Family Fortune
The Great Wealth Transfer will change Canada's economy. And maybe Canada itself.
Imagine you uncovered a chest of pirate treasure in the backyard, a long-lost Picasso in the attic, the winning 6-49 ticket stuffed in the back of the kitchen junk drawer. For the 9.1 million children of the baby boomers, such windfalls aren’t the stuff of financial fantasy: over the next decade or so, the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada estimates this lucky generation will inherit a total of $1 trillion from their parents.
While the idea has been talked about since at least the mid-1990s, the aptly named Great Wealth Transfer will be the most socially significant passing on of inheritance Canada has ever experienced. And not just for the private jet set: if your folks were farsighted enough to buy a modest home in or around Toronto or Vancouver when you were growing up, your treasure may be the backyard itself, and inheriting it will be more than enough to bump you up several rungs on the financial ladder.
Anyone who’s read a Jane Austen novel knows how profound an effect inheritance can have on an individual. For society itself, the consequences may be even more significant. As the song reminds us, money changes everything, starting with the choices people make about working (or not), saving (or not), and motivating themselves (or not). It can change the way the economy functions, shifting the emphasis from getting up and going to work to sleeping in and collecting interest, dividends, or rent. It can change people’s priorities: what reforms or retrenchments they support socially, environmentally, and politically.
It can also change our belief in what we might call the idea of Canada: that beyond the myriad inequalities, injustices, and cynical jokes, effort still counts for something here. As much as we might tut-tut about the personal injury lawyer earning more than the kindergarten teacher, it remains true that the majority of well-to-do Canadians put in no small amount of sweat and sacrifice before they made it big: the entrepreneur who failed at several businesses before creating a hit product, the doctor who put in 24-hour shifts as a resident, the superstar who got up at 5 a.m. to shoot pucks, Mom and Dad who drove a 20-year-old Toyota so they could pay off the mortgage a little faster.
Inheritance changes all that, creating a cohort of Canadians who neither toil nor spin for their fortune. Instead of the nobility of hard work and perseverance, we have the genetic lottery, in which being born at the right time to the right parents sets you up for life. Yes, $1 trillion can buy a lot of things. One thing it might not be able to buy, however, is the feeling that this place will ever be the same again.
