Canadians elected Prime Minister Mark Carney to help navigate economic uncertainty and build Canada Strong. His government has rightly focused on making Canada more productive, resilient, and prepared for the future and has made real progress towards that.

But while his government works to build for tomorrow, many young Canadians struggle today, making it hard to imagine building their future here at all.

I am a student at the University of Waterloo, home to some of the brightest people this country will ever produce. And I am watching my friends leave.

A close friend recently moved to New York for the kind of tech job Waterloo is famous for. Others head to California, Texas, or Europe for graduate school and never come back. They are not leaving because they want to leave Canada. They are leaving because they cannot picture a future here: a home they can afford, a family they can support, a life they can build.

That should concern all of us.

We can act immediately by reconsidering why we’re on track to spend roughly $17.5 billion each year on Old Age Security subsidies for retirees living in households with six-figure incomes. These are not the seniors struggling to pay for groceries or rent. Repurposing even half of this spending could finance the most significant improvements to affordability in decades, for young and old alike.

The proposal is straightforward: gradually reduce OAS payments for couples once household income exceeds $100,000. Today, a retired couple with roughly $180,000 in household income can still receive nearly $18,000 in OAS.

Unlike the Canada Pension Plan, which workers contribute to throughout their careers and receive in proportion to those contributions, OAS is a taxpayer-funded subsidy available to anyone who meets relatively generous eligibility rules.

This matters because programs that support younger Canadians are far more restrictive. The Canada Child Benefit begins to phase out at household incomes around $81,000, while Canada Student Grants largely disappear once family income reaches $50,000 to $60,000.

Better aligning the phaseout for OAS with these programs would reduce benefits only for retirees with household incomes above $100,000 while protecting or improving support for roughly eight in ten seniors.

The savings could eliminate poverty among approximately 400,000 seniors, provide meaningful rent support for younger Canadians, and expand opportunities like the Youth Climate Corps. None of this would require higher taxes or larger deficits. It would simply redirect public resources toward Canadians who need them most.

Some will hesitate because older Canadians vote at higher rates than younger Canadians. But I believe those fears are overstated.

Most parents and grandparents do not want their children and grandchildren locked out of home ownership, delaying families, or moving back into childhood bedrooms because rent has become unaffordable. They understand that younger Canadians face challenges that previous generations did not.

The quiet bargain our politics increasingly offers my generation is this: lower your expectations so nobody else has to sacrifice. Most Canadians, including many seniors, would reject that bargain if we discussed it honestly.

There is evidence they already do. A large majority of retirees support reducing OAS for higher-income households if the savings help eliminate seniors’ poverty and improve affordability for younger Canadians.

Prime Minister Carney has argued that leaders must focus on the challenges they can actually solve. OAS reform is one of those opportunities. It is a chance to end seniors’ poverty, improve affordability, and demonstrate that governments are willing to adapt programs to meet today’s realities.

So, I urge Liberals to put OAS reform in the next budget. Make it part of an affordability agenda worthy of this moment. Let this government be remembered for ending seniors’ poverty and giving young Canadians renewed confidence that this country still works for them.

My generation was told to study hard, work harder, believe in institutions, and believe in one another.

We did.

Now we are asking our government to do the same: the right thing, even when it’s hard.

That is what building Canada Strong requires.

Nicholas Aboagye is the National Chair of the Young Liberals of Canada and a Public Affairs Associate at Impact Public Affairs. He is completing a BA in Political Science at the University of Waterloo and has previously worked in the Prime Minister’s Office and the office of the Minister of Rural Economic Development.

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