Canada promised to safeguard future generations. Two years later, we’re still waiting for that promise to drive lasting change.

In 2024, countries around the world adopted the first-ever United Nations Declaration on Future Generations, committing to “safeguard the needs and interests of future generations.” For Canada, this commitment came on the heels of a 2024 federal budget that promised to deliver Fairness for Every Generation.

Alongside global allies, Gen Squeeze welcomed these commitments as markers the urgent need for governments to stop shortchanging younger and future generations — and end a painful era rising costs, declining employment, growing debts, and escalating climate risks and costs.

That hope remains. But Canada’s early momentum has stalled, revealing how easily promises can lose ground when governments change and immediate pressures take priority. We need to make generational fairness an enduring responsibility, embedded in the laws and institutions that guide government decisions.

Below, we share Gen Squeeze’s contribution to a global assessment of progress since the Declaration’s adoption, compiled by the UK-based School of International Futures. Our assessment examines what Canada has — and has not — achieved, and what it will take to turn commitments into lasting change.

We thank our international allies for their leadership in documenting progress and showing what’s possible. Canada has examples to learn from — and a promise to keep.

From Promise to Practice: The Road to 2028 for Future Generations

Canada: Making Intergenerational Fairness Durable Beyond Electoral Cycles

When countries around the world adopted the United Nations Declaration on Future Generations in 2024, it affirmed the wellbeing of younger and future generations as a bedrock principle for national and multilateral governance. Canada was among the signatories, elevating to the global stage an earlier national Budget commitment to organise spending around the goal of Fairness for Every Generation. This was a watershed moment for Canadians concerned about growing intergenerational tensions and the deteriorating wellbeing of younger people and the climate on which they will depend.

Two years later, however, Canada’s story is one of limited progress. In the face of political and economic headwinds, the critical milestones of the UN Declaration and the 2024 Budget have proven insufficient for sustaining momentum towards a future in which Canadians of all ages can thrive. A change in the national government, escalating trade tensions, and threats to Canadian sovereignty have shifted attention away from the long-term and systemic change required to advance generational fairness, and towards short-term defensive action.

This retreat highlights a key lesson for the pursuit of global and national progress towards restoring a healthy legacy for younger and future generations. Durability depends on more than securing visible commitments at peak moments. Subsequent actions must be anchored in the structures and machinery of governance – the legislation, accountability tools, and public processes likely to endure through political, electoral, economic, and other changes.

Canada’s Fairness for Every Generation Budget helped legitimise the value of a generational lens in policy and fiscal decision-making. Yet this single document was 65 Progress and Highlights: Windows into an Emerging Global Practice not enough to put Canada on course to reverse the deteriorating wellbeing of younger and future generations, or restore the intergenerational solidarity needed to make sure people of all ages can thrive. To live up to our national and international commitments, a key next step is to embed the principle of generational fairness in legislation: An Act to Safeguard the Wellbeing of Present and Future Generations. Legislation will create a legally binding common purpose for Canada’s national government: to act as good ancestors to all those who follow us, making sure spending and policy decisions consider the implications of the choices we make now for our children, grandchildren, and future generations.

As nations around the world work to live up to the goals enshrined in the Declaration on Future Generations, Canada’s experience over the last two years points to the importance of designing actions to withstand external shocks. That means insulating progress from shifting political cycles, building coalitions to sustain pressure, and bringing the ideas that animate the Declaration to mainstream public and political dialogue. In Canada, Generation Squeeze is doing all three, and we look forward to ongoing collaboration with other leaders around the world.

—      Paul Kershaw (University of British Columbia and Generation Squeeze) and Andrea Long (Generation Squeeze)