Intergenerational Fairness Is Not A Partisan Issue
Hard work isn’t paying off for young people the way it did for previous generations; we need a federal task force working to remedy this
Earlier this summer, Generation Squeeze founder Paul Kershaw wrote an article for the Globe and Mail explaining how many of the hardships facing younger generations are the result of policies adopted decades ago, often by today’s older generations. He described how older generations failed to adequately consider how policy choices that helped them would erode housing affordability for generations to follow:
“There is only so much wealth that can be extracted from a housing system. Many homeowners like me, and especially those who are older, have extracted so much of that housing wealth that we have transcended the middle class to be among the more privileged. We have done so at the cost of unaffordability for those who walk in our footsteps.”
Paul called on our federal government to create a task force to investigate why Canada no longer works fairly for all generations – and to propose corrective policy actions to disrupt this legacy. Since then, he has been working his hardest to fulfill the “Change” part of Gen Squeeze’s mandate as a “Think and Change Tank”. He’s been invited to meet with leaders from the offices of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Labour and Seniors, and the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth to explore the contributions that a “Generational Fairness Task Force” can make.
As we keep working hard behind the scenes to get this task force established, Generation Squeeze’s Andrea Long, Senior Director of Research and Knowledge Mobilization, thought it would be a good time to take a moment to acknowledge what a historic year this has been for generational fairness. Leaders of all federal political parties have now acknowledged the generational impacts of our public policy choices and the harmful legacy we risk leaving to younger people and generations to follow.
See Andrea’s thoughts below, along with some questions that we need your help with.
Both Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been talking about the “promise” of Canada. Each describes this promise as an expression of intergenerational fairness – in effect, that every generation should do better than the one which preceded it. Both leaders also acknowledge that this promise is at risk, as wages fall behind, and rising home prices push more and more younger people out of the housing market.
It’s striking that the Conservative and Liberal leaders use a generational lens to define what we are striving towards as a country. Their visions of success for Canada invoke the generational fairness principles at the core of Gen Squeeze: stewarding our collective resources to preserve what’s sacred, planning wisely to promote well-being at all ages, and treating future generations the way we’d want our own to be treated.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh invoked similar sentiments earlier this year. He spoke about the profound affordability pressures on younger Canadians and asked the government to address generational fairness in the federal budget. Mr. Singh echoed this sentiment in his podcast with us, underscoring the greater economic challenges and wealth inequality faced by today’s younger people compared to previous generations. Green party leader Elizabeth May offered similar observations in her podcast episode, drawing particular attention to the disproportionate climate burden on the shoulders of today’s younger people and generations to come.
It’s encouraging to watch all parties view Canada’s biggest problems through an intergenerational lens for the first time. Over a decade ago when Gen Squeeze first got started, policy dialogue about age focused largely on ‘ageist’ discrimination against seniors. There were few entry points for dialogue with any party about the deteriorating well-being of younger people, or the fact that hard work doesn’t pay off today the way it did for previous generations. The struggles of younger people were more likely to be viewed as personal failings, than the legacy of decades-old policy decisions that didn’t address fiscally unsustainable medical care and public pension systems, or environmentally unsustainable levels of pollution.
We spent years mobilizing and framing the evidence, to get these problems recognized through a generational lens. And now we have, by parties of all ideological stripes.
It’s not enough by any stretch, but it is something to take a moment to acknowledge before diving back into the fight. Now we need all those party leaders to back up their words with more action. As we continue working to get them to do that, we want to know:
What else do you think we should do to make sure that our leaders turn words into actions?
What do you think we should ask political leaders to do to restore Canada’s promise for younger and future generations?
In your experience, how has the “promise of Canada” been compromised? We’d love to hear your stories.
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I see a huge amount of resentment from people my age (early 30s) who want to have children, or another child, and don't see any reasonable path to that at an age where it’s still biologically possible. I think governments need to seriously acknowledge that the length of time these problems have been ignored means there’s less runway for wholly long-term solutions. Immigration policy is a good example of this: it may bring long-term benefits, but however ambitious new housing measures might be, if the housing to accommodate it doesn’t come for a decade that is not going to be a good consolation prize for someone who is already 30 and can’t afford family-sized housing. The ability to build wealth and save for retirement can be put off up to a point—so people might be placated by long-term promises on that front--but many life milestones can’t be. I think policy needs to be all-in on that both in terms of spending priorities, but also as a stopgap to stop treating having children as a thing people need to earn the stability for and just a thing that is a normal part of adulthood (important to not all but many) that needs to be accommodated. (I saw someone comment once that children had effectively become a luxury or a status symbol. Depressing!)
A set of mostly non-monetary things that I think would make a real difference are changing rental and condo laws in ways that better reflect real living situations and the fact that people have fewer choices of living arrangements that they once did. Many laws still effectively assume families always still have a choice to move to the suburbs; in practice, laws that make it difficult for people to have children in the housing they can afford just prevent people from having wanted families. Adults-only buildings (including conversion of existing buildings to 55+) are a major example of this, but so are overly-restrictive occupancy rules. This applies both for owned and rented condos. In Ontario, for example, condos form a major part of the rental stock but are still permitted to have rules (such as bans on pets, roommates, and sometimes boyfriends) that would ordinarily not be allowed. This is a big deal when renting has become much less transitory, although it may be difficult to fix without risking needed rentals being removed from the market. Similarly, many provinces tenancy laws effectively provide no security of tenure for roommate households where occupants might change (compared to families) making young people much more exposed to market rents.
I think the way statistics are collected often also doesn’t reflect either current living arrangements or the ways that young adults’ life choices are constrained even without having an inability to meet current needs. (As a particularly annoying example, most Statistics Canada data measures the home-ownership rate in a way that it increases if young adults move back in with their parents or otherwise stop being independent households.). Similarly, while a lot of attention is (justifiably) paid to poverty rates given people’s actual family structure and living situation, there’s less acknowledgement both that young adults need more income to meet typical life goals (like having children, getting extra education, or moving around for work) and that there are huge amounts of people who can meet their needs only because they’ve put off previously-normal life goals that are important to them. Income-based statistics also often ignore the role of wealth (and especially housing wealth) in people’s ability to meet their needs.