Good afternoon.
Thank you, Chair and members, for the invitation. On behalf of Generation Squeeze, an organization working to improve well-being for all generations, I have one straightforward message. Canada is within reach of the most significant improvements to affordability and income security in decades, and we can do it without raising tax rates or increasing the deficit, but only if Ottawa redirects billions in subsidies currently flowing to retirees with six-figure incomes towards Canadians who have greater financial needs.
Here's what we could do. Imagine allocating $5,000 to every one of the 400,000 retirees below the official poverty measure and virtually eliminating seniors' poverty. We can do that. We could, for a million young people struggling to afford housing, give an annual $3,000 subsidy. We could say to a million post-secondary students facing a $1,200 hit to the Canada student grant that we won't make that cut. We could add another 100,000 child care spaces subsidized at $10 a day and meet Ottawa's target of 250,000. We could go and invest substantially to reduce youth unemployment, say, turning the youth climate corps from a pilot of $1,000 into something that's supporting tens of thousands to give young people leadership and job training and make our communities more resilient.
We could do all of that by modernizing Canada's largest income security program: old age security. According to the spring economic update, in 2024, we spent $80 billion on old age security. By the end of the decade, it will reach $109 billion. It absorbs more new public spending than any other program in the federal budget by a whopping order of magnitude, and a surprising 16% of it goes toward retirees who already have six figures, a subsidy that, for those couples, often exceeds $18,000. By 2030, the share of that funding alone will reach $17.5 billion, even after taking account of the current clawback rules.
That $17 billion is big. It's more than twice what we are doing for $10-a-day child care. It's 10 times the amount of money put into making homes more affordable in the recent spring economic update. It dwarfs all spending on grocery supports, trades training and clean growth combined. Remember, this is just the portion of OAS going to financially secure retirees with six-figure household incomes. At a time when Ottawa projects deficits of about $50 billion annually for years to come, this $17 billion can no longer be justified as the best use of public dollars, so it's time to trim. It's time to trim OAS benefits, but only for retirees with household incomes above $100,000, reducing their subsidies by, on average, about $3,000 after taxes.
This change would protect OAS or improve it for 80% of retirees while reducing subsidies for simply the top 20% who now receive OAS. Very importantly, it would not cut OAS spending. We're proposing to only slow its growth. Rather than have it reach $109 billion by the end of the decade, we're talking about it reaching more like $100 billion. That $9-billion savings is enough to pay to eliminate seniors' poverty, improve rental affordability, help students and all of the other things that I summarized a moment ago, and do so all at once.
Canadians are ready for this change. Polling consistently shows that three-quarters of Canadians, including three-quarters of retirees, support it. Canada cannot build a resilient economy while we allocate $17 billion in subsidies to flow to those who have more financial security, even as poor seniors and younger Canadians struggle to afford the basics. For that reason, we are calling on Ottawa to modernize old age security in budget 2026 this fall to unlock the largest improvements to affordability and income security in decades, and to do so to benefit young and old alike.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.