Le coût réel de la pression financière (anglais seulement)
00:00
11:12
Screen [00:00:05]: Mental illness accounts for more lost workdays than any other chronic condition.
Its cost to the Canadian economy is estimated at $50 billion each year.
Calissa Ngozi: [00:00:11] Money and health are more connected than we often think. Financial pressure affects how we sleep, how we cope, and how we show up at work. In this series, we follow real people from different generations, each facing that pressure in their own way. And we bring in the experts who help us understand what can actually help. This is where group insurance has a role to play, not only in how a plan is designed, but in how it is sustained. It is all about keeping it strong enough to hold when people need it most.
Four episodes’ four stories, with a different angle each time. To see these challenges clearly, we first need to understand them.
Screen [00:00:58]: Ask the experts
Decoding the real impact of financial pressure
[00:01:03] Episode 01
When pressure takes over
[00:01:09] Calissa Ngozi
Mental Health Export, Child & Youth Care Professor, Professional Keynote Speaker
Calissa Ngozi [01:08]: Many Canadians are dealing with financial pressure. No matter what generation they're in, everyone is feeling it. I'm going to be talking to experts that are going to lend their insights, as well as individuals that will tell us about their stories and how they're dealing with the pressures at hand.
Screen [00:01:29]: Young adults
Ages 18 to 30: The new talent on the block
[00:01:31] Corey
26 years old
Calissa Ngozi: [01:31] So, Corey, you're 26 years old. You have created a beautiful life for yourself. You're dealing with complex trauma. You've got the loss of your father, who you've labeled as one of your best friends and your biggest supports. You've got your mother, who is now dealing with this diagnosis of cancer, and you're trying to start your life. How are you able to persevere?
Corey: [00:01:49] Oh, it was really, really hard starting out. My plan initially had been to move out and to get a job in the city and finish up school, and everything was going to be fine. I had landed an apartment and I came home to tell my mom, and that's when she told me about her diagnosis.
So we both made sacrifices. We both worked really hard together. I was driving her to hospital appointments. We were worrying about what she could eat and then also planning my dad's funeral. But, you know, you're working 20 hours a week at minimum wage. It's not like I was raking in a lot. So it added to that feeling of being stuck.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:02:26] 80% of Canadian young adults say they do not feel financially secure. That is more than any other generation.
Judith Plotkin: [00:02:37] They're literally trying to establish themselves at a time where finances are so uncertain. So those folks give up.
Screen [00:02:44]: Judith Plotkin
Vice-President, Health Solutions People Corporation
Judith Plotkin: [02:44] They become hopeless. They experience a bit of disengagement, and when they start to disengage and feel there's no hope financially, they isolate at a time where they need to be social.
Screen [00:02:56]: Sunil Hirjee
Vice-President
Sales and Partner Experience,
Ontario, Western & Atlantic Canada
Beneva
Sunil Hirjee: [00:02:56] 50% of young adults, half of their earnings is going to just the basics, the necessities of life. And then at the same time, they grew up in a social media world. There's this constant comparison, and it has led to kind of an earlier onset of anxiety and stress. That unique reality that they're faced with these financial pressures at a much younger age than maybe the prior generations were – it's something that employers need to pay attention to.
Judith Plotkin: [00:03:25] We know these days managers have as much impact on our mental health as our spouses. So how do you help your managers, your supervisors, your leaders develop empathy? Because empathetic leaders create a culture of health and wellness.
Screen [00:03:49]: Mid-life adults
Ages 31 to 50: The sandwich generation
Sarah
44 years old
Sarah: [00:03:49] The sandwich generation, to me, is not so much about age, but about overlapping responsibilities. As you get older, if you have young children, you also start to have aging parents that you start to worry about, care for. And it often happens during peak career years, kind of juggling with all of this all at once.
Four years ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer, and that involved caretaking on my part, staying late, coming back from the hospitals. I was so worried all the time that I wasn't sleeping very well either. It's exhausting emotionally. You don't want the children to see you cry all the time. You're hoping your employer will understand because you don't want to lose your job, either. So I probably could have benefited from a couple more months off, but I did have accumulated a certain amount of debt, and I didn't want to be put aside of other possibilities or promotions. So it was a short break.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:04:43] In Canada, caregivers from the sandwich generation are 14% more likely to reduce their working hours, causing them to make less money. This puts them at risk, considering that Canadians worried about their financial situation are twice as likely to report being in poor health.
Judith Plotkin: [00:05:03] It's interesting we call them “sandwich” because they really are caught in between little kids, school-aged kids, step kids, mortgages, and then older parents or step parents. So there's a ton of pressure and they really feel it a lot.
