The Current - Is the election pitting generations against each other?

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Recent polls show a stark generational divide this election, with the majority of young voters angry about the cost of living, while seniors are more anxious about Donald Trump’s threats against Canada. We look at what the different parties are pitching, to all Canadians.

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This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. It is week two of the federal election campaign, although perhaps you'd be forgiven if it seems like it's been going on for much longer. Cast your mind back to last Sunday, Liberal leader Mark Carney kicked off the federal election with an appeal to younger generations. My generation was fortunate. For us, there were more opportunities and life was more affordable.

But for the generations that have followed, they're working just as hard or even harder than we did. But they're struggling to pay the rent, to put groceries on the table, and to save for their kids' educations. A few days later, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poliev targeted older voters at a campaign announcement. Today I'm announcing that a new Conservative government will put Canada first by allowing our seniors to earn up to $34,000 tax free. He promised to keep the retirement age at 65 and lower taxes for seniors putting more

money in their pockets. This will mean for a working capital that happens to be of retirement age, they will literally save thousands of dollars they can spend on a nice summer vacation or maybe spoil the grandkids just a little bit more. Appealing to different generations in the campaign is a bit of a tricky balancing act, especially right now, because polls suggest the generational divides in this election around big issues could help shape voting intentions. And so we are reconvening our intergenerational panel to talk through all of this. Rudy Boutignal is president of the Canadian

Association of Retired Persons, or CARP. Paul Kershaw is professor of population and public health at the University of British Columbia. He's also the founder of the Think Tank Generation Squeeze. And Vass Bednar is executive director of the Master of Public Policy Program at McMaster University.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning. In a word, we're gonna get into the specifics, but in a word, I want to ask you what the driving issue for your generation is in this election. Rudy, what would that word be?

Well, right now it's a change from the status quo. Okay, Paul? Well, I'm gonna answer as a prof more than my Gen X status. And I would say the thing we're not discussing is old age security. Old age security. All right. And Vass for you, what's the driving issue for people of your generation? Okay.

Greetings fellow kids. I'm a geriatric millennial and I've been reading up on Gen Z. Honestly, I would say vision question mark. We're seeing these little know, these little snack size announcements, but what does it add up to? What's the Canada we want? What are we building towards? Okay.

Those are all things to pick into. Rudy, as we heard, the conservatives are promising to lower taxes for seniors. Pierre Pauli up there said that working seniors could earn up to $34,000 tax free, keep the retirement age at 65 as well. What do you make of the conservative plan for seniors in this country?

Well, it was good to finally hear seniors making the election platform. The candidates had gone quite silent on it the first week. So that was a concern. So I think what the conservative party was offering was good to have it on the agenda. I think it's a good start. I think the idea of keeping seniors in the workforce longer,

those that want to or have to, is a good idea. It's good for the economy. We've had, you know, the seniors have a lot of skill, a lot of knowledge, and many want to continue working, and it's good for their overall health. So that was good. What about holding the retirement age at 65? This is something that in 2012 Pierre Pauliev said that there would need to be a change in the retirement age if we wanted to keep the public pension system in this country solvent.

Well I think it's reassuring for many people. Again, it doesn't apply, you know, the age of 65 does not apply equally to everyone in terms of wanting to retire. Some people, they're very in the labor intensive jobs, hard jobs like personal service workers, nurses, construction, heavy construction workers. 65 is, you know, they can barely make it. Other people that are white collar might live or work longer. So again, we, you know, look at all seniors at the same age of 65. We have to look at it holistically, but I think it's reassuring right now because many people have made their

plans based on that. Paul, you've been on this program before talking about generational fairness in government policy. What do you make of the Conservatives' tax cuts and promises? And it's the NDP as well, aimed at seniors. Well, on the one hand, when I think about the fact that there are about a half million poor seniors, I'm quite supportive of thinking about how we can eliminate their poverty. I think that a blunt tax cut of this sort that is being proposed in this case by the conservatives isn't going to get the job done. And it also is inconsistent with Mr.

Poliev's previous sort of railing against what he called inflationary deficit spending. And if we're going to be serious about the fact that the federal government has a large deficit, we have to start digging into the fact that old age security is driving that deficit. There's no way Canada will ever balance our budget until our national leaders grapple with this challenge. And if I can just give a bit of a math lesson, I apologize for doing it early in the morning. The year before Mr. Trudeau became prime minister, OAS was costing us $44 billion. This year, OAS will costing us $44 billion. This year, OAS will cost us $86 billion. That's a $42 billion increase and not coincidentally, almost precisely the same

amount of our deficit this year. No other program has grown so rapidly. No other program is going to grow as much in the years ahead. And so we can't escape that Canada is starting from a poor financial foundation to fight the Trump tariff war because we have not grappled with the need to modernize OAS. And this is now then dripping down to millennials and Gen Z. Not only are they inheriting large unpaid government bills, the data show they're paying 20 to 40% more in their income taxes towards the healthy retirement of boomers than boomers paid when they were young towards seniors. And they do so in part to help poor seniors, but they also do so

