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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Sluggish homebuilding will have far-reaching effects on Canada’s economy

Published on November 13, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson

At a time when Canadians are grappling with epic housing supply and affordability challenges, the data show that homebuilding continues to come up short in some parts of the country including in several metro regions where most newcomers to Canada settle.

In both the Greater Toronto area and Metro Vancouver, housing starts have languished below levels needed to close the supply gaps that have opened up since 2019. In fact, the last 12-18 months have seen many planned development projects in Ontario and British Columbia delayed or cancelled outright amid a glut of new unsold condominium units and a sharp drop in population growth stemming from shifts in federal immigration policy.

At the same time, residential real estate sales have also been sluggish in some parts of the country. A fall-off in real estate transactions tends to have a lagged negative effect on construction investment—declining home sales today translate into fewer housing starts in the future.

While Prime Minister Carney’s Liberal government has pledged to double the pace of homebuilding, the on-the-ground reality points to stagnant or dwindling housing starts in many communities, particularly in Ontario and B.C. In July, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) revised down its national forecast for housing starts over 2025/26, notwithstanding the intense political focus on boosting supply.

A slowdown in residential construction not only affects demand for services provided by homebuilders, it also has wider economic consequences owing to the size and reach of residential construction and the closely linked real estate sector. Overall, construction represents almost 8 per cent of Canada’s economy. If we exclude government-driven industries such as education, health care and social services, construction provides employment for more than one in 10 private-sector workers. Most of these jobs involve homebuilding, home renovation, and real estate sales and development.

As such, the economic consequences of declining housing starts are far-reaching and include reduced demand for goods and services produced by suppliers to the homebuilding industry, lower tax revenues for all levels of government, and slower economic growth. The weakness in residential investment has been a key factor pushing the Canadian economy close to recession in 2025.

Moreover, according to Statistics Canada, the value of GDP (in current dollars) directly attributable to housing reached $238 billion last year, up slightly from 2023 but less than in 2021 and 2022. Among the provinces, Ontario and B.C. have seen significant declines in residential construction GDP since 2022. This pattern is likely to persist into 2026.

Statistics Canada also estimates housing-related activity supported some 1.2 million jobs in 2024. This figure captures both the direct and indirect employment effects of residential construction and housing-related real estate activity. Approximately three-fifths of jobs tied to housing are “direct,” with the rest found in sectors—such as architecture, engineering, hardware and furniture stores, and lumber manufacturing—which supply the construction business or are otherwise affected by activity in the residential building and real estate industries.

Spending on homebuilding, home renovation and residential real estate transactions (added together) represents a substantial slice of Canada’s $3.3 trillion economy. This important sector sustains more than one million jobs, a figure that partly reflects the relatively labour-intensive nature of construction and some of the other industries related to homebuilding. Clearly, Canada’s economy will struggle to rebound from the doldrums of 2025 without a meaningful turnaround in homebuilding.

Jock Finlayson

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

Business

Carney and other world leaders should recognize world’s dependence on fossil fuels

Published on November 11, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari

Simply put, despite trillions invested in the energy transition, the world is more dependent on fossil fuels today than when the United Nations launched its first COP. No wonder that ahead of COP30, leading voices of the net-zero-by-2050 agenda, including Bill Gates, are acknowledging both the vital role of fossil fuels on the planet and the failure of efforts to cut them.

On the heels of his first federal budget, which promises more spending to promote a “green economy,” Prime Minister Carney will soon fly to Brazil for COP30, the 30th United Nations climate summit. Like the former Trudeau government, the Carney government has pledged to achieve “net-zero” emissions in Canada—and compel other countries to pursue net-zero—by 2050. To achieve a net-zero world, it’s necessary to phase out fossil fuels—oil, natural gas, coal—or offset their CO2 emissions with technologies such as “carbon capture” or large-scale tree planting.

But after trillions of dollars spent in pursuit of that goal, it appears more unrealistic than ever. It’s time for world leaders, including Canada’s policymakers, to face reality and be honest about the costly commitments they make on behalf of their citizens.

For starters, carbon capture—the process of trapping and storing carbon dioxide so it’s unable to affect the atmosphere—is a developing technology not yet capable of large-scale deployment. And planting enough trees to offset global emissions would require vast amounts of land, take decades to absorb significant CO2 and risk unpredictable losses from wildfires and drought. Due to these constraints, in their net-zero quest governments and private investors have poured significant resources into “clean energy” such as wind and solar to replace fossil fuels.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 2015 to 2024, the world’s public and private investment in clean energy totalled and estimated US$14.6 trillion (inflation-adjusted). Yet from 1995 (the first COP year) to 2024, global fossil fuel consumption increased by more than 64 per cent. Specifically, oil consumption grew by 39 per cent, natural gas by 96 per cent and coal by 76 per cent. As of 2024, fossil fuels accounted for 80.6 per cent of global energy consumption, slightly lower than the 85.6 per cent in 1995.

The Canadian case shows an even greater mismatch between Ottawa’s COP commitments and its actual results. Despite billions spent by the federal government on the low-carbon economy (electric vehicle subsidies, tax credits to corporations, etc.), fossil fuel consumption in our country has increased by 23 per cent between 1995 and 2024. Over the same period, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy consumption climbed from 62.0 to 66.3 per cent.

Simply put, despite trillions invested in the energy transition, the world is more dependent on fossil fuels today than when the United Nations launched its first COP. No wonder that ahead of COP30, leading voices of the net-zero-by-2050 agenda, including Bill Gates, are acknowledging both the vital role of fossil fuels on the planet and the failure of efforts to cut them.

Why has this massive effort, which includes many countries and trillions of dollars, failed to transition humanity away from fossil fuels?

As renowned scholar Vaclav Smil explains, it can take centuries—not decades—for an energy source to become globally predominant. For thousands of years, humanity relied on wood, charcoal, dried dung and other traditional biomass fuels for heating and cooking, with coal only becoming a major energy source around 1900. It took oil 150 years after its introduction into energy markets to account for one-quarter of global fossil fuel consumption, a milestone reached only in the 1950s. And for natural gas, it took about 130 years after its commercial development to reach 25 per cent of global fossil fuel consumption at the end of the 20th century.

Yet, coal, oil and natural gas didn’t completely replace traditional biomass to meet the surging energy demand as the modern world developed. As of 2020, nearly three billion people in developing countries still relied on charcoal, straw and dried dung to supply their basic energy needs. In light of these facts, the most vocal proponents of the global energy transition seem, at the very least, out of touch.

The world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels should prompt world leaders at COP30 to exercise caution before pushing the same unrealistic commitments of the past. And Prime Minister Carney, in particular, should be careful not to keep leading Canadians into costly ventures that lead nowhere near their intended results.