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The Current Transcript for May 25, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

My big idea is a very, very small idea that can unlock billions of big ideas and my little idea that we do that is sleep.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Yes, it is true. It turns out that if you sleep enough, you can dream big. And if you don't, well, we live in a society of sleep deprivation and that has links to serious health problems, from increased risks of heart attack, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, obesity. We spend 58 billion dollars a year worldwide chasing sleep. How's that working for us? In half an hour, Arianna Huffington offers her vision for a sleep revolution. Also today, a lot of people are losing sleep over the reality of retirement.

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My friends are all traveling all over the world. It kind of does break my heart that I can’t go. Like, I do want to go, but that's, you know, suck it up.

AMT: At 68, she expected she'd be living a different kind of life right now. Instead, there were unexpected financial hurdles and she and her husband now put in long hours just to get by. One third of Canadians who don't have an employer pension are reaching their mid-sixties with less than a thousand dollars in retirement savings. In an hour, we'll hear from two people who thought they were doing everything right and now find themselves with no choice but to keep on working. But we begin today with a debate playing out in BC and resonating in communities across this country.

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VOICE 1: I think it can be good for education. I went to a private school and we just had smaller classrooms and more individualized teaching programs.

VOICE 2: Well, it helps the people who can afford to send their kids to the private school, but it hinders everybody else.

AMT: The public funding of private or independent schools. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Should taxpayer dollars fund private schools?

Guests: Jim Iker, Deani Van Pelt, Charles Ungerleider

SOUNDCLIP

[crowd chanting] Save our school! Save our school!

STUDENT 1: It's like something we all care very deeply about. I don't want to have to leave Osoyoos to get to a school.

STUDENT 2: A lot of us feel like no one is paying attention to the fact that they're shutting down so many amazing programs, like, we have hockey academy, we have the Coyotes. And that's amazing because so many different kids from different areas come to play here.

PARENT 1: We want to support the school, right. And everybody, we support everybody.

PARENT 2: It matters to all the businesses. It matters to our community and if they shut the school, they're shutting the community down.

VOICE: When they say, hang on, we're not going to commit to buying a house here if we think that your school is closing. So the ripples go everywhere.

AMT: Well, losing a school can be a major blow to any town. And in Osoyoos, BC, the prospect of losing the only high school had its citizens out in protest. Osoyoos Secondary School is slated to close next month due to low enrolment. It's a difficult situation for southern BC town and, in the eyes of some, an unfair situation. On Facebook, the BC Teachers Union asked why communities such as Osoyoos are forced to close their only high school when, quote, “BC taxpayers are subsidizing elite private schools,” end quote. That post tapped into a debate happening beyond BC, and it went viral. Five provinces - B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec - subsidize private schools with public funding. Just last month, the Edmonton Public School Board asked Alberta to phase out public funding for private schools. Jim Iker is the President of the BC Teachers' Federation. He's in Vancouver. Hello.

JIM IKER: Hi, Anna Maria. How are you doing today?

AMT: I’m well. How are you?

JIM IKER: I’m doing fine, thank you.

AMT: Well, how much money does the BC government spend on private school funding?

JIM IKER: This past year, the private schools received 358 million dollars in public subsidy and we believe that is unacceptable.

AMT: And how does it fund private schools?

JIM IKER: Well, there are two classifications in British Columbia. Group One schools get 50 per cent of the public funding and Group Two schools, which are the elite private schools that charge really tens of thousands of dollars for tuition, get 35 per cent.

AMT: And so why does the BC Teachers Federation oppose public money for private schools?

JIM IKER: Well, we believe that all the money, taxpayer raised money should be going to public schools. We believe that public schools as well as public services are the cornerstone of our democracy. And it's become a major issue now because what we've seen from this government, in particular, in the last 15 years is a systemic underfunding of our public education system, where our school boards are basically getting starved for money. You see, here in British Columbia, we've got the second worst funding across Canada. And our government currently under funds our public system to the tune of 1,000 dollars less per student than the Canadian average.

AMT: Well, it has been widely reported that the school closure in Osoyoos is due to low enrolment. Why does the Teachers Federation link it with questions over whether public funding should go to private schools?

JIM IKER: Well, first of all, we have to question what's considered low enrolment or space not being used in our public schools and our government considers that the efficiency rate of the use of our spaces in our public schools should be at a 95 per cent capacity, which we think is a very artificial number that creates some of the scenario that we've seen, in terms of the closing of schools. In Calgary, recently, the school district there said that their capacity is that 85 per cent, which is a much more realistic figure. And Osoyoos Secondary School is a thriving community school where, I believe, the capacity is over 85 per cent, if I'm not mistaken, and the real issue here is the underfunding of our public education system. Our current government does not fund our schools to the rate of inflation. I think they pegged that this year at about 1.9 per cent. It also does not give our schools any funding for downloaded costs created by government, such as MSP.

AMT: MSP?

JIM IKER: Medical Service Premium increases.

AMT: Okay. But before we get into a lot of nitty-gritty of numbers here, those in favour of public money for private schools say it's more cost effective because the government pays less per student compared to public schools. What's your response to that?

JIM IKER: Well, you know, that's not their issue. Our goal as a society is, to me, make sure that all of our children, all over youth have access to a strong public education system in our communities, in our neighbourhood schools and that means that the K to 12 system needs to be properly funded here in British Columbia and that's not what's happening. And so what we see is taxpayer dollars going to private schools, especially going to private schools that already charge 21, 22 thousand dollars in tuition. And parents have the choice. They can send their children to private schools. We don't have an issue with that, but we don't believe that any public dollars should be used to subsidize private schools. And in a time where our government is expecting-- School districts, in the last two years, cut 84 million dollars out of their budgets, which is creating the problem we see in Osoyoos and across British Columbia, where we’ve seen up to 257 schools closed or in the process of being closed and that's due directly to government underfunding of public education.

AMT: At the same time, if you closed all those private schools those kids would go to public schools. It would cost the government more to fund them. If they're paying up to 50 per cent now per pupil in private schools, they're actually going to have to pay more, so where are you going to get the money?

JIM IKER: The issue here is that the government needs to properly fund our public schools, which they're not doing. And every other province has found the money despite hard, not so good economic times or really good economic times, except here in British Columbia. This is a choice of our government and we believe that our government actually does have the dollars to fund public schools the way they should be funded. A start for them is to start putting that money for private schools back into our public schools, like they should.

