, Sharman shared how his family’s experience during the last years of his mother’s life shaped his view on how society should care for older adults. It started when a gerontologist diagnosed Margaret, who initially presented with severe anxiety, as a paranoid schizophrenic, then a dose of medication rendered her catatonic for six months.

“The first discovery was that our system is disconnected, it is fragmented, and it’s reactionary,” said Sharman. His mother recovered and from there, because she couldn’t care for herself, she lived with Sharman’s sister for a year, then moved to a retirement home, and finally to long-term care. Due to an out-of-character violent episode, Margaret ended up in a locked ward in that facility, where she lived out the last years of her life.

“My sister and I were horrified by our mother’s journey, so we started looking at ways we can improve community care support programs and help the systems that we work with to provide a better journey for older adults,” Sharman said.

Around that time, Rick Goldring, the mayor of Burlington, had established an advisory committee seeking to improve the quality of life for older adults in Burlington, but according to Sharman, nothing was happening—“they couldn’t figure out what to do.” Then in 2017, Sharman received an invitation to visit Thome Rivertown in Detroit, MI, a property of LeadingAge member Presbyterian Villages of Michigan, which introduced him (and Goldring, who accompanied him) to PACE.

Thome Rivertown is a four-story senior apartment community for adults 62 and older and houses one of nine PACE Southeast Michigan locations onsite, featuring health clinics, day rooms, rehabilitation facilities, gathering areas, and more, where people can come and get the services they require while continuing to live in their own homes.

Seeing the PACE center made a profound impression. “On the way back, the mayor and I talked about the fact that we needed to pilot a program like this in Burlington,” said Sharman. “We knew we weren’t talking about more specialized housing for seniors. What we need is care models—we don’t need more built form. Because people can stay happy, healthy and safe in their own home and that’s what we saw.”

Replicating the PACE model in Burlington initially provided a challenge. “We spent two years trying to figure out how to do it because we couldn’t get into retirement homes or long-term care homes since they’re all governed by regulations,” said Sharman. They brought the director of the regional community housing corporation onboard and together, with an interdisciplinary team from the community (including the police, fire department, and other service providers), along with a dedicated coordinator, they took the principles and logic behind PACE to launch a pilot project in 2019, which included 180 units in downtown Burlington with a PACE center.

Five years later, in 2024, they evaluated the program. “Even though we did not have people who were in the later stages of multiple morbidity or high acuity, we found that, for every 100,000 people, based on our data, we would save the Ontario government $90 million in health care costs,” Shaman said. “We essentially got the same results they have in the United States.”

The team also recognized other tangible successes. “We found that people in the community were happy—their levels of anxiety and depression massively diminished. We found caregivers feeling security that their families were being well looked after,” he said. “And we also found that the service providers, corporations, and organizations were willing to pay for the coordinator because we were making them more efficient and effective, too.”

Another way to improve efficiency in the aging services sector is via technology. Sharman, who owned a software company during the time he was a consultant, sees the potential of using tech to offer better care options.

“Keep in mind, the health care system was designed 65 years ago when the population of older people was smaller. The whole model for providing care has changed,” he said, explaining that finding a way to assess people, at any stage of their lives, could help get them to the services they need when they need them—a system he compares to an “Amazon Prime kind of model,” with a charitable or non-profit type of focus.

“Similar to the type of interface Amazon offers, we would have as a not-for-profit window where we would provide basically empathetic analysis and assessment and onboarding and the provision of the information to support providers,” he said.

Currently, PACE Canada is partnering with the U.S.- based Java Psychiatry, a mental health platform that works with people who have anxiety and depression. Sharman sees the potential in identifying some of the 5,000 health service providers across Canada, and linking them to individuals across the country who could benefit from services. Connections will be made via artificial intelligence (AI), with conversations taking place with a mascot or an avatar.

Sharman said PACE Canada has the AI technology, which will link community members to participants or providers, thereby creating a whole community support system—they are working with an AI medical systems developer to fine-tune the existing platform. Sharman anticipates the integrated model is “a few months away.”

Along with Philippe Saad, of DiMella Shafer in Boston, Sharman will be presenting at the Global Ageing Network Summit on 24 October from 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. on the topic “Environments: Rethinking Communities, Neighborhoods, Service Infrastructure.” He’ll discuss the journey with his mother which led to his commitment to improve the quality of life for older adults, and as he says, “maybe take the stress that we’re now experiencing with the increasing number of older adults off the health care system, and off the entire housing industry as well.”

“There will always be people going into senior housing, and we need that. But can we put the brakes on and keep people happy, healthy and safe in their own homes for longer? That’s my goal,” Sharman said.