I'll be brief. I thought that the policy of the government providing income support from the beginning of COVID in March 2020 was completely appropriate. We were in this massive crisis. We didn't know where it was going. We didn't know how lethal it was and so forth. We all know the story.
However, since then, everything is dynamic. Economies are dynamic. The facts are dynamic. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is non-partisan, said only five or six days ago, there's no further justification, and we have to pivot. I know I'm sounding like the hedgehog, with only one big idea, that the world keep populating, but the data is overwhelming. We have a shortage of almost a million jobs, and let's be clear about what that means. There aren't enough people in long-term care homes to look after, yes, older people like me one day, if I get there. We have shortages and yet—and I say this with the greatest respect to MPs, because I think you have an incredibly challenging job—we have to pivot. It's not 1972. I've known 1972. I joined the workforce in 1972 and it is not 1972. It's not 1982. It's not 1992. We have massive job shortages and we're only at the beginning. We're not at the end. We're looking at 30, 40 or 50 years. Every serious demographic forecast by serious demographers in top-notch research universities says that these shortages are only going to get worse and worse, and we all say we'll solve them with immigration.
When other countries wake up and start to realize they have the same crisis, you're going to see countries restrict—and in the authoritarian, totalitarian countries, they're going to prevent—people from leaving their countries to go off to Canada so we can solve our job-shortage problem.
I'm saying, then, that we have to pivot. We have to adopt, as former deputy prime minister McLellan said, not only a growth agenda but also a focus, I think, on all hands on deck. We have to get everybody into the workforce that we possibly can, and I hope you look at what the OECD has been recommending for years. They said we're living longer and longer, yet we have retirement policies as if we were back when life expectancy was 60 or 65, but it's not that any more. It's in the 80s and it's increasing.
Therefore, we have to look at our policies on minimum retirement age. We have to look at making sure every income support program.... Of course, support people who need help, but tie it to a requirement that they must be seeking employment. We need all hands on deck in this economy.