https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/posthaste-canada-could-face-two-120043247.html
Country could be looking at low growth and higher inflation for next 20 years
All you have to do is look at Japan to see the future for most western countries.
They speedran this whole situation a few decades ago.
That feels a bit different to me because Japan refuses basically all immigration and their population is declining, while Canada is accepting record numbers of immigrants and is by far the fastest growing population in the G7.
Japan's population skyrocketted, and land prices got extremely high, it took another two decades before population started to decline.
Doesn't matter if it was births or immigration. We're seeing the population increase and land going up.
Soon we'll see immigration cut off as people get mad, and the population will take a decade or two before it starts declining.
Look at the demographics. Understand WHY Canada is hoovering up young professionals like it's Coke at MaraLago:
so.
Immigrants, excluding refugees
Okay, too much information to be hit with all at once, but those are the predicates. So it follows:
The problem isn't immigration, despite what the russian bots and conservatives will tell you: it's that we have an ageing population not working - as mentioned - who needs more care to stay alive and whom we want to stay alive; and all the indolent hillbillies high on russian-anti-vax hate and rejecting basic social responsibility made the experienced doctors fucking quit by being dickheads. But it's the imm'grints' fault? Housing is an issue because rental barons are raking it in and voting for the guys who promise no services, no taxes, because hoarding greenspace and greenbacks is the American way; and imm'grints are the issue?
Look. We can't kill Nana, and she's done with work anyway, so we can't send her back to work as the only job she'll score at her age is stocking shelves at the loblaws and I know that for a familial fact. We can't claw back a bunch of years of retirement and hope Uncle Bob will reopen his bait shop happily and pay more taxes. And we have to keep them alive because we don't have that loophole where the poors and retirees and soldiers die from being poor like in America because we don't do that (and we like them because she makes good cookies and he tells us all the dumb things Dad did as a kid).
We need:
Sadly, we're gonna have to raise retirement. But let's do it slowly, like a half-a-year each year or so, so Uncle Bob can stay retired and a few people to near the age can fulfill that wish and the rest who are almost as close can still accomplish it sooner just not right away, etc, etc, just stay in the job they have a little longer and use their experience. We're all living longer, and that's awesome. Let's still be Canadian and try to care for one another if we still can.
(If you own a dodge ram and no cowboy hats, this is probably not about you, but your downvote will be lost among the people who don't know better, so a flash of spite on the mouse-click is all good)
Part of the issue with raising retirement age, though, is that you can only go so far before the majority of people are unfit to work. Things like osteoarthritis have a much larger effect on your ability to work than they do on your life expectancy. Plus, the burden of continuing to work disproportionately falls on poor people whose work is more physical—well-educated people with desk jobs usually earn more money, have somewhat better savings, and can thus afford to retire a few years before their government pension kicks in.
The other issue is that people who plan to retire at x year will fucking riot if it turn into y year. I'm one of them.
And many desk jobs don't physically destroy your body like labour and trades do. On average a desk job will let you retire earlier and in better health.
Hang on, your solution is to raise the retirement age at a time when wages are actively being suppressed across multiple sectors because there are too many people competing for the same jobs?
Let's revisit that when applicants for near-minimum wage unskilled labour jobs aren't lining up around the block (virtually and sometimes physically) for a single opening.
I'd posit that a point you're missing under "We need" is "to tax the rich more to pay for the services and supports needed to manage the number of immigrants we plan to build.
You're right about immigration, but the problem, like anything our governments (LPC or CPC) do is that they'll do half the solution; the easy, cheap part (immigration, decriminalizing drugs, setting healthcare and education standards) but not the hard and expensive part (building infrastructure, providing treatment and housing-first at scale, actually spending money on teachers, doctors and/or nurses), and the reason they do the cheap part is they're ideologically unable to ask the rich to make do with less.