Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll try to get back on track.
Thank you very much for being here today.
We had a professor from the University of Ottawa at the last meeting who said that we need to change the way we look at the demographics of population and age. I suggested that we had the gospel of Freedom 55. That was the ultimate. If you could retire at 55, that was just great. But actually, retirement is not just great at 65, because you can have productive years after.
What I'm getting at is this: when you do your stats, it says “age 55 and older”, as if 56 is older. I wonder if we should start changing those terms to reflect the health of the people. Often, younger people don't start careers or really get their act together until they're in their thirties. So that is something I think we need to do as a society. It affects StatsCan, too, because you do your surveys based on those sorts of bases. I think that our terminology should change. Maybe we should talk about our “mature” workers instead of “older” workers. Of course, you might think I'm reflecting on this because I'm an older person, but I feel that I still have many productive years left.
This is something we have a problem with. We hear all the time that eligibility for different benefits is being lowered. But we're offering those benefits at a different time in life, even though they're still as healthy as they were 20 years ago, when they were eligible for those benefits.
First, have you ever looked at starting at 62 to 72? You could call those older workers and see what's happening with that group, rather than dipping into the 55 to 62. I wonder if there would be a significant difference in your outcomes if you compared that. That's one question.
Second, this is not just a Canadian challenge; it's also in Europe and the United States. Have you looked at any of the statistics coming out of other countries and compared them to see how they're managing to allow mature workers to stay in the workforce?
Finally, as to the mature workers, do you find that they are just wanting to stay and work in their career paths and that they've upgraded their training or skills so they can continue, or do you find that the older workers are leaving their career paths and going into a new career where they have to be retrained?
There are a lot of questions there.