Seniors who need help mowing their lawn — or washing their laundry — could receive up to $750 a year under a new fund to keep them living in their own homes longer.

“We are making targeted investments of $1 billion over three years in the new Seniors’ Healthy Home program,” Finance Minister Charles Sousa said in his Wednesday budget speech.

“We will provide up to $750 for every eligible household led by a senior 75 years or older, to help offset the costs of maintaining their home. This payment could be used to help pay for services such as snow shoveling, lawn care or house cleaning.”

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“Our seniors have helped build the province we enjoy today,” Sousa also said. “We are deeply grateful to them.”

The program is expected to be in place by 2020, and details on what chores will be covered will be determined after consultations with seniors. The government will then build a list of eligible expenses and how they should be accounted for.

Items and services already covered under government programs — such as prescriptions or other medical expenses — will be ineligible.

Progressive Conservative MP Vic Fedeli questioned the wisdom of such a fund, saying that in the 2016 budget, the Liberals proposed something similar but it failed for lack of interest.

The government used “basically exactly the same words, ‘to help seniors live independently in their homes’ — but they cancelled the program in 2017 because it had significantly lower take-up than projected and provided little support for seniors,” he told reporters.

“So you’ve got a program they put in, then cancelled and put back in.”

Currently, there are more than 2 million seniors living in Ontario, and by 2040 that number is expected to balloon to 4.5 million, which will have a “profound impact on our social services and our economy,” Sousa said in the Legislature.

“It will also have a profound impact on those families who often struggle with added costs related to their care and well-being,” he also said. “Many seniors would prefer to stay in their homes and live independently.

“We want to help them.”

The elderly got a lot of attention the Liberals’ budget, their last before the June election — including more money for home care and personal support workers, additional nursing home beds, free prescriptions for those 65 and older, and free shingles vaccines between the ages of 65 and 70.

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The healthy home funds are targeted at those 75 and up because there is some evidence that’s the stage of life when Ontarians are spending the most on services to help with the upkeep of their home.

The budget also notes that last year, the Pensions Benefit Guarantee Fund would be boosted to $1,500 a month, a move Sousa is proposing be retroactive to last May “to ensure that former Sears Canada employees could benefit from receiving this additional support,” he said, referring to the giant retailer who closed up shop last year, leaving pensioners in the lurch.

The fund is meant to help those whose pension plans have wound up.

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