Hope that better days are ahead is among out most valuable public assets. It gives people confidence to start businesses, invest in communities, raise families, trust democratic institutions, and sacrifice today for tomorrow. When hope erodes for younger people, so does much of what allows a country to flourish.

That’s why rebuilding hope for younger generations should be a central goal in this election. 

The starting point is for all parties to acknowledge that our province has become far better at protecting the living standards people have already achieved, than creating comparable opportunities for those still trying to build them.

As Gen Squeeze has long documented, diverging financial fortunes are at the root of generational tensions. Older people have lower poverty, higher incomes, more home ownership, and the most wealth. By contrast, financial precarity has become the norm for younger generations. Home ownership is out of reach, competition for rentals is fierce, and starting a family is being put off. The punchline is that hard work no longer pays off the way it did for previous generations.

Alongside growing economic insecurity, young people report a sharp drop in life satisfaction — a decline on par with places like Venezuela, Lebanon, and Afghanistan. For those under age 25, Canada now ranks 72^nd globally, below the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Yet seniors remain relatively happy, ranking 8^th out of 143 countries.

This gap should be setting off alarm bells for all parties. A province that allows this generational divide to deepen is putting its future at risk.

BC’s next government must invest adequately in the building blocks of a healthy society: affordable child care, quality education, secure homes, adequate incomes, and a healthy environment. Rebuilding hope requires concrete changes that give younger people a fair chance to build the lives they are working toward.

BC’s next government must invest in wellbeing at every stage of life: helping children get a healthy start, younger adults build secure lives, and older British Columbians age with dignity. That means no longer shortchanging younger generations.

We want the young people in our lives to thrive. We invest in their education, celebrate their milestones, and help when times are tough. Our public budgets should show the same commitment. Yet as spending rises to meet the needs of an aging population, investments in the foundations of younger people's wellbeing aren't keeping pace.

This election, every party should commit to a clear principle: for every new $1 invested in healthy retirements, invest $1 in the wellbeing of children, parents, and young workers. Supporting our aging loved ones must go hand in hand with creating opportunities for those following in their footsteps. That’s how we stop younger generations from falling further behind.

BC’s next government must acknowledge — and address — the province’s longstanding failure to prepare adequately for the costs of population aging.

For decades, successive governments knew that the retirement of the large baby boom generation would increase demand for medical care. The data are clear that Canadians over age 65 use roughly four times more medical care as those under age 50. When demand goes up, costs predictably rise as well. Yet no BC government chose to adapt revenue systems in response.

The Canada Pension Plan offered an example of what needed to be done. In the late 1990s, Ottawa increased premiums by 68%, building the reserve needed to keep the CPP sustainable as the population aged. Those higher contributions — paid in part by today’s seniors during their working years — ensure that the CPP benefits on which retirees are now drawing were largely pre-funded.

Provinces like BC made no comparable adjustment for medical care. They allowed spending pressures to grow without corresponding revenue increases — and the result is clear. 

If BC’s population still looked like it did in 1976 — with just 10% of residents over age 65 instead of the 20% we have today — the province would spend about 22% less on medical care. That’s enough to transform BC’s $7.7-billion deficit in 2025/26 into a modest $800 million surplus.

Needing more care as we age is normal. Failing to prepare for that care has left a growing bill for younger generations, alongside too little investment in the priorities that matter most for Millennials, Gen Z, and their children.

This election, every party should commit to immediately forming a Better Late Than Never Task Force, bringing together fiscal experts, medical care leaders, and the public to develop a fair financing plan. Its mandate should be to protect universal access, safeguard vulnerable seniors, and preserve room to invest in the wellbeing of younger generations.

We all want young people to thrive. They are our children, grandchildren, friends, and neighbours. Their wellbeing matters today — and our shared future depends on the lives they are able to build. Parties’ spending choices should reflect this commitment.

Yet BC’s 2026 budget plans to increase annual medical spending by $3.2 billion by 2028 — more than double the combined increase for K-12 education, child care, trades training, and social services. This works out to about $2,100 in additional annual spending per retiree, compared with roughly $440 per resident under 45. On top of this disparity, the province projects another $37 billion in deficits over the next three years — unpaid bills left for younger and future generations to shoulder.

As spending rises to meet the needs of an aging population, investments in the foundations of younger people’s wellbeing aren’t keeping pace. Status quo spending will only continue to shortchange younger people. 

This election, every party must commit to investing adequately in the building blocks of a healthy society — affordable housing and child care, quality education, adequate incomes, and a healthy environment — with the same urgency they bring to supporting our aging loved ones.

BC’s public accounts put last year's deficit at $7.7 billion, and a larger shortfall is projected this year.

Trump’s economic turmoil and threats to Canadian sovereignty create real fiscal pressures. But they cannot explain away a challenge that successive provincial governments failed to address long before he returned to office: the predictable rise in medical costs as our population ages.

Governments knew these costs were coming but did not adequately prepare revenue systems to cover them. When we blame these deficits on Trump's economic turbulence, we overlook this real, made-in-BC challenge. The longer we postpone that conversation, the higher the bill. 

Every party should explain how it will fairly fund the medical care our aging population needs. Without that plan, younger generations — already squeezed by BC’s exceptionally high housing costs — will inherit growing bills while investments in their own wellbeing fall further behind.

Too many British Columbians lack a family doctor, wait too long for medical services, or turn to emergency rooms because they have nowhere else to go. Parties must address these access problems. But recruiting more doctors from the US or elsewhere isn’t an adequate plan for better health.

Many British Columbians may be surprised to learn that BC already has far more doctors per capita than it did in the 1970s. Between 1976 and 2022, the number rose from 162 to 270 per 100,000 residents. Family doctors increased from 88 to 141.

These figures don’t discount the access challenges that need to be addressed in some communities. But they do show why parties must look beyond recruitment and ask: why is the line of patients needing care growing, and what can we do to shorten it?

Health science has long shown us that health doesn’t begin with medical care; it begins in the conditions into which we are born, grow, live, work, and age. All parties should commit to aligning their budgets with this science by investing more urgently in housing, education, child care, adequate incomes, and a healthy environment than they do in medical care.

BC used to follow this prescription, investing more in social services and education than in medicine. Today, the opposite is true. Finding a better balance between the care we need when we’re sick or injured, and the building blocks that help us stay healthy, is a central task for BC’s next government.