Policy implications of ageing populations

Dawn Wiseman

Patrik Marier (Political Science) says the media is overstating the impact of an ageing society on the North American labour force. All those boomer retirements are not likely to cause a crisis here.

“The problem is not nearly as acute as portrayed,” he said. “The Canadian labour force will actually increase in the short term and then level out. In the U.S., it will continue to increase, but in Europe, a number of countries will have problems. Italy and Spain will see a 40 per cent drop in their labour forces over the next few decades.”

Marier is the Canada Research Chair for Comparative Public Policy. Created in May 2005, the Chair focuses on the policy challenges engendered by population ageing in industrialized countries.

To underline the complexity of issues that must be considered in ageing policy, he pointed out that Canada’s relative good fortune with respect to its labour force is not, as many would suspect, related to recent trends in immigration, but rather to past ones.

“Recent immigrants are fairly quick to move if their expectations aren’t met,” he said, so they cannot be counted on to meet labour needs. It is instead the children of immigrants from the 1950s and 60s who are maintaining, and will maintain, the Canadian workforce. “These people came and established homes. They gave their children a sense of place, and with a third generation now coming along, they are less likely to move.”

“Ageing policy crosses many ministries,” Marier said. “Employ-ee retention is a human resource concern. Keeping women in the workforce involves childcare issues. There are also tax issues which are looked at by Finance.” Once decisions are made it becomes even more complex because “we tend to underestimate the challenges related to implementation.”

By examining government approaches to ageing in OECD countries, Marier hopes to create a comparative database of key parameters that classify countries by their strengths and weaknesses. As an example of a strong working policy, he offered the Finnish approach to older workers in the labour force.

“The Finns are champions in this area. They believe in adapting the workplace to help people maintain their jobs as they age.”

Marier came to the study of ageing through his research into pensions. “I am interested in how pensions are problematized and conceptualized.” He pointed out that Canada’s pension “system is mature and full-grown,” so changing it is difficult. Any pension reform directly impacts both current and future users, and the government must meet “commitments made to those who contributed to the system,” so part of his research focuses on who politicians listen to in the development of policy change.

Marier underlined that when certain groups of acknowledged experts are left out or ignored in policy discussions — as the Harper government has been accused of doing with regard to the environment — the legitimacy of resulting work is often publicly questioned.

“There is politics involved in who is legitimized as an expert,” he explained. To depoliticize debate, “you need to get consensus out of a diversity of expert opinion.” This means involving all stakeholders in the discussion of policy development and delivery.

On Nov. 23, Marier hosted a number of experts on ageing at Adapting Public Policies in Ageing Societies, the final 2006 event in the Cycle de rencontres Canada-UE series was held at Concordia. Funded by the European Commission’s Programme de diplomatie publique and Ottawa delegation, and co-sponsored by the Chair for Comparative Public Policy, the panel sought to underline the way in which governments are coordinating policies to face the challenge of an ageing population.

Speakers included Byron Spencer, McMaster University, and Director of Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population (SEDAP), a SSHRC-funded program.