One of the great ironies of modern public policy is that many of the people who criticize identity politics seem to have adopted one of its central assumptions.
The assumption is simple: If we know which group someone belongs to, we know something important about their interests.
Mistaking age for advantage
For years we have heard politics discussed through the lenses of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, geography, and culture. Increasingly, however, another identity has entered the conversation and that is generation: young people/millennials vs boomers/seniors.
Generation Squeeze has been enormously successful in drawing attention to the challenges facing younger Canadians. Housing affordability, student debt, precarious work, and the rising cost of raising children are real issues. They deserve serious attention.
But there is a growing risk that the policy discussion is beginning to mistake age for advantage. That is where identity politics enters the picture.
The argument increasingly sounds like this: Older people have done well. Younger people are struggling. Therefore, resources should be shifted from one group to the other. At first glance, this seems reasonable.
The problem is that age is a poor proxy for economic security. Not all seniors are wealthy. Not all young people are struggling.
Some seniors rely entirely on modest pensions and government benefits. Others face extraordinary medical expenses, caregiving responsibilities, and long-term care costs. Many seniors live one unexpected event away from serious financial hardship.
Conversely, some younger Canadians already own homes, possess significant family wealth, or stand to inherit substantial assets.
Assets not age
The dividing line is not age. It is wealth.
This distinction matters because the policy prescriptions change dramatically depending on which diagnosis is correct. If age is the problem, then reducing Old Age Security for some seniors may appear sensible.
If wealth is the problem, then reducing Old Age Security accomplishes very little. A senior can lose part of their OAS and still:
- own a mortgage-free home worth $2 million
- transfer substantial investment assets to their children
- leave behind an inheritance that fundamentally changes the life trajectory of the next generation.
The wealth remains. The transfer remains. The advantage remains. Only the income support changes.
This is why so many proposals aimed at intergenerational equity feel oddly disconnected from the problem they claim to solve. Canada increasingly debates income, but inequality revolves more and more around assets.
We argue about OAS while ignoring inheritances. We discuss clawbacks while ignoring housing wealth. We focus on retirement income while avoiding conversations about the tax treatment of large intergenerational transfers.
The result is a peculiar form of identity politics. We begin treating seniors as a privileged class simply because they are seniors. Yet the category itself contains enormous variation.
The retired widow renting in the private market receiving GIS bears little resemblance to the owner of multiple investment properties. The senior paying thousands of dollars each month for dementia care bears little resemblance to the retiree sitting on a large investment portfolio without family obligations.
Grouping them together because they are over sixty-five can be as misleading as grouping all young adults together because they are under forty. Identity categories often obscure as much as they reveal.
Asset testing: Applied to the poorest, not the wealthiest
That does not mean Generation Squeeze is wrong about the challenges facing younger Canadians. Far from it. The housing crisis is real. Affordability pressures are real. The increasing concentration of wealth is real.
The question is whether age is the most useful lens through which to understand those problems. I am not convinced it is.
In fact, there is another irony here.
Canada already possesses one of the most aggressive forms of asset-testing in the developed world, but it is applied primarily to its poorest residents.
People receiving welfare or disability assistance face asset tests, reporting requirements, and detailed scrutiny of their finances. By contrast, wealth itself often receives remarkably little attention in policy debates.
A person can inherit a million-dollar home and face less public scrutiny than someone receiving a modest increase in social assistance.
That should give us pause.
If the concern is intergenerational fairness, then eventually we must talk about wealth. We must talk about inheritances. We must talk about tax-free gains on principal residences. We must talk about new levies on financial transactions. We must talk about the increasingly important role that family assets play in determining life chances.
Until then, we risk fighting the wrong battle.