News & Insights

BC allows anyone over age 55 to defer paying municipal property taxes on their principal residence. This program may have made sense when it was created in 1973, but today, most beneficiaries are multi-millionaires. With BC facing record deficits, it's well past time for Finance Minister Bailey to change this outdated and inefficient subsidy.

While leaders spar over housing and immigration, few acknowledge how boomer aging has become the decisive force behind provincial and federal deficits. Unlike other drivers of deficits, such as poor policy decisions or trade wars, this one was both predictable and preventable.

Last year, Canada and other UN member states adopted a milestone in global governance: the Declaration on Future Generations. With a federal budget around the corner, the question is clear: Will Canada live up to the promise it made at the UN — or will short-term politics win out?

Build Canada Homes embraces many of the housing affordability solutions Generation Squeeze has been championing for years. Despite these strengths, the strategy sidesteps a critical piece: what is our goal for home values?

Millennials and Gen Z are already conscripted into national service for their elders – no uniform required. Medical care shows why. Paying for rising costs is one of the clearest examples of the service younger generations provide.

BC wants to make its electoral system better. Gen Squeeze is calling on the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform to make 3 changes: require parties to release detailed platforms, lower the voting age to 16, and shift the province towards a proportional representation voting system.

Medical care is the largest expense in every provincial budget across Canada. The demand for medical care will continue to surge as boomers age through the system. Canadians and governments alike need to confront the root cause that has long been ignored: provincial governments failed to plan for the predictable rise in boomers’ medical costs.

Ottawa recently released what it describes as the “most ambitious” housing plan in over 75 years. In many ways, it delivers. But for all its ambition on building homes, the plan is silent on deeper tensions that drive unaffordability – especially the generational dynamics at its core.

Home ownership among young Canadians (under age 35) has recently surged to 44%, the highest level in five decades! 18% of them are mortgage-free. This indicates Canada may be drifting from a meritocracy toward a landed aristocracy, where access to secure housing increasingly depends on being born into the right family.