The Act to Safeguard the Wellbeing of Present and Future Generations will require federal departments to set and report on specific wellbeing objectives. This means monitoring the generational impacts of existing and new policies, as well as the potential for trade-offs between short- and long-term wellbeing. This analysis and reporting will help expose where the decisions we make today over-extract from our shared fiscal, planetary and housing resources – resources on which younger and future generations also will depend for their lives and livelihoods.

Canada’s Quality of Life Framework already delivers some valuable data to identify indicators and track progress, though more needs to be done to analyze government spending by age, and assess how Canada invests in wellbeing and prevention compared to illness treatment. Fortunately, Gen Squeeze has evidence-based methods for each of these themes that could easily be adopted.