This paper focuses on the referral structure (and the primary definers within this structure) in terms of which elder abuse is being defined as a social problem in Canada and interest groups are being mobilized to deal with the alleged problem. Preliminary research indicates that the major impetus is, in the main, not coming from organizations of the elderly but from various professional groups and governmental agencies who have laid claim to elder abuse as an issue requiring social action. In particular, governmental groups are laying claim to the importance of elder abuse as a public issue based on the graying of the population and the possibility of an increasingly politically important elderly bloc. Resistance or apathy on the part of the elderly themselves, however, and the absence of developed ideologies (e.g., feminism in the case of wife abuse and child sexual abuse) has resulted so far in relatively little being done in the construction of elder abuse as a social problem. (Author)