It’s an age-old problem

It’s the least surprising “surprise” you can think of – and yet, when it arrives, it’s undoubtedly going to be classed as a surprise anyway.

In sports terms, it’s the equivalent of one team putting its next offensive play up on the scoreboard, and having the defence fail to figure it out anyway.

It’s aging – in particular, the aging of the Atlantic provinces. There’s nothing new to the idea that all four Atlantic provinces are getting older. There’s also nothing new to the fact that older residents cost disproportionately more to serve – particularly in the main expense of all four provinces, health care.

More older people mean fewer young, working people both paying taxes and having a relatively light impact on the cost of government services.

Nothing new there. Significant milestones were passed years ago. There’s this, from a Statistics Canada report: “In 2014, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick saw more deaths than births, resulting into a negative natural increase for the Atlantic region since 2013.”

Some more old news from the same study? “In 2014, seven percentage points separated Alberta – the province with the lowest proportion of seniors (11 per cent) – and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which had the highest proportions (slightly above 18 per cent).

Based on the most recent population projections, this difference could increase to 13 percentage points in 2034. Hence, the proportion of seniors in Newfoundland and Labrador could reach 31 per cent, or almost one in three people, compared with 18 per cent in Alberta.”

So, if the changes and the risks are so obvious – and have been for more than a decade – why is it that the four Atlantic provincial governments aren’t more involved in addressing fundamental changes in both the amount of tax money needed (much more), and the ability of citizens to contribute to that increased financial burden?

So far, while several provincial governments have paid lip service to the issue – giving clear warnings and talking about the need for changes in programing – major shifts simply haven’t happened. The problem is that our current form of governance isn’t set up to deal with long-term problems – because there’s no political return in dealing with problems that will hit home five or 10 or more years into the future.

Governments want to be re-elected – and being re-elected has tended to mean offering equal or “better” services while at the same time cutting taxes.

It’s like publicly traded companies: the market wants returns every quarter, and managers focus on the need to maintain returns, even if layoffs and cutbacks impede or destroy the ability of the business to survive in the longer term.

Eventually, as you speed towards a wall, you have to turn or put on the brakes. Time is ticking away, and we’re still pressing down on the gas.