It’s official – Canada is OLD

I’ve written on similar topics before and briefly touched upon this one in other writings. I have yet to see anyone else mention this egregious issue so I’ll do my best to tackle it with a blunt summary;

Canada is old.

It doesn’t matter what data you look at; it’s all grim.

We (Canada as a nation) have arrived in 2025, about 60 million Canadians short of many failed initiatives and incentives.

Nearly 50% of all Canadians have less than $1,000 in savings.

I’ve written about preparing for retirement, but let’s face it. Most of you can’t.

In my province, British Columbia, we have some of the highest debt per household in the country.

Nearly 80% of people have less than 25% saved of what the need to retire.

And Canada has generous TFSA/RESP/RRSP/CPP/OAS offerings that likely make up a good portion of those savings.

A population of 2 kids per family will keep its national population steady (essentially it will replace itself)

Canada has not met this goal for many years, U.N projections have our country peaking by the year 2100 and honestly, it seems there’s not much Canadians are willing to do about it.

And let’s be honest, we’ve had failed government policies and institutions to blame for quite some time now, and no single party is to blame, it has been a bipartisan disaster.

Really. We can only blame incompetence or malice and I believe it to be the latter, and things may be easy to see now, and perhaps the same benefit of the doubt would be placed in hindsight, and perhaps it’s not just policy makers who are to bare the brunt of the blame.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’m just one small voice, and one singular opinion on a web of many, with megaphones at amplitudes I do not possess.

Nor do I expect any change to come from this musing, but if I can inform others of a potentiality and maybe a few people can assist in altering the course our nation is currently on and perhaps break asunder.

Canada and Europe are on a pretty similar path, and we’ve seen the trajectory of changing political rhetoric towards modern mass human migration in the west, Europe may offer up a blue-print of canadas fate as a ‘post-modern’ nation, perhaps never having completely severed ties with the monarchy, instead forming government, separate and distinct, but never too far out of lock step.

Perhaps Canada belongs in the EU, perhaps Canada never left Europe.

Keep in mind the lowest number on the above chart is 35 on the left and the highest is 47 on the right, making it a factor of only 12 years as a margin across the board.

With a change of a factor of 3–7 years respectively, over a span on two decades, this is concerning.

I wrote at the beginning of this decade, that by 2030 3/5 people in Canada will be retired, leaving a huge deficit in the working age population.

I will reiterate; when 1 person retires, it creates 2 jobs.

Even with automation of low skill jobs, something that has been a constant factor since the industrial revolution, our aging population will soon outnumber our workforce.

Let me break it down for you

There’s about 1.4 million jobs we track federally

Even thought most houses are worth half a million dollars in a city, Canada is home to roughly 2 million, millionaires.

And currently about 50 billionaires. (Down from 100+ in 2017)

Remember, 50% of people are living paycheck to paycheck, (the 5th column is where most people sit at)

Okay so how much do you have to make to be a 1%er ?

Depending on factors like age, province, etc you can determine that you need roughly $2–9m in assets.

And $1m in assets would put you in the top 10% alongside your fellow countrymen.

As a result of the cost of living, Canadians are opting to start families later, if at all, and choosing to start saving for retirement much later than previous generations including strategies that involve them working well into their seventies.

Typically familial and financial obligations dry up around late 50’s – mid 60’s depending on how late the individual decided to invest/raise a family/divest

Meanwhile an atypical seniors earning potential has virtually peaked based on statistical data available.

I’m not saying your dream of retiring a little later to beef up that TFSA or RRSP isn’t brilliant and diabolical.

I’m just pointing out the data says otherwise, that what happens is a slow down in hours to a part time basis and a shrinking of overall earning potential.

This could be due to many factors such as having debts paid off, health, life expectancy ( we typically don’t have such a large sampling pool of data to draw from after the average life expectancy of 70 )

But as people continue to have families later and push the boundaries of social norms and what is physically possible only time will tell, perhaps Canada will have a super-centarian workforce propped up by AI and helper robots by 2100, I don’t know and I’ll likely be well past by best-before by then.

My point in writing this piece is to give you the raw data and explain to you as well as encourage that nurturing the next generation is perhaps the most important thing we could do together as a nation at this point in time.

We can;

Build LTR finally

Invest in STEAM

Build Houses

Create Prenatal Incentives (maids, benefits)

Loosen Red Tape (build chips / data storage centres)

Strengthen international relations

(Stronger trade = Stronger Dollar)

Canada would need a pretty big shopping list to accomplish projects, we can unleash unprecedented growth and wealth generation for the entire nation, including current and future generations as well as inspire an entire generation of future entrepreneurs and problem solvers.

As a nation, we’ve rested on our laurels struggling with this ‘maple leaf’ idea of our past, while our neighbours have left us in their shadow, the rest of the world ignores our identity politics and virtue signalling because we’ve lost sight of our values.

And those values and morals that used to be a part of our national identity have been all but erased by our irrational hyperbole that has overtaken the public discourse, we’ve allowed ourselves to be the pawns in the zeitgeist of the global rhetoric. We’ve entered a new era.

Memes have replaced the Acta Diurna,

AI and TikTok have replaced the puppet shows and theatre and public broadcasting before it.

Just like YouTube and twitter killed TV and print media.

The meme economy came and went with NFT’s.

We had de facto crypto bros ten years ago saying that digital currency is the future and now the [sic] same guys are saying to use cash because it’s less traceable.

The days of ‘the news cycle ‘ are dead, there’s no such thing as a story dying before daylight.

Everything is news and everyone is a journalist. If anything, most legacy media exist as fact checking institutions and public/federal interface, and sports/weather.

Disney seen the futility in paying to print and manufacture a million physical laser disk CD’s, then pack em, and ship em all over to other people’s stores, it seen the writing on the wall for manufacturing a million DVD’s and sending them to wal mart and target and even Amazon.

It cut out the middle man, and turned its go.com platform into a streaming service.

This is the reality of the world we live in and I think most people have not really realized just how much the world has changed since 2005.

In just twenty short years we went from iPods to Ai

We went from using the yellow pages and libraries and maps, to flying cars, robots, robot vacuums, gps, internet, AI, laser guns etc. in about as long as the Simpsons has been running.

Yet, as soon as 2040, most people alive, the most people who have ever been alive, will have been born after the year 2000.

It is truly unprecedented times to be in, for all of human history after this era. Will likely be known as the post-human era.

Our ‘image’ our machines, will scour the cosmos as fast as we can send them, in all likelihood, technology will advance so rapidly, that we will have multiple types of probes and machines on the way to the same celestial bodies as we advance.

And well some of us may have already aged out, we can help the next generation re-tool and prepare for a new type of playing field.