AMT: You know, the BC government has been doing this for 40 years and the opposition says they would continue.

JIM IKER: That's the current state and we're hoping that what we're going to see-- We've got the Trustees Association across British Columbia passing motions that all funding to private schools needs to end needs to be redirected back to public schools. We see the Parents Organization across British Columbia being very concerned about this. We’re seeing citizens and students very concerned about this.

AMT: Okay. So you need to take it to-- You think that'll give you some sway with the government.

JIM IKER: We’re hoping that there will be some sway as the groundswell of public opinion shifts towards ending funding for private schools .

AMT: Okay, well, Jim Iker, we have to leave it there. So thank you.

JIM IKER: Okay, Anna Maria, appreciate it.

AMT: Bye. That is Jim Iker. He is the President of the BC Teachers' Federation. He’s in Vancouver. Well, again, it’s not solely in BC that private schools receive public funding, only in Ontario and Atlantic Provinces do they not. Deani Van Pelt, is the Director of the Barbara Mitchell Centre for Improvement in Education at the Fraser Institute. She joins us from Hamilton, Ontario. Hi.

DEANI VAN PELT: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: What's your reaction to his concerns about public funding about private schools?

DEANI VAN PELT: Well, first of all I'd like to react to the school closures in British Columbia and as a parent myself I want to recognize that these sorts of disruptions do cause instability in education and as a parent I feel for the families and the students that will be affected by this and as well for the communities. Schools can be very vital and vibrant hubs of communities and this kind of disruption is disconcerting. We know that stability is important and yet we have to consider some facts. And these are some facts that your previous guest did not bring up. We know that there's a decline in school age population in Canada. Since 2000, we have six and a half per cent fewer school age students. In British Columbia, it's actually nine per cent fewer. We know there's been a decline in public school enrolment in Canada, almost five per cent since the decade that began in 2003. In British Columbia, public school enrolment has declined by almost 11 per cent in British Columbia. These are facts that we need to consider. But add to that, on top of it, that spending is not in decline on education in Canada. We increased it in the decade from 2003 to 2013 by 46 per cent in this country. In British Columbia, your guest was indeed correct, it wasn't one of the highest to increase but it was still a dramatic increase of 26 per cent.

AMT: No, and his statistics will tell you that they increased public independent school funding by 66 per cent in BC. So I guess-- What's the rationale behind provinces that fund private schools with public money?

DEANI VAN PELT: But I think it's very important to realize that public per student funding for students in public schools has increased in British Columbia. Even when you take into account changes in prices, inflation, it has increased by 25 per cent over a single decade. So the fact that we are not increasing our funding is a complete myth. Student enrolment is down, funding is increased.

AMT: Right. And they’re arguing that the increase in funding for private schools per student has actually increased by 66 per cent. So let me ask you, what's the rationale behind funding private schools with public money?

DEANI VAN PELT: Sure. So first of all, what is the attraction to private schools?

AMT: That’s what I’m asking you.

DEANI VAN PELT: Exactly. Why have we seen a decline in public school enrolment? So the share of students in the province in British Columbia that attended public schools was 91 per cent in the year 2000. 13 years later, it was 88 per cent of the students were attending public schools. So where were they going? They were moving to private schools and to home schooling. What's the attraction in the private school?

AMT: Yes, what is the attraction, please? And can you answer that? What is the attraction?

DEANI VAN PELT: There are a number of different, diverse goals that private schools meet in the various provinces. The highest one is religious diversity. Private schools are not only Catholic, but there are other Christian. They’re Islamic. They’re Jewish. And other religious communities come together and they have a diversity of goals for their students that are not met in the government schools. Secondly, there are different teaching and learning styles that are addressed through a variety of independent schools in this country. So you've got Waldorf schools, Montessori schools, schools that focus on STEM subjects, schools that focus on arts or athletics. These are these are schools that are gathered around different pedagogical approaches, different learning styles, and the parents are seeing that these independent school communities can address the needs of their students. So in five provinces, as you've mentioned earlier, these schools are funded. It's a different in every province. The amount in British Columbia is 35 per cent or 50 per cent. Saskatchewan now has a 50 per cent rate.

AMT: Right. Right. Okay. I'm going to stop you here, because I'm not actually looking for a rundown. We know that it is up to 50 per cent in most provinces and can go as high as 60 per cent in Alberta. Does it concern you that public money goes to schools that can turn away a student if they can't afford to pay or if they aren't deemed academically fit for a specific school?

DEANI VAN PELT: Many independent schools serve specific communities, special needs communities that the government schools have been unable to serve and is, indeed, why parents are turning to these schools. And I think it's most important to note that these schools are able to educate students more efficiently. The fact that—

AMT: Okay. Can you tell me how you know that?

DEANI VAN PELT: So we know that parents continue to choose these schools. We have we have surveyed parents. We know that they've tried government schools, in many cases, and they haven't been well served and they've had to move to the independent school communities. In a number of provinces-- In every province, there are, what your previous guest called, elite private schools, but that is that only talks about five per cent of the independent schools in this country. The other 95 per cent of independent schools are not the schools that charge 20 or 30 thousand dollars in tuition. These are the schools that serve and address the needs of students that aren't being met or the needs of parents the goals of parents aren't being met in our government schools and are doing it at half or less the cost of the government schools.

AMT: What percentage of children in Canada go to private schools?

DEANI VAN PELT: Okay. So we there are about 400,000 students in in the country that attend independent schools.

AMT: And what percentage is that?

DEANI VAN PELT: So there are about five million students in the country.

AMT: Okay. So if you say five per cent of kids only go to the elite schools, or five per cent of schools are elite, what percentage of the kids going to private schools are in the elite schools?

DEANI VAN PELT: So, again, five per cent of the schools are in that elite school category. It's about ten per cent of the students that attend independent schools that attend those. So it's about 40 or 50 thousand students in the country that are attending these schools that meet this, whatever your guest is calling this, elite group.

AMT: Okay, well, Deani—

DEANI VAN PELT: All the rest, 300,000 other students are attending independent schools that are not the high tuitions and that are able to exist because the governments to do partially fund them and they more efficiently educate these students.