to be subsidizing an $18,000 OAS for a retired couple with 180 grand in income. And that, I think, is the issue we need to focus on. You have suggested scaling back old age security for financially secure retirees. You wrote that without a renewed focus on whether You have suggested scaling back old age security for financially secure retirees. You wrote that without a renewed focus on whether we get good value for OAS spending, it will be harder, for example, to fend off US threats. Easy for you to say you're not running for election. I mean, seniors are a very reliable and motivated voting bloc. Do you see any party weighing into that? I'm skeptical that this conversation happens during an election, but I am certain that if anyone

really wants to balance the budget going forward, or even just put us in a stronger financial foundation, we're gonna need a conversation with the aging loved ones in our lives who are financially secure. And if they have over six figures of income each year, that's the group we're gonna need to ask to say, might you accept slightly less so that the money can be repurposed to inject a large amount of money for poor seniors?

I'm talking, we should be adding five grand for every one of the half million poor seniors. Then even still, there would be money left over to help with housing and post-secondary and childcare for their kids and grandchildren. Vass, what do you make of that scaling back OAS, old age security for financially secured retirees? I mean, I think we're tinkering at the margins when we need to be having real talk about structural reforms to these systems, right? If these systems aren't supporting the more senior

people in our population enough, then is this cost of living? Is it inflation? Is it how pensions have shifted so much from the private sector to people trying to save independently? What's happening? What's actually happening? I think announcements like that, when you're not in the core constituency, are also easy to shrug off or ignore, because they feel like they're much more kind of micro targeted. That's kind of like the Oprah style of policy announcements, right? Like you get something,

you get something, you get something. And you're made to feel that you should only think about what you're getting as an individual instead of what the suite of policy announcements, again, those frames mean in all. And I think there's, now I want to change my word from vision to impatience, not because I was patiently waiting on the panel, but because I think younger generations aren't apathetic, right? They're impatient. There's this serious vibe of, well, why hasn't the government done more already? Right? How fast can we actually move? What is government for? And those are questions that have to be answered beyond these, again, you know, carefully calibrated announcements.

I was in British Columbia last week speaking with voters about, you know, who they're voting for and why. And we heard that in patients from a 20-year-old. His name is Connor Kuznick he's voting in his first federal election he's planning to vote conservative have a listen to what he told me because this election for me is coming down to somewhat of a generational divide the liberal party for many young people represents two things the first is an untenable status

quo that pierre paulieff's messaging of a lost liberal decade is on the minds of many young people. And the second thing is the Liberal Party seems to represent the interests of individuals who, older generations, who really shouldn't have a stake in young people's future. Fast pick up on that because the polls broadly show that there may be a political shift happening where you have some younger Canadians who are moving toward the Conservatives, perhaps leaving the Liberals, and you have

more financially secure Canadians who might be leaning toward the Liberals away from the Conservatives. Why are we seeing this in some young people, this move toward the Conservatives? This fascinating inversion. And kudos to Conor for being so honest about his feelings right now I mean young people feel that as Prime Minister Carney was saying in that clip from earlier that they're working very hard or just as hard or sort of following the The guidelines, you know, maybe going to university getting skills applying kind of taking the scattershot approach and increasingly they're delaying those first jobs, they're getting completely ghosted by employers, they're having trouble getting their bearings, right, or also feeling quite disoriented. We also have this

destabilizing force. I'm not pointing to all technologies, but AI is changing the way we work and how we work and this has implications for all generations too, right? So yeah, there has been polling suggesting that boomers are actually, I mean, boomer feels like it's increasingly derogatory, but it is the official term. I'm not using it in that like, okay, boomer way that they are, you know, they want to be more progressive at the same time young people like Connor research from elections Canada shows that they their generation are leaders in using public transit to address climate change and taking on the work of convincing friends and family to adapt pro-climate behaviors and that is seen as something that is fundamentally

progressive forward-thinking policy across generations. Rudy we heard Mark Carney at the to adapt pro-climate behaviors and that is seen as something that is fundamentally progressive forward thinking policy across generations. Rudy, we heard Mark Carney at the beginning talk about the good luck of older generations and part of that good luck is having cheaper housing for example. If people like Connor feel like the system has been stacked against them, what do you think older Canadians owe younger Canadians given that good luck that older folks might have experienced and the sense from some young people that the deck is stacked against them. Well, again, I think you have to have a bit of historical perspective. I'm a boomer and I remember my parents buying a house in suburban Toronto, which by today's standards seemed relatively affordable. But we were living 12 people in my house, lots of aunts, uncles, and aunts, and I slept

in a roll-up bed in the living room trying to make the $67 a month mortgage. And so it was relative. We were new immigrants and making it was really hard. So the house seemed to be affordable and they did pay it off in 25 years, but it was really tough for them. They worked really hard and it was the first generation to go to university. So it's not like we've just, you know, it was gifted to us. We were part of a generation that also worked really hard and built the built environment that's around here, the colleges, universities, libraries, community centers, roads and bridges. So each generation builds something for the next.

