A week ago something happened. It had been coming so slowly for so long that you might not have noticed it — seniors over age 65 now outnumber young people age 14 and under.

This fact might not really mean much to you unless you think about it slowly and carefully. How much longer will an average 65 year-old live? Life expectancy is still going up in Canada, with many people over 80 and 90. Of course this is good news, but it has some bad news along with it. Some Canadians who are and will be collecting pensions for over 35 years paid into it only slightly longer. For politicians, the ratio is much worse!

That means that the young people who will be getting into the work force will not only have to pay into their own future pensions, but they will also have to try to support a greater number of seniors who are drawing from it.

But maybe you are thinking “No, because the retiring generation paid into it, and are now drawing out if it; why would it affect the younger generation?” There is a problem with that logic. The government has been managing that money. Milton Friedman famously said “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand”.

Canada has a big debt, and each of the provinces have their own debt. Sure, the federal debt has stopped growing (at least temporarily), but it has ballooned since 2008, and that, along with the pension burden and the demographic shift all add up to what the Canadian Taxpayers Federation calls “generation screwed”. They are predicting that we will run out of people to whom we can pass the debt burden. In the CHP, we have had the boldness to point to the moral roots of the problem: the breakdown of marriage, the legalization of abortion, and the devaluation of children.

Apart from the moral permissiveness of this country with regard to assisted suicide, there will soon be an economic case for assisted dying; the right to die will become a “duty to die” (as it has already in Europe), and the people who are clamouring for it now, might suddenly swing the other way and demand to be kept alive by a system that Is no longer solvent.

It is a bleak picture in the long run when you eschew God’s principles for your life, and it is the same for a civilization. The Ottawa Citizen presented one bright point — we are not as bad as most other G-7 countries. Well, actually that is not a bright spot after all; it simply means that we can expect their economies to collapse sooner than ours.

Good thing the next generation is loving, caring, and compassionate, having been taught the value of each human life from conception to natural death, right? Oops, wrong again. By God’s grace some have been taught this, but many others have not. Political correctness has blocked this message from thousands of our brightest youth. Shame on us.

Still looking forward to the “golden years”? They might have just lost some of their shine for you. We have only ourselves to blame for electing the governments that we have, and looking out for ourselves before our families and children.

Let’s not become bitter about the failures of the past; let’s work together now to make the future brighter. Many parents have raised children who are salt and light in this world, and God may yet give a revival that will cause many more Canadians to embrace a culture of life. But apart from God’s grace, this slow-moving disaster will become worse and worse — the consequences of moral neglect will be physical neglect for some, and it is an awful thought.

Please join us in a party that not only understands the consequences of economic decisions, but also the consequences of moral decisions, and how they relate. Join the CHP and help us grow a party that embraces the culture of life — the answer to our aging and dying culture.

Comment on this Communiqué