National Child And Housing Days

Opportunities to remember that we are failing young Canadians

Thanks to those of you who took the time to join our inaugural Community Call last week. We had a great time, and hope you also found value in it. It was exciting to meet so many people passionate about generational fairness – we’re more motivated than ever knowing that we have your support!  For anyone who couldn’t make it, you can find the recording here, and the calls to action that we discussed here.   

As we mentioned on the call, Paul was coming to us from Ottawa, where he was invited to speak about the need for a Generational Fairness Task Force with the Office of the Prime Minister, as well as leaders from the offices of other Ministers. We believe that a Task Force can help tackle the root cause of our affordability, housing, medical care, and climate crises: public policies that put the well-being of older generations above that of younger ones. The idea of integrating generational fairness into government operations seems to be gaining some traction with the Liberals.

Here are the topics we will cover in today’s newsletter:

• National Housing Day

• National Observer’s Max Fawcett: Young People Are Still Getting Screwed

• New Policy Solutions For Families

Let’s get into it.

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For National Housing Day, Our Federal Government Gave Us A Reminder That Housing Affordability Is Not A Top Priority

November 22 is Canada’s National Housing Day. The idea of marking the importance of homes might ring a little hollow for many Canadians, given how bad our housing situation has become. Recent polling confirms that sky-high prices continue to make housing a source of despair, anger, and worry. New Statistics Canada data suggests our housing system is becoming dynastic, with the children of homeowners or ‘mom & pop’ real estate investors more likely to own homes than children of non-owners. For many younger people, the housing crisis is impacting “nearly every facet” of their lives – from physical and mental health, to financial wellbeing, to overall quality of life.

In the face of housing despair, what can we do on National Housing Day but reiterate the need for accelerated and comprehensive action to fix our broken housing system? It’s clear what needs to be done – check out our housing policy solutions framework which describes all of the steps along the way to restoring affordability. 

National Housing Day fell right after this year’s Fall Economic Statement (FES), but the federal mini-budget didn’t match the urgency of the moment on housing. Despite the PM’s earlier brave statement that housing prices can’t keep rising, our Federal government continues to treat supply as a silver bullet, making it less likely that the stalling prices the PM has set out as a goal are achieved. While our leaders claim to understand that “no single measure will solve Canada's housing challenge”, the FES primarily focuses on “building more homes, faster”, ignoring investor demand, which the PM recently correctly identified as a factor that led to elevated prices.

If you’re looking for more on the FES, check out Paul’s recent appearance on BNN, where he details how the FES includes $115 billion in new spending for Old Age Security compared to just $16 billion for housing - no wonder young people are feeling the squeeze. We’re currently taking a deeper dive into the FES and will have some more analysis available in the coming days.

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Young People Are Still Getting Screwed

The above is the title of an article that Max Fawcett, lead columnist at Canada’s National Observer, and a friend of Gen Squeeze, published last week on the first-ever Intergenerational Fairness Day. In the article, Max explains how “Canadians under 45 consistently get the shortest end of the political stick”, on climate action, public finances, and of course, housing.

“Housing policy and local planning decisions in Canada have long been biased towards protecting the equity of existing homeowners, much of which was accumulated through no work or wisdom of their own, rather than affordability issues faced by younger people.”

We recently outlined some of the policies that are contributing to our issues. It’s exciting that a prominent writer like Max not only agrees with our diagnosis of the problem but is also calling for the same solutions:

“A good place to start would be forming the Task Force on Generational Fairness that Generation Squeeze has called for, one that would shed more light on the challenges younger people are facing.”

Thanks, Max, for bringing attention to Intergenerational Fairness Day, and how a Task Force on Generational Fairness would help create the change we need.

For more great insights from Max, check out his recent podcast with us. The episode features a discussion on housing, where we learn that Max agrees with our idea that restoring affordability means breaking our addiction to rising home prices:

“The beating heart of any successful housing strategy in this country involves going after the biggest enemy in all of this, our own behavior”.

(Are you listening, writers of the FES?)

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New Policy Solutions For Families

Monday, November 20th was National Child Day, a day to celebrate child rights like access to rest, play, education, health care, safe water, and nutritious food, among many others. As the cost of living in Canada continues to rise, many young families are having trouble providing these necessities for their children. The aim of our updated family policy solutions framework is to deliver the changes needed to support families with young children.

Parents are struggling to balance time to care for their kids, with time at work to earn the wages needed to support their families. Our plan aims to make this balance easier by improving parental leave, ensuring key supports like child care are affordable, accessible, and high quality, while also exploring ways to change workplace norms to support greater flexibility. Interested in learning more? Check out a summary here, or do a deep dive into the detailed framework here.

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That’s all for this time, thanks for reading!