Fairness for every generation: more than an empty slogan, not yet a reality

New report card shows more progress required to achieve federal budget promise

This week, the United Nations enacted the Declaration on Future Generations, which obliges all nations to govern as Good Ancestors, stewarding what we hold sacred now and forever. It delivers a vital antidote to the cynical, short-term thinking that plagues the politics of too many countries. Canada endorsed the Declaration, as our Prime Minister just affirmed to the General Assembly.

To support its implementation here at home, Generation Squeeze prepared Canada’s first-ever Report Card on our federal government’s commitment to generational fairness.

There is good news and bad news.

It is good news that Ottawa re-organized the national budget around the promise of “fairness for every generation.” This is a big reason why our report card does not assign any failing grades. We would have done so in past when generational fairness was not on the political radar.

The bad news is that much work remains before Ottawa will earn excellent marks.

Our lowest grade — a D — signals that spending plans in budget 2024 do not invest fairly in young and old alike. Investments in Old Age Security (OAS) and medical care for the aging population dwarf investments in the Canada Child Benefit, child care, housing and postsecondary.

This indefensible gap will only widen if the Bloc Quebecois gets its way. The Bloc is threatening to hold the Trudeau government hostage to its demand to accelerate OAS at a pace that will leave investments in younger people even further behind.

Ottawa earns C for its efforts to avoid leaving unpaid bills to younger and future generations. Canada currently has the lowest net debt/GDP ratio of any G7 country, which is a strength. But Canada also faces a structural mismatch between revenue and spending as a result of poor planning for population aging. This mismatch is driving the $40 billion federal deficit.

Despite enacting the most comprehensive federal housing policy we’ve witnessed in decades, the government still only earns a C+ for reducing intergenerational tensions in Canada’s housing system. Since the National Housing Plan never mentions the word “wealth”, it ignores that many older Canadians have benefitted from the rising prices that now inflict unaffordability on their kids and grandchildren.

We award the Government of Canada a B for its efforts to steward the planet for younger and future generations. Mr. Trudeau now leads the only government in Canada that defends the principle “If you make a mess, clean it up.” Consumers should pay for our carbon pollution so we pollute less, and pay to clean up our mess. Otherwise we betray our kids.

Canada earns its top grade — a B+ — for organizing its budget around the promise of fairness for every generation. But we are not yet among the world’s leaders in implementing the UN Declaration. Wales has a Commissioner for Future Generations. The EU has a Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness. Canada needs one too.

Canada needs an Act to Safeguard the Wellbeing of Present and Future Generations, because a single budget isn’t enough to disrupt the short-term thinking that seduces the present to colonize the future. Only by enshrining intergenerational fairness into machinery of government will we safeguard what is sacred — a healthy childhood, home and planet.

Dr. Paul Kershaw is Founder, Lead Researcher & Executive Chair of Generation Squeeze. He is a policy professor in the UBC School of Population and Public Health.