Thank you, Brian.
Just to broaden that a bit, at Ryerson I'm actually with the National Institute on Ageing as well.
I've been doing research for quite a long time. I always find it very surprising that when we look at retirement income security for Canadian seniors, we always look at age 65, but most 65-year-old Canadians who don't have enough money to sustain their living standards do what the rest of Canadians do: either they go back to work or they curb their spending. However, there is a crisis, and the real crisis comes when people develop chronic health conditions at more advanced ages. Once you develop a chronic health condition, you don't have the option to go back to work and you cannot curb spending because the associated costs are not voluntary costs: they're fixed costs, and they cannot be postponed.
Throughout time and around the world, that is where family would step in. Up until now in Canada, when seniors became frail and elderly and developed chronic health conditions, families stepped in to support the seniors in their household in their daily household needs and their daily care needs. Unfortunately, in Canada, this will not continue into the future. One reason is simply that baby boomers did not have children; the other is that mobility has increased in Canada substantially, and therefore children don't live near enough to their parents to help in any feasible way on a daily basis.
Somebody is going to have to pay these for costs, and they're going to be enormous. If seniors can't afford to pay for these services themselves and we want to help these vulnerable seniors, then somebody is going to have to pay. If it's not the seniors themselves, it's going to be a shrinking workforce of workers who are already supporting the economy and are already paying for our social programs.
The difficulty of understanding this absolute truth that we know is going to be happening in the next decade is that it's not just a complicated system. The retirement income system in Canada is not just complicated and it's not just about rules, formulas, and numbers. It's actually what we call, in the sciences, a complex system, because it's made up of real people and it's made up of components that are connected and interdependent, and they adapt and evolve. Nevertheless, I've worked for the last dozen years independently between government, academia, and industry, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that there are huge disconnects in the system.
I can also tell you with absolute certainty that there are also incredible areas of synergy between the three, and if we can leverage and identify those synergies, we can create extremely effective, viable, valuable solutions that will substantially help Canadian seniors in their well-being today as well as tomorrow.
In my mind, a valuable solution has to satisfy three criteria. The first is that a valuable solution has to be what seniors want; second, a valuable solution has to be what seniors actually need; and third, a valuable solution cannot pass financial burdens on to a shrinking workforce.
Fortunately, solutions do exist. The first solution is basically to allow Canadians seniors to have the money they need when they need it. The way we could do this at a federal level is to integrate in the Canadian registered retirement savings plan an option for Canadian seniors to take a portion of their savings and put it into a pool. Then, basically, with the other Canadian seniors, this pool would pay out a guaranteed income for those among them who live past age 85, the time at which they will develop chronic health conditions.
That is called “longevity insurance”. Longevity insurance is extremely popular and very successful around the world. It's completely absent in Canada. This solution satisfies my three criteria: it gives seniors what they want, it gives seniors what they need, and it does not transfer any financial burden onto Canadians. In fact, it will save us an incredible amount of money.
I recently presented this idea to leading pension policy thinkers in Canada. It was met with unanimous support, and it's soon going to be coming out in a C.D. Howe Institute public policy report.
A second solution is that we want to try to preserve the invaluable services being provided by the family for Canadian seniors, because we know these costs are enormous. Fortunately, right now 70% of care for seniors is being done from within the family. Despite the changes in our culture, we can still preserve this practice. The way we do that is by paying informal caregivers. Again, this solution has been implemented with amazing success around the world, in the Netherlands and in Germany, and I'm currently partnering with provinces across Canada and researchers to explore this solution.
Again, it's giving seniors what they want, it's giving them what they need, and it will save us a ton of money.
As Victor Hugo said, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” If we can leverage on the synergies between academia, industry, and government, as well as learn from the experiences of other countries, it will be very effective in creating viable and valuable solutions that will substantially improve the well-being of Canadian seniors. It will help them get what they want and get what they need without transferring financial burdens onto Canadians—the younger Canadians, part of what will be a shrinking workforce.
Unfortunately, the big “but” is that the effectiveness of all these solutions is time-limited. If you don't do it now, there's not enough time to make these solutions work. I implore you: the time to implement powerful solutions is now, and you are the people to do it.
Thank you very much.