Let's not make ‘ mandatory' either staying or going at 65
Craig McInnes

Vancouver Sun
May 10, 2007

Note to boss: Don't take this the wrong way. I like my job. I get to talk to interesting people, there are no lumps of coal falling on my head and I get paid to speak my mind, even when you don't like what I have to say.

Still, the news that British Columbia is following the lead of other provinces by banning mandatory retirement does not immediately make my heart leap with joy.

I grew up in the 1960s, when the expectation was that advances in science and technology were going to allow us to work less and spend more time in the pursuit of leisure.

So I have a deeply embedded sense that there is more to life than paid work. Again, I'm not complaining, but my annual holidays are not long enough to quench my thirst for the wider world.

My adult life has been divided into an early period when I had lots of time to do what I wanted but no money, the scrambling years when our kids were young and we had neither time nor money for much other than the basics, and the sense I have now of having a little money to tick off some of the things on my do- before- I- die list but not enough time.

My dream of retirement is not a couch with my name on it, but a period in which I will have both the time and the money to do as much as possible before my body gives out.

But that's just me. Somehow I don't think the drafters of the bill banning mandatory retirement tabled in the legislature last month had me in mind.

But what were they thinking? There are essentially two groups lobbying to increase the opportunities for people to work beyond what has been in Canada since 1951 the " normal" retirement age of 65. That was the year Ottawa brought in the legislation that has evolved into the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security.

One group wants to keep on working past 65. That's not illegal now, but until the new legislation becomes law, employers can maintain policies that force employees, such as university professors who have been among the most active advocates for change, to retire when they reach that age.

The law before the legislature would make such policies subject to the Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on age.