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610 CKTB | The Generational Chokehold: Rethinking Democracy in an Aging Canada · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Litkey's got to take. Good morning, John Lidkey.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Geenevilitis.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, listen, I was online over the weekend. A big
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: debate erupted on x or Twitter, whatever you call it
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: about stripping voting rights from retirees. Now, is there a
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: legitimate point about older voters holding back Canada's economic future?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: And be careful with your answer, because I'm at a
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: certain age here.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: You know, Listen, Gene. You know, this whole thing erupted
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: because the CEO of Shopify decided to engage in a
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: little bit of a thought experiment about whether or not
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: if you take out your pension, do you become a
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: dependent and does that mean that you shouldn't have a
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: right to vote the same way that dependence of you know,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: parents' children don't have a right to vote in misspawn
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: from a conversation about a housing project in San Francisco
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: that didn't get built because of NIMBI attitudes. But no, Gene,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: of course, you can't blame an individual senior for defending
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: their home equity. For most it's their entire retirement safety.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: But collectively, we're talking about a systemic chokehold. Older demographics
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: have every financial incentive to choke off new housing supply
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: to keep their own asset values artificially inflated. I'm not
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: speaking about any one person. Then when you throw in
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: classic local nimbiism, where people simply refuse to let their
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: neighborhoods evolve and grow, you can see what the dynamic
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: actually is. And I want to be honest about things.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Nimby's are quite frankly conservatives just wearing progressive outerwear.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, And for people who don't know, nimbi is not
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: in my backyard. So is local nimmi political power the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: primary bottleneck to solving Canada's housing crisis. Or are online
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: commentators just scapegoating we seniors of which I am proudly one.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: The bottleneck gene is a government incentive structure that's completely backwards.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Municipalities are terrified of raising property taxes on reliable older voters,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: so they shifted the entire tax burn and we saw
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: this at various levels of government onto development fees that
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: gets tacked straight onto the price tag for new younger buyers,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: blowing entry level costs out of the water. Now, look
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: in the past, post war generations built generational wealth partly
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: off of massive government tailwinds in terms of housing subsidies
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: or providing housing or land. Today, no politician wants to
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: fix housing supply if it hurts them at the ballot box.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: So until the demographic math forces their hand, or until
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: that equity gets passed down, our status quo is locked in.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Now. One idea that's been floated around on this online
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: debate is something called tax weighted voting. Explain that, what's
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: it really mean?
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: You know, it's a provocative thought experiment designed to stir
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: the pot. Absolutely, this is an idea where non tax
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: pers would get zero voting. Now, when this conversation was online,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: the idea was if you just simply buy a Hamburger,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: for example, you'd be paying a tax that would give
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: you a vote. When they say no taxpayers, they mean
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: someone who doesn't spend any money whatsoever. Period. But look,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: corporate executives love this idea to talk about because this
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: is how boardrooms work. More shares, more votes. But our
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: country isn't a corporation and our democracy is not a
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: board of directors. I'm not going to trade away one person,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: one vote. After generations of efforts to secure this, and
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: you know, calling a retiree who paid taxes for forty
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: years a dependent. That's an absurd premise. But the core
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: argument about time horizon, that's very real. Younger Canadians have
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: a much longer runway and way more skin in a
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: future game. So we need to have a collective reckoning
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: on generational stewardship. But right now, self interest is winning.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Yeh, explain this notion. Because I've been following this debate
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: because of my age, I'm not even sure if I'm
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: pronouncing this right. But many voting explain that one this
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is kind of interesting.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, so this is this is really interesting. This
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: would be where parents get extra vote on behalf of
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: their children to balance out an aging electorate. Now, to me,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: this is non negotiable. You don't touch one person one vote,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: so it's a non starter. That opens a dangerous backdoor.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: But the real problem isn't that parents lack proxy voting.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: It's that youth voter turnout is historically dismal, and that's
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the vicious cycle. Young people don't show up to vote
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: at local ballot boxes, so municipal councils ignore them and
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: cater exclusively to the people who do show up to vote.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: And that's why we're in the system.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: We're in Okay. So when both high earning professionals and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: young broke Canadians are expressing this level of frustration with
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the status quo, where do you know? It almost feels
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: like the generational contract is totally broken. So where does
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: this war over homes, taxes and titlements head? If the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: politicians just keep ignoring it, I mean it is there.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, of course it's there, and it exists. So if
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: we want to break the cycle, we can't keep. You know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: you don't want to disincent de people from voting. You
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: don't want to turn them away from it. So I
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: would suggest we could look towards gamifying civic participation. So
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that these are ideas to implement, but
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: real incentives could be giving young voters a tax break,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: maybe a direct stipend, a micro scholarship, heck, free food
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: at polling stations. Or we could tie civic engagement to
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: mandatory national service and if you take your vote, you
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: could get a credit and maybe opt out of that
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: service because you did your service. We can be creative
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: about these things, but we have to be realistic. Most
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: establishment political parties don't actually want to higher youth voter turnout.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: They say they do, but they don't, because if there
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: was hired youth voter turnout, you'd see a massive wave
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: of angry, hyper engaged social media using young voters who
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: would instantly shatter the comfortable status quo that the party
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: elites rely on. And just look right now to the
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: US with the Democratic Socialists taking over and shaking things
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: up like that, it's completely upending things and that's not
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: what these party elites want whatsoever.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: M a great take this morning. I thank you, Thank you, Jim,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and we will talk to you on Friday.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Cheers.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: All right, there he goes John Litkey. Litkey's gotta take
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: some days. He'll a great some days you won't. But
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: we love having John on the show.