Canada Faces Aging Crisis

While our opponents (not just the pro-aborts but also some Libertarians) claim that "abortion and family planning enable countries to improve their economies and reduce social costs", economists discover just the opposite. The demographic changes, resulting from 40+ years of legal abortion and contraception, have put Canada on the verge of a serious budget crisis:

NEVER MIND the economic downturn. The stark mathematics arising from a greying population and a falling birth rate mean Ottawa, in decades ahead, faces a serious — and growing — structural budget imbalance that can only be cured through tax increases, spending cuts, or both.

That’s the message of parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page, who last week released a report looking at the long-term implications of Canada’s shifting demographics — as the baby boomers retire and the labour force shrinks — for federal government finances over the next 75 years.

The report’s calculus is undeniable.

Since health care costs go up as one gets older, as the extra-large demographic cohort known as the boomers move beyond 65 years of age, health care spending will inevitably increase. So, too, will the cost of supplying the various government support programs, such as Old Age Security, collected by seniors.

At the same time, the projected shrinking of the labour force will put a crimp in government tax revenues, leaving a fiscal gap that must be closed, one way or another. Otherwise, government debt relative to GDP will skyrocket.

More >>>

We've already seen a sharp increase in CPP premiums - from 1.8% in 1986 to 4.95% in 2003. But, judging from the report, which predicts a fiscal gap of $20B to $40B, we should brace ourselves for many more tax hikes.

It's extremely unlikely that the government (no matter what party forms it) ever dares to increase the retirement age. After all, as Canada's median age drifts towards 45, seniors will become the largest group of voters. The typical solution, proposed by the establishment is more immigration. Those who propose it ignore the fact that increased immigration will increase social costs and not just on the short run.

Only 40-45% of immigrants are skilled workers. But even if all of them were - how many of them would like the idea of paying more than a third of their salary to support Canada's many seniors - Canadian born and those that came in the 1970s, 80s and 90s? How sure can we be that at a certain point we won't have a milti-million strong community saying that they no longer agree to pay old age pensions to those who hasn't bother to raise their own children?

The only remaining solution is - trying to encourage more births and fewer abortions. This will require admitting that condoms are killing Canada in every possible way. This will require teaching abstinence and fetal rights at schools, instead of sex education and "social justice". This will require revamping the CPP and the EI premium structure, offering lower rates to those who have more than two children and forcing childless contributors to pay double or triple rate - for themselves and for the children they're unwilling to have.

And of course, this will require reinstating restrictions on abortions and abortion funding, as well as disallowing public hospitals to perform abortions except in medical emergencies. (New Brunswick definition of "medically necessary" is extremely lax, yet even that could reduce Canada's abortion rate by half, saving ~50,000 babies a year, if applied from coast to coast.) But these are the measures that no major party is ready to consider. They would rather get the entire nation broke than let go of the ideology which they consider to be "progressive".