Demographic time bomb is now ticking

About 25 years ago, in his book “Boom, Bust and Echo,” economist David Foot said demographics explained about two-thirds of everything. Data from the 2021 census released by Statistics Canada recently made it clear that demographics also explain a good deal about what should be preoccupying policymakers over coming decades.

Canada is short on workers, long on old folks, with birth rates in decline, seniors living longer lives and long-term-care and health systems already fraying.

That adds up to one instance where the “perfect storm” cliché could reasonably be trotted out. And it was.

StatCan found that more than one in five working-age people in Canada are aged 55 to 64 — the largest segment in history on the brink of retirement.

The population of those 85 and older doubled over the past decade and is expected to triple by 2046.

That cohort constitutes a coming grey wave with profound consequences for the cost of seniors’ programs and the burden of care that will fall on the system and their families providing care.

Many of the analysts who commented on the census data noted that they had been warning of its trends for years.

It’s true that most of these trends have been visible for some time. But there are reasons why problems we should see coming tend to arrive on us as if leaping out of a dark laneway.

Evolutionary psychologists say our obsession with short-term planning might simply be part of human nature. Most animals, including humans, are poor at taking the long-term consequences of their actions and the import of events around them into account. Experts call it “discounting the future,” a tendency to prefer the small pleasures and indulgences of now to the larger rewards of later.

The political and economic systems both react and cater to that bias. And governments contending with four-year electoral cycles are usually hard-pressed to resist the imperative of the short-term and loath to invest in projects and programs, the fruits of which are somewhere on the horizon and for which they might not be around to get the credit.

Technology, moreover, has shortened the attention span to the speed of clicks and shortened the gaze to the immediacy of the next news cycle, not the next decade.

Nothing better illustrates the focus on the short term than Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s recent spree of sprinkling money on citizens in advance of an election. The demands of populism seldom align with the long term.

But the demographics show clearly why it must be so in times when the sustainability of the welfare state and social programs will be sorely tested.

The challenges involve all levels of government and span interconnected policy fields from immigration, to labour to housing to health and long-term care.

StatCan says even a significant increase in immigration will not fill the labour needs that Canada confronts. But, with about 800,000 job vacancies across the country, increasing that crucial inflow of new people, skills and energy is critical.

Solutions also involve housing, providing opportunities for the generations who follow the baby boomers with the opportunities to have their own kids and for young families to thrive.

Not unreasonably, after all, younger generations who have never in their lifetimes enjoyed the benefits of a generous economy want to have some level of security before having children.

That will also require enhanced and improved long-term care as well, relieving young generations of the expensive and exhausting responsibilities of elder care and allowing seniors to spend their later years where most wish, at home or in their community.

Wouldn’t it be grand if the warnings from StatCan finally persuaded Canada’s political leadership to put away childish things — the partisanship, the pettiness, the spin and deceit, the opportunism — and take seriously challenges that should be neither evaded or postponed?

For there was another phrase, in addition to “perfect storm,” that commentators frequently seized on: demographic time bomb.

And if that isn’t alarming enough to spark new levels of creativity, collaboration and commitment, it’s difficult to know what would.