Presentation title: A Health Equity Reform for Canada’s Old Age Security System: Eliminating Seniors’ Poverty and Improving Affordability for Younger Canadians
Date & time: Friday, February 27 from 12-1 PM (PST)
Location: Hybrid
- In-person: Room B104, School of Population and Public Health, 2206 East Mall, Vancouver
*NEW* Lunch provided for in-person attendees. RSVP required. If you have any dietary restrictions or food allergies, please email spph.communications@ubc.ca. - Online: Zoom. Please register to receive the meeting link.
Register/RSVP: https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/99Dt70l7TpWg_YhA5W5QUA#/registration
Summary
Old Age Security is Canada’s largest income-security program and a major determinant of population health. Yet its design is increasingly misaligned with contemporary needs. Today, taxpayers provide roughly $18,000 annually to retired couples with household incomes of up to $182,000, even as more than 400,000 seniors live in poverty. This represents an inefficient use of an $86-billion program—particularly when benefits for families with children begin to be reduced once household incomes reach $81,000. Dr. Kershaw will present new policy research on options to reform the OAS clawback threshold so funds can be repurposed to eliminate seniors’ poverty while freeing billions of dollars for housing, child care, and postsecondary education, all without raising taxes. Such reform could enable the most significant expansion of income security in Canada in decades.
About the speaker
Dr. Paul Kershaw is a policy professor at the University of BC’s School of Population Health, public speaker, media contributor (including his regular column in the Globe and Mail), and Founder of Generation Squeeze. Gen Squeeze is a Think and Change Tank promoting wellbeing for all generations by championing generational fairness to preserve what Canadians hold sacred—a healthy childhood, home, retirement and planet.
Kershaw received the UBC President’s Award for Public Education through the Media in 2023; the award for Academic of the Year in 2016 from the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of BC; and twice the Canadian Political Science Association honoured Kershaw with national prizes for his gender and politics research. He received the award for BC’s Affordable Housing Champion in 2017, and the Government of Canada’s award for excellence in moving “Knowledge to Action” on housing in 2018.
His work has directly influenced many policy areas, including $10/day child care, parental leave, the National Housing Strategy, pollution pricing, taxation of housing wealth, and commitments to generational fairness, including the Government of Canada’s 2024 budget promise to deliver “fairness for every generation.”