Essay On Mandatory Retirement

In the mid-twentieth century, the poverty of Canadian seniors sparked the enactment of a number of distributive policies designed to ameliorate the situation (McMullin 323). The Canadian government initiated a network of financial coverage for elderly citizens, including Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Canada/Quebec Pension Plan, and incentives for retirement savings in the form of Registered Retirement Savings Plans (McMullin 324). The Old Age Security Pension is a monthly payment that is delivered by Service Canada which is available to Canadian aged 65 or older (McDaniel and Um 75). Citizens and legal residents of Canada are eligible for Old Age Security payments if they meet the residency requirement such that the …show more content…
As a result, older workers in British Columbia are no longer forced to quit when they turn 65. British Columbia followed the steps of eliminating mandatory retirement from Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, and Ontario to eliminate mandatory retirement (McMullin 326). On April 30, 2003, the Ontario government banned mandatory retirement such that “the government introduced a new legislation to allow more seniors to remain active in the workforce and retiring at a time of their own choosing, no an arbitrarily government appointed time” (Gomez and Gunderson 5). However, there are still some provisions from employers that allow mandatory retirement for jobs where physical ability is essential, such as law enforcement officers and firefighters. Eliminating mandatory retirement will eliminate age discrimination among the workforce as it has been shown that individuals with the most education tend to enjoy their work and are reluctant to get out of the workforce (McMullin 326). Many older workers want to keep working in the labour market because they have a sense of