Canada’s “Fairness for Every Generation” Budget Is Getting Noticed Around The World
International Momentum Behind Canada’s Historic Commitment
The promise of “fairness for every generation” in the 2024 federal budget is a historic achievement – not just for Generation Squeeze, but for a growing global movement. Ottawa’s formal recognition and validation of our cause has resonated far beyond Canada’s borders, drawing praise and reflections from global allies concerned about the declining well-being of younger and future generations.
Canada and the UK share problems – and solutions
Liz Emerson, CEO and Co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation in the UK, rallied behind this milestone in a recent blog post:
“This is a massive win for intergenerational fairness in principle. Governments around the world should take note that Canada has placed such a high priority on fairness for every generation that it organised its fiscal framework around this principle.
It’s also a win for our good friends at Generation Squeeze. The team has worked tirelessly for more than a decade to raise the issue of intergenerational fairness within Canadian policymaking and wider society.”
Her reflections underscore common challenges faced by younger generations in Canada and the UK. This is particularly noteworthy in the housing sector, where in the UK “younger generations have been calling for greater tenancy protections for more than a decade as house prices soared, supply withered and rents have gone through the roof – up 29% in just three years”.
Liz emphasized the need for Canada to learn from the UK's experiences with the Renters Reform Bill. The bill promises desperately needed protections for tenants – but has been slow to come to fruition, starting its winding path through Parliament way back in 2018.
“The journey to full legislation is long, arduous, and fraught with obstacles, so young Canadians need to take note and keep pressure on legislators to ensure that Trudeau’s housing promises are delivered quickly,” Emerson warned. That’s critical advice for Canadians, as we turn our attention to ensuring that the federal government is accountable for delivering on its budget commitments. We need to ensure that generational fairness becomes a core principle for all future budgets – and future governments – to secure lasting change.
For more from Liz, check out our recent podcast episode in which she explains how younger people are feeling squeezed, and how her organization is squeezing back.
Bridging the Generational Gap In California
Sarah Swanbeck from the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans draws parallels between the challenges facing Canada and California in another recent article. Like Canada, California grapples with balancing the needs of an aging population while also investing in the future. She suggests that California lawmakers could draw valuable lessons from Canada:
“[Canada’s budget] aims to address systemic intergenerational inequalities, focusing on creating sustainable and equitable policies for both current and future generations. This is a landmark win for our allies at Generation Squeeze and an important moment for other international groups that have been pushing for greater acknowledgement of intergenerational fairness by governments around the world.”
Sarah sees no shortage of common challenges between California and Canada – like housing affordability, climate change, and public debt management. Sarah urges California to adopt principles of intergenerational fairness in its policy-making process, emphasizing the need for sustainable revenue generation and equitable budget cuts that don’t disproportionately impact younger generations:
“Canada’s federal budget explicitly acknowledges the need for policies that do not disproportionately favor one generation over another. This includes investments in housing, education, healthcare, and climate change mitigation to ensure younger generations are not burdened with the economic and environmental debts of their predecessors.”
What Price Are Young Americans Paying?
Influential – and sometimes controversial – marketing professor Scott Galloway is also bringing attention to the plight of younger generations. His recent TED Talk on "How the US Is Destroying Young People's Future" went viral. In it, he sheds light on the financial hardships faced by young Americans, detailing how living standards in the US have declined in recent decades:
“...we're seeing that for the last two generations, people are making less money on an inflation-adjusted basis. In addition, the cost of buying a home, the cost of pursuing education, continues to skyrocket. So the purchasing power, the prosperity, is inversely correlated to age… we're taking away opportunity and prosperity from our youngest… for the first time in the US's history, a 30-year-old is no longer doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. This is a breakdown in the fundamental agreement we have with any society, and it creates rage and shame.”
Galloway notes that despite having the deck stacked against them, young Americans are also being snubbed by their governments, which focus on supporting older folks.
“It would cost $11 billion to expand the child tax credit but that got stripped out of the infrastructure bill. But the additional $135 billion a year to social security flies right through congress. Every year we transfer $1.4 trillion from a cohort that is increasingly doing less well to the cohort that is the wealthiest cohort in the history of this planet.”
The aging of Canada’s population is yielding similar trends. The growing number of Canadian retirees is claiming an ever-larger share of public spending, squeezing out investments in younger generations and driving up public debt. Better understanding the mismatch between our spending on older Canadians – and the revenue available to pay for it – is necessary to reverse the ongoing deterioration in younger people’s quality of life.
Galloway’s data-driven analysis and poignant critique resonate deeply with our cause. His insights reinforce the importance of policies that prioritize the needs of younger generations, and serve as a powerful reminder that the systemic challenges faced by young people are not unique to Canada – and that they shouldn’t be blamed on any single politician or political party.
Looking Forward: A Collective Effort for Generational Fairness Around the World
Recognition from international partners reinforces the significance of our recent budget victory – as well as the urgent need to continue advocating for policies that will bring about fairness for all generations. We’re proud to be at the forefront of this movement, amplifying voices and driving change that transcends borders.
This movement’s global scale will reach new heights this September, when the United Nations convenes the first and only global summit in its history focused on fairness and wellbeing for younger and future generations. The Summit of the Future will ask 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.
The Declaration recognizes the importance of “seiz[ing] the opportunity that present generations possess to leave a better future for generations to come and to fulfill our mandate to meet the demands of the present in a way that safeguards the interests of future generations.” It calls for UN member states to “future-proof decision-making” and to “embed future generations and long-term thinking in policy-making processes.”
Ottawa’s recent fairness for every generation budget is an important milestone on the way to the Summit. This event is an opportunity for Canada to showcase its leadership on generationally fair budgeting – and most importantly, to announce the next steps needed to make sure these commitments are for the long term.
We extend our thanks to Liz Emerson, Sarah Swanbeck, Scott Galloway, and all our global allies in this fight. Together, we are working to build a future where every generation can thrive, and where hard work pays off for everyone, regardless of age.
The US comparison is interesting because (compared to Canada) the US has always had maybe a different attitude towards safety nets for working age people, in terms of how much people see that as a central role of governments in the first place. But even though people maybe didn't see it consciously as a necessary counterpart of the welfare state, the huge expansion post-war had also come alongside both relative improvements in income inequality and increasingly-accessible property ownership that meant many more working age people could do well on their own. I think the term "pre-distribution" (coined by political scientist Jacob Hacker) to describe policies that reduce inequality in market income rather than after-the-fact, actually describes a lot of inter-generational tensions well too. There's a question of budget fairness, but there's also a question of why young people are doing worse pre-transfers, and at least some of that is policy-driven. There's a political question about how you want to fix that that might not look the same across countries.
Most Canadians, me included, I think are comfortable with a somewhat bigger role for redistribution. But I think the thing that stood out to me (personally) is that a lot of the recent budget wins in Canada have come alongside continuing either an arguable lack of attention to why young people are doing poorly without help they didn't used to need to the same degree (like in treating "labour shortages" as a problem rather that the first upward pressure on wages in decades), or in the case of housing explicitly committing to goals like maintaining high home prices that make it harder for people to meet their needs in the market. So I think comparing between countries there's some room to be flexible on how you get to fair outcomes, even if spending has different age-balances.