AMT: Okay, Deani Van Pelt. We’re going to pick up on that, whether it is efficient, with our next guest. Deani Van Pelt is the Director of the Barbara Mitchell Centre for Improvement in Education at the Fraser Institute and she was in Hamilton, Ontario. Running through the debate is an assumption that private schools can provide a better education than public schools. That’s a question that's been put to the test with a number of studies comparing public and private schools. So, for a look at how they stack up, I'm joined now by Charles Ungerleider. He is professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in educational policy. And he's in our Vancouver studio. Hello.

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: Hi.

AMT: So Jim Iker of the BC Teachers Federation maintains that using public money to fund private schools undermines the public system. Is that true?

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: Well, the public policy question is, should the public fund a private benefit? That's really at what's at the heart of this issue and I'm glad The Current does raise that issue. There are underlying issues as well. So the question for the public to decide is, should it be funding religiously based schools? Should it be funding elite private schools?

AMT: Okay. And the other question is that the belief that private schools are better academically. So what the study shown? How do private and public schools compare when it comes to the academic achievement of students?

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: When you compare like with like, that is, students of the same economic and educational background in the public and private system, they perform equally. That is, public school students do as well as private school students, which raises the question, of course, for the parents who are investing in the lead private schools and paying the dollars that Mr. Iker referred to and whether in fact it's a wise investment on their part. They're probably not getting a very good return on their investment.

AMT: Well, we just heard our last guest say parents continue to choose private schools.

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: Yes, and, as Ms. Van Pelt said, there are a variety of reasons why parents do that. The vast majority do it for religious reasons. Some people seek it for the other reasons and she said - Montessori schools, Waldorf schools, specially focused schools - but some, a small percentage. In British Columbia, 17 per cent of the private school students attend, what are referred to as, British model elite private schools. The remainder attend schools that are largely religiously focused or specialized in a variety of ways. So, for example, in the community in Osoyoos, where the school is closing, there is a 13-student private school called The Good Shepherd Christian School. But it's a K to seven school. It doesn't handle senior students. There's also a First Nations reserve school that has approximately 100 students. I can't remember the grade configuration of that school.

AMT: So but what you're saying is that if you define better education as academic achievement, there's no difference.

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: That's correct.

AMT: And so why do you think so many people continue to believe that private schools offer a better education?

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: Well, I think they want private education, in many cases, for other reasons than that - social capital, rubbing shoulders with people who can help you in your career along the way, or, for the majority of parents, for religious reasons. That is, they want an education that is focused on their values, their religion, and the public school, of course, doesn't offer that.

AMT: And so beyond religion is there something private schools offer which students and parents cannot find in a public system?

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: No. The interesting thing about that is that the variety of opportunities in the public system exceed those in the private system largely because of the scale and largely because of the demand. You know that school boards have multiple schools, typically. Not in Osoyoos, they only have one secondary school, but even in that secondary school they are for offer many diverse programs. But an underlying public policy issue is: what's the minimum number of students that a high school needs in order to offer the full range of programs that students need for transition to the workplace or to post-secondary education? That's an issue that the public has to think about. As well, it has to think about the issue of whether the requirement of 95 per cent enrolment is the right one for public schools. I know that in North America, hotels for example have an average occupancy rate of about 65 per cent than, as Mr. Iker said, the Calgary Board of Education uses about 85 per cent.

AMT: But you're saying that, when it comes down to it, this is about a decision that society has to make on how we fund it. It’s not really about educators making this decision.

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: No, it shouldn't be educators making this decision, except in their private capacity as citizens. It certainly shouldn't be the Fraser Institute making this decision on the behalf of others. Its interest is largely to privatized public services, like education and health care and reduced government expenditures and increased private profit. That's the primary motivation and to convince people, as you heard in Ms. Van Pelt say, to be averse toward increasing taxes.

AMT: Okay. Well, Charles Ungerleider, thank you for your views on this.

CHARLES UNGERLEIDER: My pleasure.

AMT: Charles Ungerleider is a professor emeritus at the University of BC. He was in our Vancouver studio. We’re looking for your views on this. Should public money be used to fund private schools? Let us know. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Post on this story on our Facebook page. Email us by clicking on 'contact' link at cbc.ca/TheCurrent.

Back To Top »

Arianna Huffington calls for a Sleep Revolution

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Waking up to the importance of sleep.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music: lullaby]

The cats nestle close to their kittens, the lambs have laid down with the sheep. You’re cozy and warm in your bed, my dear. Please go the [beep]to sleep.

AMT: The dulcet tones of Samuel L. Jackson giving voice to the silent plea of parents everywhere during the sleepless nights with infants and toddlers. But going without enough sleep is not just a problem for babies and new parents. There is research to suggest that many of us are essentially sleepwalking through our days at huge costs to our health and our productivity. Now spending more time under the covers may sound like the sort of cause that is easy to get behind, but getting society to seriously tackle the problem of sleep deprivation requires a lot of work, and none other than Adrianna Huffington, the hard charging founder of The Huffington Post has risen to the occasion. She's just written a book called The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time. Adrianna Huffington joins me from New York, hello.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: Hello. Great to be with you again.

AMT: Well, it's nice to have you with us. I remember reading an article about you a long time ago and I distinctly recall that you were famous for not sleeping.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: Exactly. I learned the hard way when nine years ago, I collapsed from sleep deprivation and burnout. I hit my head on the way down and broke my cheekbone, and as I came to in a pool of blood, I had to re-evaluate my life and that's what got me interested in learning about the new science, and learning about the fact that we're living under this collective delusion that somehow burnout was essential to achievement and success. Of course, all modern science completely disproves that.

AMT: How much sleep are you getting at that point in your life?

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: I was getting like four to five hours a night and I was sleepwalking through my days, but you reach that point of exhaustion where you're not even aware you're exhausted, and you begin to think that being tired is just the new normal. That's part of the reason why I’ve become such a sleeper evangelist. I think there is so much unnecessary suffering in the world because we are sleep deprived.

AMT: But until that day, did you feel you were functioning well on the amount of sleep you had?

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: I think a lot of us function well despite the burnout. But we think we function well because of the burnout and we don't realize that we would be functioning a lot better if we were not burned out. In every area, the science is unequivocal.

AMT: To some people, not sleeping seems to be a badge of honour. How has it become so ingrained as part of the norm of our lives?

