Wednesday September 24, 2014 – 11am
Posted Sep 24, 2014 12:44:58 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
11:00- Age, not gender, is the new income divide
David Stewart Patterson, Vice-President of the Conference Board of Canada and study co-author
Age, not gender, is increasingly at the heart of income inequality in Canada, says a new study that warns economic growth and social stability will be at risk if companies don’t start paying better wages. The Conference Board of Canada findings suggest younger workers in Canada are making less money relative to their elders regardless of whether they’re male or female, individuals or couples, and both before and after tax. The average disposable income of Canadians between the ages of 50 and 54 is now 64% higher than that of 25- to 29-year-olds, the report found. That’s up from 47% in the mid-1980s. Vice-president David Stewart-Patterson, one of the study’s co-authors, said the economic think-tank was motivated to undertake the study due to a wealth of “anecdotal evidence” that suggests Canadian youth are falling behind economically. “Our report provides some pretty persuasive, quantitative evidence that yeah, there really is a systemic pattern here. There really is a pattern that’s unfolded over a prolonged period, a pattern which has some disturbing implications going forward.” The trend is particularly troubling, he added, because as the baby-boom generation moves into retirement, Canadians will be relying on a smaller share of the population to drive economic growth and sustain the tax base that supports public services. Canada therefore needs average employment incomes to rise, not fall behind, in order to pay for, the increasing health-care costs of the baby-boomer generation, among other expenses, the real incomes that are being earned in the workplace by younger workers have barely budged after inflation. That creates an issue in how much governments can raise in tax revenues, how much can our economy grow?” He also warned that before long, the younger generation is going to “get fed up.”
11:30- O Canada gender-neutral debate
O Canada, a debate about your national anthem’s “sons” is about to hit the floor of Parliament. Four years after Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government ditched its own plan to adjust the words of the national anthem to make it gender-neutral, an Ottawa-area Liberal MP has introduced a bill in the House of Commons to do just that. On Monday, Ottawa-Vanier MP Mauril Belanger introduced a private member’s bill to make the change. The bill would replace just two words. Currently, Canadians begin the anthem by singing: “O Canada, our home and native land, True patriot love, In all thy sons command.” Belanger’s version would have Canadians sing: “O Canada, our home and native land, True patriot love, In all of us command.” Belanger said in an interview he expects the first hour of debate on his bill to occur in late November or early December – to be followed by more debate and then a vote, likely in early 2015. If MPs back his bill, it will be sent to the Commons heritage committee for public hearings and further study. “I call it gender-inclusive,” Belanger said of his proposed new wording.
Listen:
