Photographer: Jez Timms
“As the biggest demographic wave in Canada’s history reaches retirement age, the province of Nova Scotia believes it knows how to weather the looming economic storm: encourage baby boomers to work longer.
“Likely our workforce participation overall will go down as more people retire than are joining the workforce,” says Simon D’Entremont, deputy minister of Nova Scotia’s department of seniors. “But, we’re also looking at opportunities created by an aging demographic.”
Nova Scotia is the first government in the country to set up a department devoted entirely to seniors, a one-stop shop for all issues that relate to the province’s aging population,” wrote Duncan McCue, and Lynn Burgess for CBC News on April 11, 2017.
McCue and Burgess continued, ” “Right now in Nova Scotia, 19 per cent of our population is over 65. By 2040 that will grow to 30 per cent. More and more, all of our policies and programs will need to have a ‘seniors lens’ applied to them.”
Statistics Canada says by 2030, the year in which the youngest baby boomers will reach 65, close to one in four people in Canada will be that age or older. That compares to 15.3 per cent in 2013.
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick share the honour of having the oldest populations in the country. And the dramatic greying of their citizenry could spell trouble for Maritime economies.”
Read the full article here.
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