Retirement Mandate

On the day of December 12, 2006, Ontarians said good-bye to mandatory retirement but now, employers face challenges and liability risks when dealing with older workers. These issues will become even more critical as Canada’s baby boomers age. The purpose of this essay is to provide reasons as to why the mandate should be placed back into effect.

        First, some background information for a better understanding. “Mandatory retirement was introduced with private and public pension plans and it had an intense impact on the workplace and the structure of pension plans, on fairness and security of tenure in the workplace, and on opportunities for others” (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2000). But the government, as it often does, made changes to legislation which can sometimes be unfavourable. According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission (2000), the issue of mandatory retirement at age 65 was considered by the Supreme Court on several ensuing occasions. In Stoffman v. Vancouver General Hospital, the Court applied McKinney v. University of Guelph and found that a regulation which took away doctors’ hospital privileges at age 65 was justifiable under s. 1 of the Charter. Interest in this case was the Court’s insinuated acceptance of the belief that older persons are not “on the cutting edge of new discoveries and ideas” and that at age 65, doctors are “less able to contribute to the hospital’s sophisticated practice” (Stoffman v. Vancouver General Hospital, 1990). Despite recognizing that there will be considerable differences between individuals as to the rate at which the skills and abilities necessary to the practice of medicine decline, the Court rejected skills testing or performance evaluations as an option (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2000).

        As previously stated, on December 12, 2006 Ontario got rid of the retirement mandate resulting in the Human Rights Code (1990) now protecting all persons aged 18 and over against discrimination in employment on the foundation of their age. This means that employers cannot make decisions about hiring, promoting, training opportunities, or terminating on the premise of an employee’s age. Antecedent to this date, the Code did not interdict age discrimination in employment against persons aged 65 or older. As a result,

policies requiring mandatory retirement at age 65 could not be challenged under the Code. This is now no longer the case. Persons aged 65 and older who believe that they have been discriminated against on the basis of age may file a complaint of discrimination with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. This does not mean that employers cannot have retirement programs based on a certain age. Rather, it means that such programs cannot be mandatory, except for judges, masters, and justices of the peace under the Courts of Justice Act, for whom there is a specific exemption under the Code (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2000).