Canada’s Trudeau: Retirement Age Will Stay At 65

Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had planned to raise the country’s retirement age to 67.

But current PM Justin Trudeau said this week that was a “simplistic solution […] to a complex problem”, and indicated the retirement age would stay at 65.

More from the Toronto Star:

Canada will keep its retirement age at 65, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says.

The Stephen Harper Conservative government had planned to raise the retirement age to 67, but Trudeau said that this won’t be happening in next week’s budget.

“Tweaking the age like that is a very simplistic solution — that won’t work — to a complex problem,” Trudeau said on Thursday morning in a question and answer interview with Bloomberg News in New York.

Trudeau said he prefers a “nuanced and responsible discussion” about retirement, arguing that investment bankers and lawyers don’t put their bodies through the same physical strains as manual labourers.

He defended his plans to invest in the middle class and said he’s not worried about driving the wealthy out of the country.

“We have nothing against success in Canada,” Trudeau said.

He acknowledged that Canada is on the other side of the fiscal debate than Germany and the United Kingdom, and said that Canada is in a strong position to take advantage of low interest rates through investment.

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