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: That's a great question, and I was fascinated by that question myself about the history of how did we get here, and I traced it back to the first industrial revolution when we started thinking that human beings are like machines, which we're not [laughs]. We believe that the way with machines, you tried to minimise downtime, we also needed to minimise downtime for human beings and then we had a lot of cultural icons like Thomas Edison. He invented the light bulb but he was also categorically wrong about sleep. He called it an absurdity, he predicted that it would be eliminated, so a lot of people who are admired him or admired captains of industry, who were priding themselves of not getting enough sleep felt that they were going to be great men, or great women, they need to do the same.

AMT: [laughs]How appropriate that the man who invents a light bulb thinks none of us should sleep.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: Or even worse, that none of us need to sleep.

AMT: Yes, so what is the economic cost of all this lost sleep?

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: It's huge, it's tens of billions of dollars. In every country that that we have looked at in the States, it is 63 billion dollars a year. Here's the paradox that we think we sacrifice sleep in the name of productivity, but in fact let's say last year when people worked harder than ever before, we lost 11 days in productivity, and that is partly because of absenteeism, and because of sickness, because of course we all know anecdotally when we are run down, we are more likely to have a cold, or a flu because the immune system is suppressed. Much worse is you know, stress, hypertension, and heart disease, but also in terms of presentation; people who go to work but only sort of with 40 or 50 per cent of their mental capacity. AMT: Because they're just too tired.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: Because they're just too tired. When you're too tired, you can still do transactional things, you know answer email, update your Facebook status, but you are not likely to be at your most productive and creative at work.

AMT: Well, you have a stat that in Canada 26 per cent of the workforce reports calling in sick because of sleep deprivation. Two-thirds of Canadians feel tired, quote, “most of the time”. Sounds like a crisis.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: It is a crisis and it's universal. And of course, our relationship with technology and our addiction to our devices has dramatically exacerbated it because we find ourselves so hooked on our devices that it's harder and harder for us to pick a time to disconnect and go to sleep. For me, we need to rekindle that romance with sleep. All that starts with a transition to sleep and the most important thing I can say that has served me is to pick a time before you're going to turn off the lights, when you disconnect from all your devices, and gently escort them out of your bedroom. It is symbolic and is an actual demarcation line between our days, which are filled with projects, obstacles, incompletions, et cetera, and the time to sleep and recharge.

AMT: Well, you've got so many ideas here, I want to pick some of them individually, but first define what good sleep is. What's the average sleep that people are getting, what should they be getting?

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: First of all, let's talk about quantity before we talk about quality, and unless you have a genetic mutation and about one per cent of the population does, we need seven to nine hours. If you get four to five hours and you feel great, it means you have the genetic mutation. I have discovered that my optimal amount of sleep at which point I'm at my best, is eight hours, but you may be great at seven or eight-and-a-half. We need to each find that special time that works for us. In terms of quality, I think that transition to sleep affects the quality, which means that if we wake up in the middle of the night, it's not a problem. We need to stop stressing about it. Segmented sleep, as it's been known historically, has been part of our lives and for centuries. What is the problem is if we haven’t slowed down our brain before we go to sleep, our brain gets immediately reactivated when we wake up and it starts processing everything from the day before or the day to come. That is what makes it much harder to go to sleep. The key is not to go to any part of our day, you know not to go to our phones, not to go to any paperwork that has to do with our daily lives, so if I wake up in the middle of the night, I consider it a blessing. This is my time to meditate without having a time limit.

AMT: You talk about how our health suffers when we sleep too little. Run through the things that are linked to a lack of sleep, health-wise.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: It starts with a separation of our immune system so that we are immediately more susceptible to any kind of virus, it's also that all the inflammation biomarkers go up, and therefore every aspect both of our physical and our mental health is affected. For me, one of the most powerful new studies is a study about what happens to our brain while we sleep. When we are sleeping, it's a time of frenetic activity for the brain. When the lymphatic system of the brain, which is the brain's planning system, it's functioning at its best, and that's when all the toxins that have accumulated during the day are actually washed away, and if they're not, that's when they accumulate among the cells of the brain, and that's what ultimately becomes the toxic build up associated with Alzheimer's.

AMT: You also point to the fact that it's much more difficult for people to control their weight when they're not sleeping.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yes. It's kind of ironic. A lot of people are sleep deprived, but they've been set the alarm to go to the gym and that's kind of the worst thing you can do because when you are sleep deprived, your body releases hormones that crave sugar and carbs, the very things we should not be eating if we are trying to lose or maintain weight. So it's kind of paradoxical, but if weight maintenance or loss is your primary goal, get enough sleep before you hit the gym.

AMT: And the links to increased risks of diabetes, heart attack, stroke?

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yes, I mean the diabetes is of course very much connected to obesity, and stress is dramatically increased when we are sleep deprived which affects hypertension, which affects heart disease, and this is all now scientifically proven, so we have a great opportunity to dramatically improve our health simply by using a resource that is free and available to all of us.

AMT: You have said the Donald Trump acts as if he were sleep deprived. What is it about his behaviour that makes you believe that?

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, if you look at the symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, you know, inability to process even simple information, no impulse control, mood swings, anger outbursts. These are all symptoms that he displays to the fullest.

AMT: I wonder what he would think of that.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: [Laughs] Well, he prides himself on getting four to four-and-a-half hours sleep.

AMT: Again, this is part of the captains of industry thing.

ADRIANNA HUFFINGTON: And also, using his devices like tweeting in the middle of the night, etcetera, that it is part of what captains of industry have been bragging about, but it is changing dramatically. We're in this amazing transition moment, this real tipping point. When we have more and more CEOs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon and like Satya Nadella the new CEO of Microsoft who say that they need eight hours in order to be most effective, I think this is the cultural shift that we're seeing, both in the corporate world as well as the airline industry. Airlines competing which airline is going to give you the best sleep experience, the hotel industry; we partnered with the Marriott Hotels, they are putting my sleep tapes on the pillows of guests staying at the hotels. So, it's really exciting to see these changes. We also did an outreach to 300 colleges here in the US to raise awareness among college students about the importance of sleep because sleep deprivation has been found to be the foundation of a lot of mental health issues in college, like depression and anxiety.

AMT: And, of course, before people were actually looking for new ways to help them sleep longer they were reaching for other kinds of sleeping aid, sleeping pills. What struck you most when you looked into the sleep industry?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, what struck me, first of all, is that the United States and New Zealand, likely not Canada for you, the only two, kind of, that allow advertising of these sleep aids, like Ambien, like Lunesta. And if you read or hear them, the adverse side effects, which are normally read by a woman in a cheerful voice while happy people are frolicking in fields, it's really alarming. I mean, just after taking Ambien the ad says you may get out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you're doing. The reported activities include driving a car, making and eating food, talking on the phone, having sex, sleep walking.

