Don’t get mad at the baby boomers over OAS

I think the wrong people are mad at Stephen Harper for fooling with the Old Age Security.

Not being an expert on the subject, I nevertheless have some observations.

Seniors are totally cheesed at the man. The Canadian Association of Retired Persons (with the unfortunate acronym of CARP) polled its members and found most of them want Harper to back off.

“I think the response is visceral,” said CARP spokeswoman Susan Eng. “Our members … already get their OAS. Their reaction is about the principle.”

That’s the way Kamloops resident Lisa Corbin, who’s 88, feels about it, too. “Altogether it doesn’t seem fair,” she says.

As another Kamloops resident, Terry Cody, approaches retirement age, he’s concerned the OAS might not be there. It feels, he says, as though a finger is being pointed at his generation.

“I take umbrage with being blamed for every ill in society as a baby boomer,” he told me on the phone this week.

“We paid our taxes, never complained.”

Keep in mind Harper and his Conservatives have been rushing around for the past week or so re-assuring everyone that any changes to the OAS won’t affect anyone currently eligible for it, or even those who are getting close.

But that’s about as far as it goes. Quite possibly by design, Harper dropped his bomb, while he was in Switzerland thousands of miles from home, without giving any details. Maybe he simply wanted to jump-start a discussion that everyone’s been afraid of for years.

He sure succeeded.

Opinions on when a two-year delay on the OAS (changing eligibility from 65 to 67) might kick in range all the way from those who become 55 when new legislation takes effect, down to youngsters just entering the work force.

So why should seniors be upset? Back to the “principle” mentioned by CARP, it would seem they have their backs up in support of the younger generation — the same one that blames boomers for all the world’s problems, as Terry Cody observed.

Seniors are inherently, irreversibly generous by nature. While I don’t hear any 20-, 30-, or 40-year-olds rising up to protest making the OAS harder to get, they’re the very ones the changes are more likely to affect. And seniors, who have earned every penny of what they get, figure the younger crowd should benefit the same way.

And yet, economic reality has changed. In future, more and more of those in their pension years will have to be “supported” by fewer and fewer young working people.

What to do?

Assuming something must be done (and that’s by no means unanimous), is changing the OAS eligibility age an answer? It seems like tinkering to me.

A friend who knows more about these things than I do puts it this way: “Considering the fact that the boomers will be hitting age 65 at a pace more rapidly than the declining work force can keep up with, a two-year holiday for the government payments on OAS seems insignificant.”

What’s the alternative? I sure don’t know. But, as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce puts it in a position paper on pensions, “There may be some immediate reforms that can be made, and there may be some longer-term solutions to be found. The important fact is that we begin to approach the situation.”

mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca