THE RISING POPULATION OF SENIORS AND BOOMERS

– By Partap Dua

By 2030, 23% of Canada’s population will be seniors 65 and older. That is around 10 million seniors or 1 in 4 Canadians.

And no one is talking about such an important thing that needs urgent attention. Not even a single party or a single leader. I am certain that like most past events, our politicians will wash off their hands when the time comes. It happened in case of underground water and wastewater pipes whose maintenance was left unplanned for years by politicians. Suddenly when they starting bursting and flooding the roads in cities like Toronto every one woke up. But no one asked who was responsible. The politicians responsible were coolly enjoying their pensions. The present taxpayers were asked to foot the bill as underground pipes needed billions of dollars to repair and replace. And our water rates increased by 500% without any increase in our wages or salaries. If it were not Canada, most of the politicians responsible would have been in prison and their pensions attached. Today we pay an average $4-5 a cubic meter and our waste water dollar amount is automatically doubled based on volume of water used. In most countries of Asia, water is provided free of charge by the government. In Canada we pay $100-200 a month for water.

Today, we have around 6.5-7.0 million seniors and 3 working Canadians for every senior. We have around 19 million working Canadians, including part time workers. In next 10 years we would require 30 million work force to support our 10 million seniors in their retirement. Could we ever have so much increase in work force that our 75% population would be employed? We have had an increase of only 2 million workforce in last 10 years since 2008. It took us 27 years to reach 19 million workforce from 13 million workforce in 1992.

So we know the impossible we have not planned for. Politicians will show us carrots and talk about all other things but the apocalypse. Have you seen any party ever mentioning seniors at all? Today we have 10% seniors living in poverty and we don’t care. What would happen in 10 years from now when seniors will be struggling to get support for their pensions?

SOLUTION

 The only solution possible is to either increase our income or keep setting aside a heavy pool of cash rather than doling out money for votes. Or we increase our workforce, which is next to impossible because Canada has only so many young people of working age. If we take out            10 million seniors from our projected population of 40 million in 2030, we would need every single person of the remaining 30 million population, including children and newborn babies to be working in some job. The other solution is to focus on finding ways to increase Canada’s annual income exponentially or magically to handle the looming seniors’ crisis. We cannot neglect those who are in their  40s or mid 50s looking to retire comfortably in Canada after having paid heavy taxes all their lives.

Our party has a novel solution to address this situation, and in turn we would have addressed many other problems plaguing developed country like Canada with a rapidly aging population, where seniors have already outnumbered our population of children under 14 and under. Not only do we want to address the future, we want to focus on present seniors as well, especially those living around poverty line. It is a shame that Canada has a large number of children and seniors living below poverty level in subhuman conditions!

We are looking forward to your support and votes, especially the young Canadians. Once again we say there has to be a novel change in Canadian politics if we want to move forward. We cannot afford to support parties based on our past allegiance.