AMT: In fact, there are cases on record of people who have gained weight by sleep-eating while on Ambien. They find chocolate bars under their bed.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, that’s the least of the problems. I think killing somebody or yourself or hurting someone or yourself while driving on Ambien would be even more alarming.

AMT: Yeah. You have actually a little skit that you've got you make reference to in your book and we dug it out. It’s a clip of actor Anna Kendrick on The Late Show with David Letterman, talking about Ambien. Let's listen to that.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID LETTERMAN: Were you in London last night?

ANNA KENDRICK: I was, yeah. I've got that London flight kind of down to a science because of Ambien. Thank god for Ambien.

DAVID LETTERMAN: Ambien. The sleep aid, Ambien.

ANNA KENDRICK: Yeah. It's a hell of a drug though. Hell of a drug. I just sort of black out the second that I take it. And I wake up and I wake up to a surprise every time. All my DVDs are in the fridge or something. Just a surprise. Surprise!

[Audience laughter]

DAVID LETTERMAN: So when you travel you take it after you get on the plane.

ANNA KENDRICK: Yeah. This last time—‘Cause you have to be ready to go to sleep. This last time I took it as soon as we took off. And I remember thinking I should put on something comfy to sleep in. And then nothing. And when I woke up I was wearing everything that was in my carry-on bag. And I had a 90-second video of my salad. Not like an accident. Like, I was Scorsese filming this salad.

[David and audience laughter]

AMT: Well, we can laugh, but, as you point out, people have actually ended up in court over their activities on this drug. What's the official name of the drug? It’s zolpidem, I think.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yes, exactly. If you read again the science of how the chronic use of these sleeping pills affects your health and how damaging it is to every aspect of your health, we would be a lot more reluctant to take them.

AMT: So, what kind of sleep revolution do we need?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: So, the first part is to change our minds about sleep and then we change our habits. Changing our minds means recognizing that sleep deprivation is the new smoking. If you go back to the fifties, you'd be amazed to see ads, television ads of doctors in white coats advertising cigarettes. You know, I smoked menthols because they fresh my throat. And I think looking back on that time we're living through, we're going to be just as amazed that there were people, politicians, corporate leaders, actors bragging about how little sleep they got, because now we know how damaging that is to every aspect of our lives.

AMT: In fact, you say we're going we're going to go from a Dark Ages asleep into a sleep Renaissance.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yes. And it's really exciting that we're living through that. I mean, first of all, it's very exciting to see a culture shift happening while we are alive. I mean, just to give you one example, which is kind of stunning. Aetna, which is one of the largest health insurance companies in the world, has just announced the program where they give their employees Fitbits and they ask them to track their sleep and if they get seven hours or more, and they get 25 dollars a night. Now, beyond the financial incentive is the fact that here is a major public company effectively saying from the top that when you sleep enough it's not just good for your health, it's good for Aetna’s bottom line, because it improves our productivity and it reduces our health care costs. Now, that’s something which would have seemed kind of impossible even a few years ago that is actually now happening.

AMT: What brought about the nap room in the Huffington Post offices?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, naps are the only way to reset your day if, for whatever reason, you haven't gotten a good night's sleep. So on those days, the best thing is to try and get a nap as soon as possible to reset your day. And so we wanted to make that easy for our Huffington Post journalists and the engineers and everybody working in our newsrooms around the world. So we started with New York in 2011, a while ago now, and there are two nap rooms. They were first met with scepticism, but now they're perpetually full.

AMT: And you nap at work?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: You know, if I have one of those nights when, for some reason, I haven't been able to get my full night's sleep, which now is only about five per cent of the time, I have a couch in my office and I use that so I don't take one of the of the rooms that are available to everyone. And my office is a glass wall and I used to close the curtain and now I leave it open, because I wanted to accelerate ending the stigma of napping on the job.

AMT: Well, what did you do to make changes to sleep habits in your own life?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, as I said, the priority is creating the demarcation line between the day and night and creating like a sacred ritual, preparing you for sleep which is what we do with our children. You know, we give them a bath, we sing them a lullaby. So, with ourselves, we need to create our own ritual. Mine involves, as I said, taking all my devices outside the bedroom, having a hot bath with Epsom salts and candles, wearing dedicated sleep clothes. I used to sleep in the same T-shirts that I would wear to the gym and my brain would get these conflicting messages. Are we going to the gym or are we going to sleep?

AMT: My brain would say, am I going to sleep or do I have to go to the gym? But keep going.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Yeah, exactly. Well, it's the same thing. And then only reading physical books in bed. I, for example, would consider it a personal victory if your listeners read The Sleep Revolution in bed and it puts them to sleep. But no screens in bed, and books that have nothing to do with work, nothing to do with anything that you're going to be doing during your day – poetry, novels, philosophy.

AMT: You know, it's interesting, because you also talk about the socio-economic side, the, almost, the class side of sleep. I mean, there are people who have to work two jobs. They commute on long public transit rides. They are single parents. They have so much to do. They might be studying at night. How do people who are just trying to make ends meet in an economy that's tough have a sleep revolution?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Well, that, perhaps, it's more important to them than to anyone else, because resilience is so key when you are struggling to make ends meet. I had a clinic in Harlem for people who are struggling to make ends meet and I talked to everybody who came there to find out more about sleep and it was heart-breaking, because it was clear that they really had bought into the cultural delusion that if they got four hours sleep and they didn’t feel good, that was their problem. I’ll just tell you one story of a woman in her early 30s who had two jobs. She was a pastry chef and a babysitter. And she described to me how she would get home from work and, this was my time, she said, to watch my show. So she would watch four hours of TV, fall asleep watching her shows. The TV would, at some point, wake her up. And then because her brain had not slowed down it would be hard for her to go back to sleep, so she would go to the kitchen, craving sweets, and have something sweet. The woman was obese. She had diabetes and she was perpetually exhausted. Now, there's a lot that needs to change in our economies, in terms of minimum wage, in terms of good available jobs, but sleep is a low-tech strategy available to all to enhance the quality of our life and our health right now.

