'We don't need it': Seniors call for reduced Old Age Security payments

OTTAWA — A group of comfortable retirees are calling on Ottawa to shrink their Old Age Security (OAS) payments, saying they don’t need the money and it would be better spent on other priorities.

“It makes no sense to me that I receive Old Age Security,” said Harry Grossmith, one of 11 retirees featured in a new video produced by advocacy group Generation Squeeze. “I’m not poor, I’m not struggling and yet I receive a bonus every month just for simply being a senior.”

“We don’t need and don’t want OAS any longer,” added fellow retiree Victor Grosstern.

The video was made to promote Generation Squeeze’s proposal to reduce OAS payments to households making more than $100,000 in retirement income, a reform the group says would free up $7 billion in federal spending every year.

Under the current rules , retired couples with incomes of up to $182,000 may qualify for the full $18,000 annual benefit.

OAS is currently Canada’s costliest federal program , eating up roughly one in every six dollars of federal spending. This amounted to a total of $85.5 billion in 2025-26 and is expected to exceed $100 billion annually by the end of the decade.

Paul Kershaw, head of Generation Squeeze, said in a media briefing on Tuesday that policymakers can ill afford to ignore ballooning OAS costs at a time of “heightened geopolitical instability and economic uncertainty.”

“In moments like this, national resiliency doesn’t simply depend on our military and diplomacy, it also depends on whether our fiscal policy is strong, credible and future oriented,” Kershaw told reporters in Ottawa.

Kershaw noted that the government tabled a $78-billion deficit , its largest ever outside the COVID pandemic in November’s federal budget.

He said “modernizing” the top-heavy OAS system could be a less painful alternative to the federal government’s current course of across-the-board spending and workforce reductions .

“This one policy, because it is the biggest, can free us on a path to better stabilize our fiscal foundation and invest in mandate priorities in this government,” said Kershaw.

Generation Squeeze also advocates phasing out two seniors’ tax credits , which it says will save Canadians an additional $7 billion a year on top of the OAS reform.

Beth Jefferson, one of the retirees who appears in the video, said she got involved with the group after hearing Kershaw discuss generational fairness on a podcast in 2021.

“I retired relatively young and was looking for where I wanted to spend time and effort … and my daughter alerted me (to the podcast),” said Jefferson, who added that she’s long had an interest in remedying “tax unfairness.”

Jefferson said she’s a strong believer in “compassion equally distributed across society,” noting that clawbacks for child and disability benefits start earlier than those for OAS.

“We all work hard in different ways, and we get different returns from it, and the government is really not fair in how it taxes those,” said Jefferson.

Anthony Quinn, President of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons said Kershaw is using the “goodwill of a few generous seniors” as “political cover for an agenda that would cut Old Age Security for millions of middle-class Canadians who depend on it.”

“Kershaw leans on big aggregate numbers to make OAS sound extravagant, but for individuals it amounts to a taxable seven hundred dollars a month ,” said Quinn. “(His) imagined ‘savings’ don’t come from trimming perks for the wealthy like the generous seniors he features in his social media; they come from reducing benefits for millions of middle-class retirees who spent a lifetime paying taxes and now depend on OAS to keep up with groceries, rent, medications, and heating.”

Quinn said he supports closing “loopholes” that allow a “ small percentage of truly wealthy retirees” to qualify for OAS by manipulating their declared income, but added this was a “far cry from gutting a program that keeps millions of older Canadians above water.”

National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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