Invest fairly in all generations: news & insights

This week, the United Nations enacted the Declaration on Future Generations, which obliges all nations to govern as Good Ancestors. To support its implementation here at home, Generation Squeeze prepared Canada’s first-ever Report Card on our federal government’s 2024 budget commitment to "Fairness for Every Generation."

Student struggles with unaffordable housing, rising food-bank use and debt are tell-tale signs that the Canadian university sector must improve its advocacy. Economic precarity should not be the price required to get a degree in this country.

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.

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.

There are only three realistic paths to eliminate the federal deficit: gut benefits for boomers’ retirement; raise taxes to pay for boomers’ benefits; or ramp up immigration. Voters deserve to know which challenges Mr. Poilievre plans to accept.

Canada’s Gen Fairness budget is getting noticed around the world. Our colleague from the UK’s Intergenerational Foundation, Liz Emerson, took the time to share her thoughts on the promise of generational fairness at the heart of Canada’s recent federal budget

The 2024 federal budget promises “fairness for every generation” as the starting point for a new fiscal framework. This acknowledgment is a game changer, because the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one. The next steps will take more than a single budget can deliver.

Meeting the goal of generational fairness means our legacy can’t be large deficits. Meeting this goal will require addressing the massive revenue shortfall but it will be nearly impossible if too many of us believe the path to balanced budgets is as easy as eliminating spending on things we love to hate.

Never before has a government been bold enough to organize their budget to respond to the problem that “hard work isn’t paying off [today] like it did for previous generations.” For young people across Canada struggling with unaffordable housing and other costs that have risen far faster than earnings from paid work, this is a welcome validation of the systemic root causes of the challenges they face.

The real fiscal signal in the 2024 budget is that the Ford government has a serious revenue problem, despite investing little to reduce unaffordability pressures. Provincial plans to restore a balanced budget by means of spending restraint and revenue from future economic growth is on shaky ground. Younger voters inherit more debt, but little help with major costs of living like postsecondary and housing. Here’s our take on why that is a bad generational deal.