AMT: How is your life different now that you are less sleep-deprived?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: It’s amazingly different. I find, first of all, I show up present in my life and I bring a lot more joy and gratitude to everything I'm doing. I'm not sleepwalking through my life. I clearly make better decisions. I'm much less likely to ignore the red flags and all the things that often go by us because we're too exhausted to notice. And I think I'm better at my job and I'm a better parent and a better friend because I think that sleep deprivation, like smoking, also has an impact on everybody around us. I think we should start talking about second-hand sleep deprivation, because if you’re around somebody who's exhausted, they're going to be more moody, they're going get more easily angry, and they're not going to be as much fun to be around.

AMT: All important things to think of. I just have to ask you, though. Do you think you could have started and created Huff Post on the amount of sleep you get now?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Oh, god, a thousand per cent. I would have done it better. I would have made better decisions. I would have made fewer hiring mistakes. There's no question. I mean, the growth of Huff Post all happened after I started getting enough sleep.

AMT: Well, there we go. Up the revolution, the sleep revolution. Arianna Huffington, thank you.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Thank you so much.

AMT: Arianna Huffington. Her book is called The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time. She joined me from New York City. If you are in need of your own sleep revolution, tweet us @thecurrentCBC. Some of you are already tweeting. You’re re-tweeting. Somebody is actually quoting Shakespeare, “to sleep perchance to dream.” If you are in need of your own sleep revolution, comment on the story on Facebook. Send us an email from our site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. Click on ‘contact’ or again tweet us @thecurrentCBC. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Canadian seniors still working to make ends meet

Guests: Stu, Sheila, John Stapleton

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

I know on television there used to be a commercial that talked about Freedom 55 and talked about, you know, if you stay with this particular company you would be able to retire at 55. It's not Freedom 55. If you're lucky, it's Freedom 75 and for many people it's Freedom 85, or 95, or in the grave, because they can't afford to retire. How many people retire at 55? That's almost unheard of unless you inherited money from, you know, some rich family. There are people working well into their 70s and certainly there are still some people working in their 80s, and it's not because they love the job so much. I mean, the greeter at Walmart is not saying, oh, goody I get to go to work today. I mean, they say, oh, goody, I get to work and I can put a roof over my head.

AMT: Well, that is Mary Hines of Toronto. She is 72-years-old. She was still working part-time until about six months ago to supplement her small pension and to afford extras. Mary is part of a growing cohort in this country; people over the age of 65 who still have to work to make ends meet. A survey by Manulife Bank released yesterday finds that six out of ten Canadians worry about having enough money to retire; that finding mirrors several previous studies including an extensive one earlier this year by the Broadbent Institute. It found that one third of Canadians who do not have an employer pension turn 65 with only $1,000 in retirement savings. Of course, as jobs with pension plans become more scarce, the problem is expected to get worse and the number of Canadians who have to keep working well into their golden years is also expected to grow. To get a sense of what those numbers mean I'm joined by two seniors who are still working. We've agreed to use only their first names in order to protect their privacy. Stu is 72-years-old, he's in Kitchener, Ontario. Sheila is 68. She's in Barrie, Ontario. Hello to you both.

GUESTS: Hello.

AMT: Stu, I want to start with you. What kind of work do you do right now?

STU: Well, I've just transitioned from a social work position that I had that has now ended. The funding has dried up for that and so right now I've just gotten a job at a warehouse doing warehouse work.

AMT: Okay, Sheila you work in real estate.

SHEILA: Yes, I do.

AMT: How is business for you?

SHEILA: It's good. I also now look after my 90-year-old mother, and so it kind of infringes a wee bit on my freedom but she is my mother so that's important.

AMT: And I just want to make clear you are both working not because you really want to but because you must in order to make ends meet.

SHEILA: That's correct.

STU: Yes, that's correct.

AMT: 20 years ago, 10 or 20 years ago when you were younger, did you did you think you'd be working at this point in your life? Sheila?

SHEILA: No. No, I did not.

STU: Well, you know, at that point they were starting to talk about Freedom 55 and I at the time, I thought it was a joke, but I did hope to be able to retire at 65 to 70, somewhere in there.

AMT: Stu, tell me a little bit more about your earlier work, what's your work history?

STU: [laughs] Oh, I've had all kinds of jobs. Most of them at the beginning were physical jobs, for example, framing, carpenter, an orderly at a hospital, retail clerk, things like that and then I was able to learn to weld and I became a fitter-welder and that was one of the best paying jobs certainly that I had and at the time. They had an employee pension plan which I contributed to, but when you leave a place, even if you have a plan, then you get a lump sum payout because you don't retire in that retiree plan.

AMT: Oh, so you got a pay out, but you don't have ongoing payments?

STU: So, that has to go into an RRSP and then it ends up in a mutual fund, but some of that money got lost over the years because of the fluctuation in the market and the particular mutual fund that you choose to invest in.

AMT: So you were working as a welder. You said it was a good paying job, you eventually left, and you started doing social work, am I correct?

STU: That's correct. I had a mid-life career change. I had to go to university to get a degree. At the time I was welding, I decided to volunteer at the John Howard Society and I liked the work a lot and I said, what do I need to do to get hired and they said well, you need a BA at least, and so I went to school to get my BA. Then I was able to get hired by the John Howard Society, for less money I might say, than I was making as a fitter-welder.

AMT: But you're always working and you're upgrading your education. Sounds like you're doing everything right. Would you say you were middle class?

STU: Well, I've always thought of myself as middle class, but I feel the pinch of time as my income has diminished and the cost of living has increased.

AMT: How do you describe your situation now for you and your wife?

STU: Well, it's a bit tough because my wife had to leave work at about age 57, and because of her health condition, she’s a registered nurse and had been Director of Care at a retirement home, she was always a hard worker but she had diabetes for the past 30 years and what really was the final touch was getting lupus, which meant that she couldn't continue working so she had to quit at that point. Since then she's had cancer, fortunately although it cost her a kidney, she's was able to beat cancer so far, touch wood, but it has been a real challenge when she was working. There was a drug plan but after having to leave work, no drug plan and so it was really crippling us to pay for the medications that she has required.

AMT: SO this is why you have to work?

STU: Yes.

AMT: Okay. Sheila, tell me a little bit more about your circumstances. Were you always in real estate?

