Invest fairly in all generations: news & insights

Budget 2025 sidesteps a hard truth: neither the Prime Minister who tabled it, nor the Opposition Leader who critiques it, has found the courage to ask financially secure retirees to share equally in this national moment of sacrifice.

In an era of large deficits and rising interest costs, our politicians need clearer priorities for how they spend scarce public dollars. Canada’s most expensive program, Old Age Security, has drifted from shielding retirees from poverty to padding the comfort of affluence. It needs reform.

The Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) proposes an increase to Canada's Old Age Security but it won’t lift most poor seniors out of poverty. Yet, it would pad the finances of retirees with six-figure incomes and add more than $3-billion to the deficit.

While leaders spar over housing and immigration, few acknowledge how boomer aging has become the decisive force behind provincial and federal deficits. Unlike other drivers of deficits, such as poor policy decisions or trade wars, this one was both predictable and preventable.

Last year, Canada and other UN member states adopted a milestone in global governance: the Declaration on Future Generations. With a federal budget around the corner, the question is clear: Will Canada live up to the promise it made at the UN — or will short-term politics win out?

Millennials and Gen Z are already conscripted into national service for their elders – no uniform required. Medical care shows why. Paying for rising costs is one of the clearest examples of the service younger generations provide.

Younger Canadians already perform a critical national service: They pay more out of pocket, and sacrifice their standard of living, to protect healthy retirements for our aging population.

The Carney government's first budget is expected this Fall. Our 3 recommendations help Ottawa deliver cost savings while also meeting key policy objectives in generationally fair ways.

Medical care is the largest expense in every provincial budget across Canada. The demand for medical care will continue to surge as boomers age through the system. Canadians and governments alike need to confront the root cause that has long been ignored: provincial governments failed to plan for the predictable rise in boomers’ medical costs.

Ottawa recently released what it describes as the “most ambitious” housing plan in over 75 years. In many ways, it delivers. But for all its ambition on building homes, the plan is silent on deeper tensions that drive unaffordability – especially the generational dynamics at its core.