Atlantic Canada’s aging population should scare governments and the people who pay for them, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
According to a new report by the CFIB, a demographic crisis is already descending on PEI and the Atlantic region and fundamental changes are needed to the way governments spend money and provide services.
Erin McGrath-Gaudet, the report’s author and CFIB’s director for P.E.I., says the Island has seen significant improvement in attracting immigrants over the past decade which puts our population in a much better position than other Atlantic provinces.
But McGrath-Gaudet says the federation is not yet seeing longer term strategies in any of the Atlantic provinces to really offset the impact population aging will have on government programs and finances.
She adds we cannot expect an even smaller tax base to be able to pay more and more to cover government spending, saying governments must get their spending in check, not just to balance budgets in the short-term, but to be able to provide priority services for the next thirty years.