According to census data released Wednesday by Statistics Canada, 19 percent of us are 65 years of age or older. 22 percent are between 55 and 64 years old, as people prepare to retire. In 2016, there were 96,000 more seniors (65 and older) than children (under 15). Just five years later, this gap has grown to more than a million. This is a demographic freight train. Like most developed countries, Canada has a very low fertility rate: 1.4 children per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population. Immigration can help offset this baby gap and the aging society that results from it, but it cannot reverse it. We have to adapt. How do we adapt? Here are six ways. First, people over the age of 65 should be encouraged to keep working. Governments and employers can increase incentives to stay at work and defer retirement income. Second, governments need to strengthen existing retirement savings plans and offer new ones, such as long-term care insurance, so that current employees can fund their retirement without having to ask younger generations to do it for them. The results of the 2021 census show that a record number of Canadians of working age are approaching retirement Third, we must speak honestly about how the boomer generation will end. According to the census, the number of people over the age of 85 will triple over the next three decades. They will need home care, long-term care and palliative care. Where will the money come from? The answer is obvious: from people who work and even from the companies in which they work. Fourthly – and this is the big thing – governments need to ease their tax burden by cutting spending elsewhere. This means that you spend less on childcare because there will be fewer children and more seniors available to care for children. The Liberal Childcare program helps keep women in the workforce, which is great, but the demographic pressure is on the other end. It means less expenses for education, because there will be fewer students. It means that we spend less on welfare and unemployment insurance. As labor shortages worsen, there will be few good reasons not to work. It means spending less on services in rural areas, which are aging faster than in urban areas due to migration by young people. Unless a town or village can find a way to generate economic and population growth, then spending on health care or education or infrastructure is unproductive. People should be encouraged to move. Rural decline everywhere is not inevitable. The pandemic has revealed the possibility of remote work. Smaller communities can benefit from the housing crisis in larger communities. In some rural areas, bandwidth improvements and other investments may pay off. But governments must be careful not to throw away good money after bad. There should be exchanges. Expenditure on defense versus expenditure on health care. Expenditure on the environment versus expenditure on healthcare. Expenditure on Anything versus health care costs. Fifth, migration levels should be kept high, with an annual intake of more than 1 percent of the population or higher, and largely in favor of younger workers. International students, temporary foreign workers – any young person wishing to fill a vacancy should be offered permanent residence. Family migration should be limited to the introduction of people needed to prevent economic migrants from returning to their homeland. Sixth, because these migrants need somewhere to live, we need to increase the supply of housing. The number of high-rise apartments has grown faster than other forms of housing in the last five years. As the census also slows the sharp increase in population in city centers, this suggests that thickening efforts are paying off. These efforts should continue, as should efforts to expand the stock of low-rise apartments and suburban homes, many with grandma apartments. As the uptake of immigration increases, we will need more than anything. Above all, we must be honest with each other. We have grown old and we are getting older. Let’s admit it and face it, now. For subscribers: Receive exclusive political news and analysis by subscribing to Political information.
