Federal government should reject Bloc plan—and raise OAS age of eligibility

Recently, the House of Commons passed a private member’s bill by the Bloc Quebecois to increase Old Age Security (OAS) payments for younger seniors (aged 65-74) by 10 per cent. OAS provides cash benefits for most seniors in Canada, except seniors with very high incomes.

The bill, however, requires the support of Trudeau’s cabinet, which has so far refused to grant a “royal recommendation” that would allow the bill to become law. And that’s the right call. In fact, the government should go further and raise the age of eligibility for OAS.

Here’s why.

Governments should always be cautious with taxpayer money and strive to direct financial assistance to those actually in need. It’s hard to think of a worse strategy to achieve this goal than increasing OAS benefits for seniors who are a relatively high-income demographic. In fact, the share of seniors living in “low-income” is only about half of that for the working-age population. It may be a good idea to increase targeted assistance for the small number of seniors that struggle financially, but spraying almost the entire demographic with a firehose of scarce taxpayer funds is difficult to justify on equity grounds.

The idea also flies in the face of the Trudeau government’s promise in its last budget to work for “generational fairness” and help make the economy work better for younger Canadians who face a housing crisis and low youth employment rates among other economic challenges.

Why? Because any increase to OAS benefits would be deficit-financed (that is, the government would need to borrow the money) and the cost would fall on the shoulders of working-age Canadians who must pay the interest on the resulting debt. In other words, boosting the OAS would be a massive income transfer from younger Canadians to older Canadians.

Again, instead of boosting benefits for younger seniors—like the Bloc has proposed, with support from Conservatives and the NDP—the federal government should go in exactly the opposite direction and increase the age of eligibility for OAS.

Simply put, people are living longer than when the program was first designed. And not just here at home but around the world, which is why there’s a clear international trend in increasing the age of eligibility for old-age benefit programs. According to our analysis in 2022, among 22 high-income OECD countries, 16 had either already increased the age of eligibility for public retirement programs above the age of 65 or were in the process of doing so. Several countries have also indexed the age of eligibility to life expectancy, to help prevent costs from spiralling out of control.

Canada was once on track to participate in this sensible international trend when the Harper government announced a plan to raise the OAS eligibility age from 65 to 67 (while giving ample lead time before the change to not disrupt the financial planning of Canadians nearing retirement). The Trudeau government reversed this decision (at great financial cost) in 2016 almost immediately after taking office. But now, the government would be well-advised to revisit the plan and raise the age of eligibility to 67, for the same reasons it’s reluctant to approve the Bloc’s motion and increase payments to younger seniors.

Ensuring income security for older Canadians is an important policy goal. But it’s equally important to achieving this goal in a way that does not unfairly burden working-age Canadians and directs money where it’s needed most.

Author:

Ben Eisen

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Related Topics:#BenEisen #FraserInstitute OASAgeOfEligibility OldAgeSecurityPayments

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Mark Carney’s fiscal plan: a marketing exercise to mask spending

Published on March 7, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss

Mark Carney is a leading contender to be the next Liberal party leader and Canada’s next prime minister. New details about his fiscal policy plan show a potential improvement from the Trudeau era, but the approach falls well short of what Canada needs.

Over the last decade, the Trudeau government has dramatically increased the size and role of the federal government in the economy, with the six highest years of per-person (inflation-adjusted) spending in Canadian history (2018 to 2023). To finance this spending explosion, the Trudeau government has raised taxes and borrowed a projected $1.1-trillion. If Mr. Carney wins the Liberal party leadership, he said his government would review program spending and cap the size of the federal workforce, which has grown by more than 40 per cent during Mr. Trudeau’s tenure. These are steps in the right direction. But crucially, Mr. Carney also plans to split the federal budget in two and create an operating budget and capital budget. By dividing operating and capital spending, Mr. Carney proposes a less transparent and less understandable budget. He’ll make it significantly more difficult for Canadians to track their tax dollars and evaluate the state of federal finances.

Specifically, according to Mr. Carney, he’ll run a “small deficit” in his newly formed capital budget that includes long-term spending on military equipment, clean energy, infrastructure and housing. (In other words, he’ll continue to rack up debt and fuel debt interest costs, which will reach a projected $53.7-billion in 2024/25.) And he says he’ll balance the new operating budget – which will include bureaucrat salaries, cash transfers to provinces and federal benefits (e.g. Old Age Security) – within three years. But there’s a problem: Mr. Carney’s math doesn’t add up. He plans to keep Trudeau’s national $10-a-day daycare and dental care programs. He’ll cap growth in the federal bureaucracy but won’t reduce its size. He won’t touch benefits such as employment insurance or Old Age Security or reduce cash transfers to provinces. And he’ll increase defence spending. With all these carve-outs for existing spending, it’s very difficult to see how a Carney government would balance the operating budget in three years.

