Noteworthy: A little more for those who need it, a little less for those who have it

By Bruce Penton on December 10, 2025.

There are rumblings in Ottawa about possible changes to the Old Age Security system. The changes would pull back some money from wealthy Canadians and direct it toward the poor. One could call it the Robin Hood plan.

Currently, OAS is paid monthly to Canadians 65 and over, but payments begin to be pulled back once a household income for retired couples exceeds $182,000. The whispered plan is for that income threshold to be reduced to $100,000. In other words, if you and your spouse make more than $100,000 in a year, your OAS cheque would be reduced. An estimated 20 per cent of current OAS recipients would be affected.

Analysts have pegged the annual savings to Ottawa at $7 billion per year. Some of those savings, in turn, would be passed on to poorer seniors in Canada, giving them an additional $5,000 per year. The rest, said a report in the Globe & Mail, would be directed to priorities such as improving affordability for younger people.

It seems like a decent, fair plan. A couple making more than $182,000 per year would have no problem getting by with a little less from the federal government, and it would help to ease the poverty situation for thousands of less fortunate Canadians in their later years.

– From the good news/bad news department: A man in Michigan who was awaiting a kidney transplant was happy to hear a kidney had been found. A man had died from rabies, and his kidney was harvested, with the transplant going ahead. The bad news: The recipient died shortly thereafter – from rabies.

– The world will be watching the fallout from Australia’s ban on social media for people 16 years of age and under. The ban takes effect today and if the rest of the world sees some positive results from it, you can bet there will be attempts to have the ban spread across the globe.

When the ban takes effect, “platforms including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and Twitch, will be required to remove existing under-16 accounts and block the ability to create new ones,” said a story on the Tech 24 website.

The reasoning? Australia’s government says “the legislation is necessary to curb rising online bullying, self-harm content and addictive design, which it says intentionally targets young users,” according to Tech 24.

This could turn into the 2020s version of what we Baby Boomers went through when we were teens – having an older teen buy a case of beer for a punk renegade kid. “Hey, psst!, have you got a YouTube account? Can I check it out on your phone? Just don’t tell my mom.”

– Like a hungry dog devouring a meaty bone, the Toronto Globe & Mail is all over Danielle Smith’s government for its medical procurement practices for children’s Tylenol and private surgical services. It’s a complicated story, with lawsuits both threatened and real. The name Sam Mraiche keeps popping up in the Globe stories and will likely become a household name in Alberta before too long.

I’ve always appreciated not being sued, so this topic will go no further in this space. Good luck to all those involved.

– Donald Trump lashed out Monday at his now-critic, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose interview with CBS Sunday drew the President’s ire. Included in his vitriol was that Greene’s “new views are those of a very dumb person.”

Which reminds me of a golf joke from the late Canadian comedian Norm Macdonald: “The golfer yells at his caddy ‘you have to be the worst caddie that ever lived.’ Caddie responded ‘no sir, that would be too much of a coincidence.'”

– Short snappers: President Trump, whose idiotic remarks often outnumber credible ones, hit a new low (or high) last week when he suggested the National Football League come up with a new name for its sport because the ‘real football’ is soccer. The world is laughing at him, not with him. … It was disappointing to learn Monday that Tigers’ captain Bryce Pickford was not invited to training camp for Canada’s world junior hockey team, which is headlined by ex-Tiger Gavin McKenna. Pickford, a defenceman, already has 20 goals and is on pace for a 49-goal season. Were he to hit 50, he’d be only the second WHL player ever to reach that plateau (Troy Mick of Portland had 63 in 1987-88 and potted 60 two years later while with Regina Pats). … Medicine Hat could be becoming the fast-food chicken capital of the world. Added to longstanding KFC, we now have Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Church’s Texas Chicken and now a Mary Brown’s outlet. If someone wants to organize a taste test among the four, I’ll volunteer to be a judge.