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.

A root cause of many of the financial challenges now facing millennials and Gen Z is that governments decades ago failed to plan adequately for the future. It is time for Canada to enshrine generational fairness in the machinery of government with an act to safeguard the well-being of present and future generations.

Generation Squeeze is bringing our generational fairness solutions to the first-ever United Nations' Summit of the Future in New York this September. Canada will join other world leaders to stand in solidarity with current and future generations by agreeing on a Pact for the Future and a Declaration for Future Generations.

Too often industry and media portray the housing market as “strong” when prices rise, and “weak” when they stall. But too many Canadians, especially younger folks, are unable to afford homes whether as owners or renters. So, we should be describing the housing market as strong when prices don’t rise, and weak when they do.

From ongoing over-extraction of shared resources from the environment, to wealth from the housing system, and young people’s tax dollars going to pay for boomers’ retirement, a majority of millennials and Gen Z Canadians have good reasons to believe that previous generations are rigging the system for their benefit.

We need to guard against making it taboo to discuss the intergenerational tensions that flow from ageism, because shutting down dialogue diverts attention from the societal adaptions required to restore intergenerational solidarity.

Correcting the age-imbalance in government budgets is the least Canada can do to compensate younger folks for the political calculation that they must forfeit some of their standard of living to safeguard the housing wealth gained by many older Canadians.

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 NDP in B.C., Progressive Conservatives in Ontario and Liberals in Ottawa all struggle to balance their budgets today because governments failed decades ago to plan adequately for boomers’ retirement.