Canada’s long-term outlook not looking good
Posted Apr 28, 2010 2:23 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The long-term outlook for Canada isn’t looking good.
The Conference Board of Canada is predicting that our country will have steady economic growth until 2015.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that, after that point, it could all come tumbling down.
It’s because the baby boom generation is at that age when most will be retiring in about five years.
This scenario means Canada could lose about a third of its workforce, government coffers could shrink and demand for services will increase significantly.
The author of the report, Pedro Antunes, tells 660News it’s a big problem.
“We do need to address these issues of government restraint, health care spending and on the health care side, just doing the number-crunching, we’re looking at a five-and-a-half per cent per year that we think we’re going to need to sustain the boomers,” he says.
Antunes says governments need to get proactive and start working on new and more cost-effective ways to deliver services.
If not, he says the only other option is to increase taxes.