SHEILA: No, for years I worked for ambulance services. I got a great government job, actually that was one of six in the province. It was really a good job. Unfortunately, my husband and I both decided to be self-employed. I'm not sorry I did it, it's just if you could just see what's going to happen in the future, but you don't know. It was a second marriage for me, I had two older daughters and my husband had never been married, and so we had a little girl and we both went into our own business. He went first and he ran that business for 18 years. I was doing real estate trying to help him with his business when it first started and raise our new baby. We were both very, very busy.

AMT: You were making enough money to look after yourselves?

SHEILA: Yes, yes. We both had great credit, we had both come from great jobs, we had a nice home, we had a nice income, we had everything, pretty much. And then when we went into our own business, that became a real struggle for both of us because we were both self-employed and my business was not getting the money that it needed to really run it. Then when there's a slowdown, my husband became finding work for the men and not himself, so it's a vicious circle, but for the 18 years he was doing it, until the bank decided that they wanted only chartered accountants to do the reporting. So, we got a chartered accountant and unfortunately that's where we ran into a problem because he didn't report our financials, even though we had them all and the bank called us one day and said we want all our money back and we want all of your lines cut, and that was the beginning of the end. We lost our pensions, we lost everything but the house.

AMT: You went bankrupt?

SHEILA: His company did and it was devastating for both of us because we'd never—the way you are treated before and the way you are treated after, it's mind boggling. You can't imagine where you are and how you got there, and all you're trying to do is work, work, work to get out of it.

AMT: How old were the two of you when this was happening?

SHEILA: We were both in our 50s, and we had pensions, we had everything, and we lost our benefits for drugs, so lots of times you know, you just don't have them, but you can't let the world know that's what's happening, so you always put on a smile and you go to work. You can't feel sorry for yourself or act like there's a problem, and in your home you have a little girl that you don't want her to know so you do your best to pretend life is okay.

AMT: This happened in your 50s and now you are 68, so you were side swiped, essentially, for retirement.

SHEILA: Absolutely.

AMT: Stu, that's fair to say, you thought you'd be in a different position.

Stu: Yes, yes and I guess one of things I should mention is that some of the money that was saved for retirement ended up getting spent on the medication.

SHEILA: I understand that.

AMT: Stu, if you didn't work now, what would your life look and feel like?

Stu: Well, we'd have to sell our house and it's hard to know what kind of accommodation we could get. One of my concerns is that this country has not had a housing plan, which is a problem because there's not enough low income housing. Many people would like to sell their homes and move into a smaller home, but the price of a smaller home is not that different from the price of a larger home, so by the time you pave the expenses of selling a home, and the moving and everything, you're not ahead at all.

AMT: How close are you financially? You have your home, but you have to work.

Stu: Yes, we did pay off the mortgage a while back, but now we've got a sizeable line of credit.

AMT: So the two of you with CPP, and even OAS, would not be enough.

Stu: No.

SHEILA: No. We have a substantial mortgage on our home as well.

AMT: And if you weren't working right now, Sheila, what would your life look like?

SHEILA: We would definitely have to sell the house, and there's not that much equity in it anymore. We're trying to get the basement finished to be a legal apartment, and Stu is very right about the smaller homes for seniors. They're hardly out there and they are very expensive because that's what everybody wants.

AMT: And you don't want to go into a quote unquote “retirement home”?

SHEILA: Oh heavens, no. I also think people today that are 68 are a lot younger than my mother's age of 68. People don't believe we're the age we are because I think it's because we're always working, and you have to get up, you have to go out and pretend everything's okay.

STU: Yes.

AMT: What do you want to say, Stu?

STU: It can be weighing on you. Over the years, I've reached a point where I've decided well, I’d just as soon do a physical job now and fortunately I have the health to do it. I have some arthritis and some you know, prostate concerns, but I'm still able to do it. If I wasn't able to, we'd be in a real pickle.

AMT: You have grown children, Stu. Do they know how close you are to the edge?

STU: Well, I think they have a rough idea. Once again, like Sheila is right, you go out you put on your face, and don't want to be whining and sniveling. We do a lot of babysitting for our children, for the grandchildren, I mean we want to have relationships with our grandchildren so we're happy to do the babysitting for free, but every once in a while we'll get a gift card that we can take and have a meal out at the restaurant or something. We appreciate anything like that that they can afford, but they're you know, they're struggling in their own right as well.

AMT: Sheila, do you talk to family and friends about money strains; of reaching this age and thinking it would have been different, or is this something you don't share?

SHEILA: Maybe with our youngest daughter because she's very positive. She went to university, she has a degree. I think family and friends really play a huge part in making it or breaking it. I can really understand where they said in the Great Depression people jumped out the window because you go from having it to losing it and it's a whole new world of how you're treated, how you feel, and it's these people that are around you, surround you, that keep you going. And you don't want to drag your children down, you don't want to burden them and let them know. I mean, I'm sure they have an idea but you know, you certainly don't bring it up on a daily basis. It's just a silent existence that you don't--

AMT: Yeah, I'm wondering how you look at your futures. Sheila, you're in your late 60s, Stu early 70s. Do you worry about ten years from now financially?

SHEILA: Yes. I think I've had so much worry. My husband is back at a job now with benefits and he's actually happy, but this is hard work that he does, but he keeps very quiet. He's a hard worker and that's allowed me to back up a wee bit and maybe look into my health a bit better and not have to work as hard. He can now go on the mortgage as these things are huge debts to us. We take baby steps and the most positive thing is that we really like each other and I think that's amazing that we have been through so much and we still respect and like each other, and we're both willing to work. As far as the future, there will be a bit out of this house. Hopefully, we get the apartment finished even more, so I think I've seen so much around me that is so sad, that I'm just grateful every day that I get up and put one foot in front of another and keep working. I'm grateful, but at the other time when my friends are all travelling all over the world, it kind of does break my heart that I can't go. I do want to go but, that's you know, suck it up.

AMT: Stu, do you think about ten years from now?

STU: Absolutely. It was 2012 when my father passed away, and he was three months away from his 100th birthday and everybody tells me that I take after my dad so they're predicting that [laughs] I will last that long as well, and I don’t like to think about it.

AMT: I'm really struck by the fact that both of you had really thought you had planned well, that you'd actually looked ahead and done things and then you got sideswiped by a number of things, but you actually put your mind to it, you actually did think about what it would be like when you were older.

STI: Sheila mentioned a second marriage and that's happened in my case as well. It ended up costing us money in sort of regrouping.

