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Is 65 Just a Number?
Bismarck's Move Now a Human Rights Issue
Working Should Be a Matter of Choice,
Says Top Liberal
Rob Ferguson, Queen's Park Bureau
August 21, 2004
Blame it on Bismarck.
As the Ontario government prepares to scrap mandatory retirement, think for a moment how long it has been around. In 1889, Count Otto von Bismarck, Germany's first chancellor, set the national pension age at 65.
What seemed wise then has become a growing human rights issue, with many Canadians healthy and active well into their 70s and beyond.
"If I told you `You're black, so you can't work here anymore,' you'd say, "You can't do that,'" notes Thomas Klassen, a York University sociology professor.
"But as it stands now, if I say `You can't work here because you're 65,' it's perfectly legal."
That's because protection against age discrimination under the Ontario Human Rights Code ends at 65.
The Ontario government is looking to fix that with plans to outlaw mandatory retirement at age 65, even though the trend is toward retiring early.
The average Canadian retires at 61. Last year in Ontario, 64,000 people retired.
Labour Minister Chris Bentley acknowledges that trend but wants to make the change anyway, given that Ontario is one of the few provinces with mandatory retirement.
Three weeks of public consultations in eight cities begin Sept. 8.
"All we're saying is, if you hit the magic age of 65 and you are still able to make a contribution and you want to, shouldn't you have the choice to do that?" Bentley said.
Jean McKenzie Leiper, a former professor forcibly retired last June, wishes Ontario had acted on this issue years ago.
After taking time out to raise three children, she has a smaller pension than most of her former colleagues and wanted to keep working - so much so she hired a lawyer.
She's pushing for a judicial review of a decision by the Ontario Human Rights Commission not to help her with an age discrimination complaint.
"The women in my family live well into their 90s," said McKenzie Leiper, who taught statistics at King's University College, part of the University of Western Ontario, and just completed a book.
"I'm not saying I want to work that long, but as long as you have good health you can keep working."
Loving what you do is one of three typical reasons for working past 65 - just ask 74-year-old actors Gordon Pinsent and Christopher Plummer, Prime Minister Paul Martin, who turns 66 later this month, his predecessor Jean Chrétien, now 70 and practising law again, urban planning expert Jane Jacobs, 88, and Queen Elizabeth, 78.
Another reason to keep working is money. Some people need more than comes in from the Canada Pension Plan or employer pensions, if they are fortunate enough to have one. Many already keep working past 65 but without protections against age discrimination.
And many of those are women and recent immigrants.
"Being able to keep working removes the sword over their head," said Stephen Bigsby, executive director of the Association for Canadian Pension Management.
The third reason is wanting to keep busy, even with a simple part-time job that bears no relation to a former career.
"It keeps them out of the house, it keeps them active," says Dan Ondrack, a professor of organizational behaviour at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
While experts don't expect Ontarians to flood corporate human resources departments with plans to keep working after 65, they do say employers will have some new wrinkles to consider.
Chief among them are keeping tabs on the productivity of older workers and paying for their health benefits as drug and medical costs soar, says Sean Weir, national managing partner and pension lawyer at Borden Ladner Gervais.
"The older you get the higher your medical expenses. The over-65 group is an expensive one to have in your group benefit plan."
That's why many employers are trying to curtail or scrap health coverage for retirees, a trend that can only intensify, Weir says.
"You'll see these things come under a huge microscope."
The end of a formal retirement age also raises the touchy issue of how long to keep older staff who have trouble keeping up with technology or the pace of work.
"The single biggest issue is going to be terminating long-service employees," Weir adds. "Performance appraisals are going to have to be brutally honest."
Until now, many employers have relied on the 65-and-out tradition to deal with staff whose productivity has lagged in their final years on the job.
The prospect of older workers staying on the job longer could also affect competitiveness if young up-and-comers get impatient about their prospects for advancement.
Some employers will have to find ways to keep their ambitious "corporate leaders of the future" happy until veteran executives decide to retire, says Michael Fitzgibbon, a partner in the labour and employment group at Weir's law firm.
"It's a crunch."
Seniors who decide to keep working past 65 could also force companies to adjust their pension plans.
Depending on how a plan is set up, older workers could continue paying into it and begin collecting payouts later. The question would become, once they do retire, will they get bigger payments than would have been the case if they'd retired at 65, said Bigsby of the pension association.
There are also suspicions, particularly from the labour movement, that ending mandatory retirement is the thin edge of a wedge that will eventually lead to governments delaying, from age 65 to 67 or older, the point at which public pensions and drug benefits will be paid out.
"It's a realistic fear but it is totally unrelated to mandatory retirement," says Klassen at York University.
"It's a fear because we're going to have a lot of people retiring and baby boomers are living longer. There's fear there isn't sufficient money in pension plans."
Bentley insists the Ontario government's plan isn't intended to save money or bail out pension plans, and he vows to protect existing rights.
He says next month's public consultations are intended to help iron out more of the implications of scrapping early retirement, which has
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