Invest fairly in all generations: news & insights

Financial security matters more for our health than access to doctors. Whether you are concerned about declining affordability or growing medical care pressures, governments need to better balance spending on medical care with other priorities that are critical to our well-being, such as reducing poverty, the costs of housing and child care, and climate risks.

The sustainability of OAS is under threat as our population ages. Ottawa should review outdated tax shelters for retirees that drain billions in revenue and could otherwise help cover rising OAS costs.

We’ll never be able to fix today’s affordability, housing, medical care, and climate crises without understanding and resolving the intergenerational tensions at their core. Here are five impacts a federal Generational Fairness Task Force will have on key decisions made at Cabinet and Treasury tables.

Gen Squeeze supporter Mary Peirson (MD, CCFP) recently wrote to us, “We have an ageist federal government – one that favours older Canadians and retirees in particular.” Here's one brave Baby Boomer's take on policies that prop up generational unfairness.

Talk of “youth issues” is distracting, drawing attention from the root causes of the problems, which have less to do with younger generations than their treatment by older ones as a result of past policy decisions. To begin to fix this, Ottawa should launch a general fairness council to investigate why Canada no longer works fairly for all generations.

Trading shorter work weeks for longer working lives would improve work-life balance for younger generations and ease the massive demographic squeeze on government budgets.

Affordability is a top concern for Alberta voters. So it is surprising that the United Conservative Party and the NDP have blind spots on this issue, especially when it comes to younger Albertans. 

Alberta’s United Conservative Party delivers one of the most generationally unfair budgets in Canada, by legislating a large gap in spending between citizens age 65-plus and those under age 45.

Our age of retirement, 65, is currently five years lower than where it stood when Ottawa launched Old Age Security (OAS) in 1952, even though average life expectancy has increased 14 yearsover the same period. It’s time to strengthen our pension system by considering a potential win-win tradeoff: slightly longer work lives for shorter workweeks.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland emphasized the need for “fiscal restraint” in her recent budget. But that’s not what she delivered in a budget which includes $132-billion in deficit spending over the next five years. This adds about $6,100 in government debt for every Canadian under age 45 – most of which pays for spending used by the aging population. The Finance Minister piles on this debt partly because her budget turns a blind eye to the housing wealth accumulated by many in older generations.