SHEILA: My first husband has been retired, I guess over 25 years and so, I'm not angry or anything, I just think how wonderful that would be because he gets to see the grandkids, he gets to go--it's just a different life for him, but I'm the one left so that's the way it is.

AMT: Neither one of you is speaking with self-pity, but you are speaking with realism. What do you want us to understand?

SHEILA: I think as I get older, the biggest thing I notice is that self-pity or feeling sorry for yourself is just a waste of time and yes, I do that at home sometimes. Some days I get up and think I just can't face anybody, I’m just really going to have a pity party for me today. Then I get over it because it doesn't do any good to do that no matter who you are.

AMT: Okay, well thank you very much both of you for talking to me today.

GUESTS: Thanks, bye-bye.

AMT: I've been speaking with Stu, aged 72, he's in Kitchener. Ontario. Sheila is 68, she's in Barrie. Neither feels they can afford to retire; each is still working past the age of 65 and we have used only their first names to protect their privacy. John Stapleton is an innovation fellow and social policy expert with the Metcalf Foundation. It's a private foundation that supports progressive causes. John Stapleton is with me in our Toronto studio, hi.

JOHN STAPLETON: Good morning.

AMT: Well, as you listen to Stu and Sheila, what strikes you about that conversation?

JOHN STAPLETON: Well, really that the times are very unforgiving and we lived through a period in the Eighties and Nineties when things went a lot more swimmingly and what we're now seeing is precarious work, we're seeing people with zero pensions, more and more people without pensions, and they have to work on what would normally be thought of as their retirement years, or even early retirement.

AMT: It's not as if either one of the two people you just heard from were frivolous in their younger years, they thought they were doing everything right.

JOHN STAPLETON: Yeah, and they were according to those times. We've seen real change now and it particularly struck me when Sheila said something to the effect of 72 is the new 62, or 75 is the new 65 because people--I mean, the good side of this is that people are more robust and they are living longer with medicine, nutrition, etc and—

AMT: They want to keep working.

JOHN STAPLETON: And they want to keep working and the evidence shows us that seniors, especiallythose about 65 do think of the idea of working as very important, like paid work.

AMT: But how common is it for people over 65 to keep working because they have to?

JOHN STAPLETON: Well, this is it. I mean, there are no percentages we could use because this is an individual judgment, but more and more have to and especially those--if we look at the Guaranteed Income Supplement, which is the supplement that people get if they're low income after 65, three in 10 Canadians receive that supplement and we're certainly heading into a period where we're going to see more and more get that supplement. These are the people who are living on $17-$18,000 a year and that might be fine if you own your own home and if you have a number of supports in place, but it's not fine if you're living in a big city and have to rent.

AMT: What are the factors then that lead to so many seniors having to work?

JOHN STAPLETON: Well, the first is that I think on the good side we have no mandatory retirement anymore. We had CPP changes 2012 that allow people to keep on working that weren't there before, but on the bad side we're looking at fewer seniors with pensions, those without a workplace pension go into retirement with about a median of $19,000, which is not very much in terms of the yearly income. We're looking at lower savings rates, lower interest rates on those savings too, which mitigate against savings. We’re looking at higher housing costs and of course, one of the big ones is as your guest mentioned, that they have to take care of someone who is very aged. 65-year olds often didn't have their parents in the old days and now we're also looking at seniors who have to keep their own dependent children in their own home, and that really is a high cost also. These are things we didn't see 20, 30 years ago.

AMT: So, what's changed since the Freedom 55 ad campaign? Was there ever really a Freedom 55 for most people?

JOHN STAPLETON: Well, if you think of Freedom 55 as high art, we would call it a period piece. It really is something that was a possibility for only the very few at the time who had stable jobs, good pensions, and they had the savings left over to be able to pay into the insurance scheme that allowed you to retire at 55. With fewer high, good pensions, people with stable career paths, with wage progression going on into their 50s, the whole idea of Freedom 55 is something that we see very, very rarely. I think the other aspect is that when you look at those ads, if you're going to survive to age 85, then you're basically spending 30 years on a beach. I don't think people want to do that anymore. There was a time when we said, hey let's chuck it all and we can we can go retire in a warm place.

AMT: There are people who are not healthy enough to be working in their 70s. How does the social safety net work for them?

JOHN STAPLETON: It works poorly. It's really fraying at the edges. That that's where you really see people who are on fixed incomes and they can't unfix them because if you go out to work, then you can fix your situation, but if you're not in a position to do that then you become highly dependent on our medical system and really there's a hydraulic there and the hydraulic is that if you're not able to pay for the supports, and the equipment, and other things, and the care that you need, you're going to age more rapidly, you're going to experience disability more rapidly, and then that puts higher class on the medical system. So, you could, in many ways if we did the smart thing and provided people with more income in their early senior years, then we would we wouldn't have the high medical costs that we have for people in their 80s and 90s.

AMT: You know, we're hearing from two people on the realities of retirement and we're talking about the realities of retirement, what should Canadians in their 20s,30s,40s be taking from this? What should they be doing as they listen to people in their late 60s, early 70s talk about this?

JOHN STAPLETON: Well, they really have to think about if they have a chance to get a stable career, many people are following their own muse and looking for the quality of the work that they're able to get, as opposed to the pay and they're not necessarily paying attention to the pension possibilities. They really have to start paying more attention to that because if you're a single person at the age of 65 and you have no other sources of income, you're looking at $18,000 from the government, and that's fine if you have as I said, if you have all of the supports and have your own home and that sort of thing in place, but if you don't, $18,000 or the equivalent 40 years from now, is not going to be enough.

AMT: Given that you look at innovation, is it just a matter of time before people coming up and looking at a system that appears not to be the safety net it was going to be, end up disrupting it?

JOHN STAPLETON: One of the things that we really have to think about is that we have a Guaranteed Income Supplement and we have seniors benefits in place right now that were not built for people to work. They are extremely injurious, let's say. If you go out to work, you you're facing clawbacks on the GIS system of 75 percent and sometimes in Ontario, it's even 100 percent after $3,500 of earning, so we need to redesign those systems for people who are going to work into their senior years.

AMT: Okay, John Stapleton, thanks for coming in. John Stapleton is a social policy consultant who specializes in retirement issues. He's with the Metcalf Foundation and he joined me in our Toronto studio. We want to hear your stories about working later in life or your thoughts on the issue. Send us an email by going to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, thanks for listening to The Current.

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May 25, 2016 full episode transcript

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