To achieve this goal, he’ll be tempted to recategorize some operating expenses as capital expenses. For example, to meet NATO’s spending target of 2 per cent of GDP, Mr. Carney could (inaccurately) categorize some defence spending as capital spending. Consequently, Mr. Carney’s “small” capital deficits would quickly turn into large deficits. This would also be reminiscent of Mr. Trudeau’s promise in 2015 for three years of “modest deficits” before he abandoned that pledge almost immediately after his election. The end result would be the same – more deficits and more debt.

On the positive side, Mr. Carney has promised to cut middle-class taxes and scrap Mr. Trudeau’s proposed tax hike on capital gains. These moves would leave more money in the pockets of Canadians. Yet his tax reform plan also doesn’t go nearly far enough. Canada would still be markedly uncompetitive compared to peer countries on personal income taxes, and middle of the pack for taxes on businesses and capital gains. Mr. Carney should instead take a page out of Jean Chrétien’s playbook and reduce taxes more broadly to improve incentives for entrepreneurship, investment and job creation.

Mark Carney’s fiscal plan may represent a potential improvement from the Trudeau years, which featured record-high levels of spending and debt accumulation. But there are serious risks to his approach, which include an accounting change that may simply move red ink from one budget to another. Canada needs broad-based tax reductions and federal budgets that are truly balanced.

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

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Next federal government should reverse Ottawa’s plastics ban

Published on March 6, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

As noted by the Trudeau government, plastic substitutes contribute to lower air quality and “typically have higher climate change impacts” due to higher GHG emissions.

Recently at the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing the Biden administration’s plan to phase out plastic straws. The Trudeau government, however, continues with its plan to ban single-use plastics, even though this prohibition will have minimal impact worldwide, will actually increase waste in Canada, and force a transition to alternatives that impose greater environmental harm. Rather than doubling down on a flawed policy, the next federal government should reverse Trudeau’s plastic ban.

In 2021, the Trudeau government classified plastic items as “toxic,” paving the way for the ban on the manufacturing, importing and selling of checkout bags, cutlery, stir sticks and straws—all single-use plastics. In 2023, the Federal Court deemed the designation “unreasonable and unconstitutional”—but the Trudeau government defended the measure and is appealing, with a ruling expected this year.

According to the latest available data, Canada’s contributes 0.04 per cent to global plastic waste. The United States contributes 0.43 per cent—more than 10 times Canada’s share. But neither country is a major contributor to global plastic waste.

According to a 2024 article published in Nature, a leading scientific journal, no western country ranks among the top 90 global plastic polluters, thanks to their near-total waste collection and controlled disposal systems. Conversely, eight countries—India, Nigeria, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil—generate more than half of global plastic waste. And nearly 75 per cent of the world’s ocean plastic comes from Asia with only six countries (Philippines, India, Malaysia, China, Indonesia and Myanmar) accounting for most of the world’s ocean plastic pollution.

The Trudeau government’s own science assessment, cited in the court appeal, states that 99 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste is already disposed of safely through recycling, incinerating and environmentally-friendly landfills. Despite these facts, plastic has become a target for blanket restrictions without fully considering its benefits or the downsides of switching to alternatives.

Consider this. Plastics are lightweight, durable and indispensable to modern life. From medical devices, food packaging, construction materials, textiles, electronics and agricultural equipment, plastics play a critical role in sectors that improve living standards.

Alternatives to plastic come with their own environmental cost. Again, according to the government’s own analysis, banning single-use plastics will actually increase waste generation rather than reduce it. While the government expects to remove 1.5 million tonnes of plastics by 2032 with the prohibition, it will generate nearly twice as much that weight in waste from alternatives such as paper, wood and aluminum over the same period. Put simply, the ban will result in more, not less, waste in Canada.

And there’s more. Studies suggest that plastic substitutes such as paper are heavier, require more water and energy to be produced, demand more energy to transport, contribute to greater smog formation, present more ozone depletion potential and result in higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

As noted by the Trudeau government, plastic substitutes contribute to lower air quality and “typically have higher climate change impacts” due to higher GHG emissions.

While plastic pollution is a pressing global environmental issue, Canada is not a major contributor to this problem. The rationale behind the Trudeau government’s plastic ban lacks foundation, and as major economies including the U.S. go back to plastic, Canada’s plastic prohibition becomes increasingly futile. The next federal government, whoever that may be, should reverse this plastic ban, which will do more harm than good.