How to miss alternative frames for the same program in three columns
Three Saturday May 2, 2026 Globe and Mail pieces, read together, tell us something important about why Old Age Security (OAS) is so often placed on the chopping block.
Robyn Urback frames cutting OAS as political boldness. In his column, Paul Kershaw tends to treat OAS for higher income seniors as a fiscal piñata that can be easily punctured by government to provide a painless $9 billion bankroll to fund a host of valuable and progressive changes.
The Financial Facelift tells the story a wealthy couple (65 and 57) with more than $5 million in net worth who will still receive some OAS if financial planning is done correctly.
Together, the three columns – two in the Business section and one in the Opinion section of the same newspaper on the same day – form a powerful trifecta of misunderstanding, tailor-made to lull the unsuspecting reader towards sympathy for changes that are inappropriate in the near to medium term.
Not because OAS is beyond debate. But because the debate is only being conducted through one of many valid frames. The intergenerational frame is very important and valid but only one of many ways to look at seniors’ income security and OAS.
Old Age Security is large. It costs roughly $85 billion a year. That number matters. But numbers with neither architecture nor context can mislead.
In 2026, the maximum monthly OAS is about $743 for ages 65–74 and $817 for age 75+. OAS is the base program upon which the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) is mounted. GIS for a single senior can add up to about $1,110 a month in non-taxable benefits for those with very low income.
OAS is taxable and partially or fully clawed back at higher incomes. The OAS recovery tax begins at about $90,000 a year and can eliminate the benefit entirely at the top. OAS is therefore not simply a cheque to seniors. It is the fully taxable platform on which seniors’ income security rests.
If we start with Urback’s column, I think it is an error in judgment to see cutting OAS as an act of political boldness. It is neither brave nor bold to cut a visible public benefit paid monthly to older people, many of whom live with crippling health and care costs, widowhood risk, rent pressure, and declining capacity to re-enter the labour market.
It may be politically difficult to cut OAS but difficulty is not the same as courage. True courage would be to confront wealth, inheritance, housing capital gains, and asset inequality—not to aim at a taxable monthly benefit that supports low- and modest-income seniors who comprise the majority of seniors in Canada.
Turning to Paul Kershaw’s column, it is incorrect to imagine that OAS can be painlessly raided for other purposes. I believe it is wrong to take a large program, declare it insufficiently modern, and then reallocate proceeds of cuts to housing, climate, childcare, and youth policy without reviewing OAS in the wider context of the life course and all that entails.
The problem is that OAS is not a loose bag of money sitting outside the system. It is part of the system. Cut it deeply enough and you do not merely “free up” billions. You reduce income security, raise household risk, and destabilize the very successful architecture that has eliminated or reduced senior poverty over generations.
But the third piece—the Financial Facelift—is in some ways the most revealing. It details how a middle-aged couple with more than $5 million in net worth can still retain some OAS.
On the surface, this not only sounds grotesque; it appears to prove the critics’ point. But in reality, it proves something else: Canada taxes income far more readily than it taxes wealth. OAS is tested through income, not net worth.
A household can be asset-rich and income-managed. That is not mainly an OAS problem. It is an asset-taxation problem.
And this is where the debate should be considered in the wider context of income taxation, wealth taxation, and health care.
OAS critics point to millionaire seniors and say: cut OAS.
But the better conclusion is: tax wealth more intelligently.
If the concern is that housing wealth, inheritances, tax-preferred capital gains, and large estates are undertaxed, then address those directly. Do not pretend that cutting an indexed, taxable, income-recovered seniors’ benefit is the same thing as confronting inequality. It is not. It is a dangerous detour around the real issue.
The OAS debate is also distorted by generational language. Seniors are portrayed as taking from younger people. But all Canadians move through the life course. Younger people today expect to age into a retirement income system tomorrow. Weakening OAS does not only affect current generations. It changes the future floor for everyone.
Nor are seniors a single class. Low-income GIS recipients, renters, widows, people with disabilities, and seniors facing private care costs do not resemble wealthy couples with $5 million portfolios. To use the latter as the moral case for cutting the former is questionable policy reasoning at best.
The deeper issue is that OAS works too visibly. It arrives monthly. It is indexed. It is federally administered. It does what income security programs are supposed to do: provide predictable support.
In many ways, along with its price tag viewed in isolation, is why it becomes a target.
Programs that fail quietly are ignored. Programs that work visibly are called expensive.
The most important question for today is not how to puncture OAS. The better question is why other parts of Canada’s income security system are not built with similar stability. Paul Kershaw is right when he inventories all the unfairnesses in our current income security system; for children, families and low-income older adults.
To take just one example, why do working-age adults on social assistance live on benefits that have collapsed in real value? Why are 60–64-year-olds without spouses or recognized disabilities left in provincial systems that bear little resemblance to the indexed federal structure awaiting them at 65? Why do we tolerate a system where a birthday can be worth hundreds of dollars a month? And why do we continue to slowly privatize and incrementally charge more for the healthcare system needed by all Canadians, especially seniors.
These are the real architecture problems.
Indeed, why not deal with all of them? But why tie important program additions to inefficient cuts to a foundational program like OAS?
OAS is not perfect. It should be examined. Its interaction with wealth should be debated. But the current critique mistakes a successful income floor for a fiscal indulgence. It sees the cost but not the function. It sees the wealthy senior but not the taxable and redistributive design. It sees the age category but not the life course.
Please don’t get me wrong. It is not improper to reassess OAS for well off senior couples and at some point, it will be good policy to pare some areas of OAS generosity. But such moves should not take place before policymakers examine a host of other issues. One of the most important is the 60% marginal effective tax rate that better off seniors’ face when they take additional funds out of their RRIFs to fund unforeseen, unfunded, and sometimes catastrophic costs of care.
The danger now is that a false boldness will become the new common sense.
Cut the program that is visible. Ignore the wealth that is sheltered. Call the result modernization.
But that is not real modernization.
It is balance sheet arithmetic with neither architecture nor context taken into account.