I think what, to an earlier point that Vass had made, you know, looking for a vision, you know, what is this country about? In political campaigns, everybody slices and dices the electorate and promises this, promises that. While young people might be impatient, older people are frustrated that what kind of a country do we have? You know, once the tariffs threat approached, all the premiers and the prime minister said, geez, we have to look at inter-provincial trade. Well, ever since I was in high school taking

political affairs or current affairs, we've talked about inter-provincial trade. And it's like, hey, let's, why can't we get that together and create an economy in a country that actually works better for its people? I'm Zing Zing. And I'm Simon Jack. And together, we host Good Bad Billionaire. The podcast exploring the lives of some of the world's richest people. In the new season, we're setting our sights on some big names. Yep, LeBron James and Martha Stewart to name just a few. And as always, Simon and I are trying to decide whether we think they're good, bad or just another billionaire. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.

Find it on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Paul, you wrote in the Globe and Mail about how, um, these are your words, across multiple levels of government, over time, Canada chose to protect housing equity for existing homeowners, even when that protection meant higher costs for renters and aspiring owners. The former prime minister, Justin Trudeau said

that housing needs to retain its value in part because it's a big part of people's potential for retirement. Where does that leave a younger generation? One of the things that you've pointed at is that, that party should compensate millennials in Gen Z for decades of those decisions. Yeah, well, that's a great summary of my work. Thanks Matt for reading so closely. I think we need to pick up on Rudy's really well articulated historical reminder that boomers and the parents who came before them, they worked hard.

There's absolutely no doubt that's the case. The difference is young people are working hard today and it's not paying off in the same way. And we just need to come and grapple with this. And one of the primary reasons it's not paying off in the same way is because in the housing market, our politics have been organized subtly and sometimes very overtly around the promise of keeping the equity or protecting the equity that homeowners have gained over the years. But the decision to protect that equity and in places like Ontario and BC,

they've been gigantic increases in equity, my case of over a million dollars. It means the only way you do that is to ask a younger demographic starting out in the housing system to have to pay more rent or to suck up larger mortgage debt or simply to forgo the dream of homeownership. And that is a massive sacrifice

to their standard of living we're imposing. And there's a reason for that. We don't really want a housing crash, but it would be in the interest of younger folks and millennials in Gen Z for us to say, we don't want home prices to keep rising anymore. And if they fail moderately, that would be okay. But politicians have been loathed to be honest that way.

And the suffering of a lower standard of living that we're requiring of Gen X and millennials and, I should say millennials and Gen Z, we need Rudy, I need Rudy's group to be more empathetic to that and not just say, we worked hard too. We worked hard and it paid off more than it does for you. And if we could have that empathetic conversation, we would make more room for Mr. Carney, not only to say this at the beginning of his campaign, but to attend to it in more detail with more rigor in terms of the public policy implications. What would that policy look like?

What would that compensation look like? Well, there's a range of routes to go. I think one part of the compensation is to say, well, not only are we asking you right now to suffer higher housing costs, we are asking you to contribute more tax dollars to an aging population. And if the aging population had the highest rates of poverty and the lowest levels of wealth, when we say that's really great, we should get you to do that young people. But it's the reverse. Retirees have the lowest rates of poverty and the highest rates of wealth. And so one way to compensate would be to at the very least say, look, more of your own tax dollars, Gen Z and millennials, we will actually

invest in things that matter for you, like your post-secondary, your housing, your child care. If that would be compensation in and of itself, but we need more of those dollars. And that's why just focusing on, you know, the relatively small group of retirees with six figure incomes and asking them to accept a few thousand dollars less in OAS each year, not no OAS, but just a few thousand less, then we could start repurposing that and really help out a younger demographic and as I said earlier, eliminate poverty for seniors. I think Vass might have suggested that was tinkering at the edges. OAS is one fifth of the federal budget. That's not tinkering at the edges.

That's taking the biggest line item and saying how do we modernize it? When the Auditor General said a few months ago, we haven't updated our thinking about OAS in three quarters of a century. Vass, I can hear you in the background. Go ahead. Part of this is one of the concerns

that a conversation like this raises. We've talked about this before, is that it pits generations against each other in some ways. Yes. And I didn't mean to minimize the scale and scope of OAS. I just felt that we're kind of scaling and kind of, you know, moving elements when, Paul, for younger generations, this question of when can you retire isn't going to be, is it 65, 66 or 67?

