Family news & insights

Taking care of our kids is one of society’s most important shared responsibilities. Whether or not we’re parents, we’re all caregivers as citizens. Standing behind adequate and inclusive supports for parents is one way we can each do our part to help our youngest citizens thrive, and ensure that every family has what they need to secure the best possible outcomes for their children.

Canada’s ‘Fairness for Every Generation’ budget is inspiring others in our global movement. Leaders from the Berkley Institute for Young Americans in California are calling on their state to look to Ottawa for inspiration.

The federal government is already demonstrating that ‘fairness for every generation’ isn’t just a convenient slogan. Every day since March 27, the Prime Minister has announced concrete policies to improve affordability for younger Canadians — policies which align with ingredients in our comprehensive housing and family solutions frameworks. Here are our takeaways on recent budget promises about restoring housing affordability and supporting young families, along with questions we'll be asking when the budget is tabled.

Gen Squeeze Founder Paul Kershaw was on Parliament Hill this week to remind Canadians why most of us supported paying for our pollution in the first place: “[W]e pay for our pollution because we love our kids, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. We have a duty to pay for our pollution for them… because there’s absolutely no escaping that we put our kid’s health, safety, air, drinking water, and food at risk when we pollute.”

Two years into the rollout of federal funding for $10-a-day child care, the plan still isn’t firing on all cylinders. But it isn’t a sign that the plan is broken. It signals that provinces are playing politics with federal funding rather than urgently reducing financial hardships facing young families.

The deficits announced in Ottawa’s fall economic statement remind us that previous governments never worked out how to pay for the healthy retirement of baby boomers. The personal finances of younger Canadians are collateral damage.

Federal parties have misdiagnosed the biggest changes in 2023 Fall Economic Statement. Canada needs a federal task force on generational fairness to correct these misperceptions of federal finances.

Despite historic government investments in child care, Canadian families still find themselves squeezed by rising costs, scarce supports, and services that are difficult to access. Government budgets still invest more urgently in retirees than younger Canadians — even when new child care spending is added in. Gen Squeeze is paving the way for much-needed policy change with a new solutions framework to support young families.

Nobody likes to be challenged about whether they earned all that they have. Some get defensive when I talk about winning the “lottery of timing” by becoming a homeowner years ago, or when I raise concerns that younger Canadians inherit unaffordability and climate problems in which I’m partly implicated. Breaking through this defensiveness is necessary if Canada is to work once again for young and old alike.

Today, November 16, 2023, is the first global Intergenerational Fairness Day. The urgent need to reverse the deteriorating well-being of younger and future generations stretches beyond Canada. Voices from the US, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Japan, Nigeria, and Australia as well as United Nations Foundation Next Generation Fellows have joined together to call on governments to preserve what is sacred – a healthy childhood, home, and planet – so that we can all be proud of the legacy we leave for those who follow.