Thank you for your question.
I don't think that the age 65 was ever really justified. In a sense, I think it was always a blow against human rights for people who were older.
On the other hand, there's no doubt that the country as a whole requires and needs older workers now in a way they didn't before. Partly that's because there were so few older workers before; there were far more younger workers. Now we have a situation where older workers...it's switched, exactly. So this becomes a much more important issue.
You mentioned that many people don't recognize that mandatory retirement even exists. In fact, until one gets older, you don't really think about things like that. I remember not even worrying about my pension until just a couple of years ago, whereas before that it was simply just numbers, as far as I was concerned. That's the other thing that's happening. More people are reaching that age and becoming aware of these barriers that they didn't know were there.
I think one of the things that's interesting, for example, is the Human Rights Commission in New Brunswick for many years actually justified mandatory retirement. They said it was a good idea, given pensions and so forth. All of a sudden they changed their minds in New Brunswick. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but in 2004 the Human Rights Commission advised the government to get rid of mandatory retirement--that is, the provincial Government of New Brunswick.
I know there's a new provincial government there, but I'm hoping they will act on that, because it is such an important right, the right to work. I think we need to recognize how important it is if we take away that right.