It's going to be a big fat question mark for a lot of people. It might be never, right? And that's a crisis too. So, Oh, but I agree. I wholeheartedly agree. But OAS isn't just about when we retire. OAS is about what are we spending on your child care now, your post-secondary now, your housing now because OAS absorbs it. I know. That's why it is this intergenerational conversation.

Fast, go ahead. If we only... Well, you know, if I can change my word of the day again, both parties have been using this very compelling word, build, right? Build what? When? How? And back to that impatience and some of what Paul was saying on housing, I do think we're starting to hear a little bit about

How can we build more housing faster? What kind of? housing can we add to the supply and to some of Paul's points to how do we move away from people feeling like they're protecting the the price the market price feeling like they're protecting the price, the market price, the relative price of their house when we're actually building more, right? How do we look at those regulatory frameworks and kind of the interconnectedness to sort of say and again build people's confidence in the power of the state, the role of the state in their everyday lives beyond some of these again micro conversations that end up being about, you know,

one-off payments that we've seen in the provincial election here in Ontario. You know, again, this kind of micro payments, little things dangling that are hard to see, okay, what does this actually do to the future? And what does it say about the country? Rudy, what do you make of Paul's call for more empathy from an older generation to understand where young people are at right now? I don't think there's a lack of empathy.

I mean, when I'm talking about older or other generations, I'm talking about my children and my grandchildren and have lots of empathy for them. And I think we have to look at, you know, we have to look at government as a whole. Again, political campaigns have been built on slicing and dicing the electorate and promising different things to different people, as opposed to some party coming out with a unified vision of saying, how do we create more wealth so we can distribute it more equitably? But, you know, in terms of generational fairness, if we're a country of homeowners, about two thirds of people are homeowners, and that'll be inherited. And even in terms of the OAS and people making six figures, they pay taxes too, right?

Seniors have paid taxes their entire life. They've been promised, they've set their retirement targets based on what's been promised by successive governments in terms of what they can expect when they retire. And again, we want to keep our seniors living a dignified life. You know, the official poverty rate has been around six and a half percent of the government policy rate. The National Institute on Aging in January came out with a survey and found that it's actually 14 percent.

So you know, there's people who are doing well and there's people who are not doing well. We're just about out of time. I just want to end with, I mean, it's interesting. We haven't mentioned Donald Trump at all in this conversation, but in the last couple of minutes that we have, and we'll start with you, Rudy, what's at stake, do you think, for your generation in this election? I think what's at stake is bringing together, you know, is a desire for change for a unified

country that stands for something. Like the good old days when I was growing up, I hate to say that, but at a time when people felt proud to be Canadian, there wasn't a question, as it has been in the last 10 years, of saying we stand for something, we're a social democratic country, we have values that are really important and define us as Canadians. I'd like to see a party talk about that, talk about what kind of Canada will bring us together. Paul, what do you think is at stake for your generation? We asked, you know, what the ballot question is, but what's at stake do you think?

Well, I think the best way to fight Donald Trump's attack is actually to remember another American president, Kennedy, who said, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. I think we're at a moment where the politics, as we've said, is still trying to slice and dice and say, what can we give you? And it kind of has turned into a cultural moment where, you know, citizens are often saying, politician, promise me more spending and cut my taxes and that's how you earn my vote.

But that makes it much more of like a politics of me, as opposed to a politics about responsibility. And I think those of us who are financially secure and well-housed, it's more often a Gen X and an older group of boomers. We need to step up right now and say, what more can we do to strengthen the country's financial foundation and take on the challenges that come

from the American attacks, international risks, and some of the many big domestic challenges we have. And that, I think, is the moment that matters to me as someone as a GenX thinking about the legacy that I want to leave. Vass, last minute to you. What is at stake in this election for you? Trust. We want to build the best country in the world. We want to reclaim our lagging productivity without sacrificing the amazing gains we've made on child care, pharma care, dental care, etc. You mentioned President Trump. That last election is widely cited as being the influencer election. That young man, Connor, probably got a lot of Pierre

Poliev ads on YouTube, you know, very online places. We haven't seen the role of influencers and non-traditional media in this election yet. That's where young people are. That's who they trust. Let's see what it means. It's great to talk to you all about this. We will come back, I think, before voting day to talk more about how this is playing

out among different generations in this country. In the meantime, thank you very much for this morning. Thank you. Thanks. Have a great day. Rudy Boutignal is president of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons. Paul Kershaw, professor of population and public

health at the University of British Columbia, founder of the think tank Generation Squeeze, and Vass Bednar is executive director of the Master of Public Policy Program at McMaster University. Your thoughts welcome. You can email us, thecurrent at cbc.ca and the Current's Election Road Trip heads to Alberta.

Later on this week we'll be in Red Deer. You'll hear that on Friday. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.