Screen [00:05:20]: Samantha Farquhar
Assistant Director, Partner Experience
Beneva
Samantha Farquhar: [00:05:20] You're not thinking about yourself. You're thinking about your kids. You're thinking about your parents. You're thinking of buying a house or $700 for a week of camp. It's a lot to think about.
Sunil Hirjee: [00:05:29] Having anxiety regarding financial pressure only makes our situation worse. All of this energy needs to be directed to my wellbeing.
Judith Plotkin: [00:05:37] And what's a little bit different from the younger generation is they don't have time to get help because with all these stresses and pressures and the pressure of home life and busy family life and trying to get ahead at work, you often have people that don't get the help they need.
Screen [00:05:55]: Pre-retirees
Ages 51 to 65: The seasoned experts in the room
David
Early 50’s
David: [00:05:55] Before music, I did computer IT stuff. I was working yeah, pretty much 60 or more hours per week on call. It was expected, even during my vacations, to be on call. Unreasonable expectations with managers. [laugh] Financially, it filled a purpose. But in reality, I'm an artist musician.
Retirement is going to look different than the traditional way that my father or mother did, right, depending on music and other things. It's probably going to be a lot later. 65? I don't know if that's fathomable. So I find alternatives. I do consulting work on the side to balance out my work to release the financial pressures.
I can't deny that it's going to be a stress to think about if I'm going to be still healthy then, or having a roof over my head, three square meals, being able to pay my bills, and hopefully being healthy mentally and physically.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:06:48] 75% of early retirees say they have $100,000 or less in savings, and 44% have less than $5,000. 59% fear they will run out of savings before they die.
Screen [00:07:04]: Michael Kondrat
Director of Sales and Partner Experience
Beneva
Michael Kondrat: [00:07:04] The financial pressures of the younger generation, perhaps talking about housing, cost of living. Those pressures are pushing upwards towards this generation that we're speaking about, and a lot of these individuals are having to support adult children that are still living with them at home. People are nervous that they're going to outlive their savings and their retirement savings, and therefore, that keeps them in the workforce maybe longer than they had originally anticipated.
Judith Plotkin: [00:07:30] They worry about, “What's my RSP going to be worth now? What are my investments going to be worth? What is my house going to be worth? Am I going to be able to…”
Calissa Ngozi: [00:07:37] Afford life.
Judith Plotkin: [00:07:37] Afford life once I retire? They just want to make sure that they have enough financial cushion to retire healthy and happy and not become dependent.
Screen [00:07:56]: Critical illness
The minority that needs priority
Susan
58 years old
Susan: [00:07:56] In 2022. I underwent a routine mammogram and was diagnosed with invasive lobular cancer. I'm blessed that in Ontario, we don't have to pay for our surgeries and things like that. However, there is a domino effect of side effects. And all of those side effects create extra expenses. So there was just thousands upon thousands of dollars of expenses that we hadn't really worked into our plan.
When you're diagnosed with a critical illness, you're going to throw everything you've got at it. So these expenses and my continuing care are part of that journey.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:08:32] The total cost of cancer care in Canada amounted to 26.2 billion dollars in 2021, of which approximately 20% was paid directly by patients and their families. Over the course of their lives, cancer patients and their caregivers can expect to pay nearly $33,000 in cancer related expenses.
Sunil Hirjee: [00:08:56] I come from a first-generation immigrant family. I grew up in Small Paris, Ontario. We had an impact in our household when my mother was diagnosed with a chronic condition. And as newer members to the country, they weren't familiar with the support that was available to them, and she ended up leaving her job because she had to. But then I very clearly saw a direct impact that a chronic condition has, not only on a home from an emotional perspective, but from the financial.
Michael Kondrat: [00:09:26] They're on costly medications, generally. They can feel that financial pressure as well. And unfortunately, that can lead to nonadherence of drugs, so taking your prescriptions, not refilling prescriptions because the cost burden is too high. This condition gets worse, and then you've got a bigger problem to deal with down the road.
Judith Plotkin: [00:09:43] Folks who are struggling to manage a critical illness or who've had a disability often say that that pressure, financially, causes them to compress their recovery time, and they push themselves to return to work or stay at work when they really need some time to recover.
Screen [00:10:00]: Sarah Morden
Right Path Advisor
Selectpath
Sarah Morden: [00:10:00] I work with employers all day long that want to do right by their employees. They want to offer more support, but it's expensive. So I think the one thing I often find myself saying right now is, we don't need to necessarily add more. Let's do a better job with what we already have in a way that connects with the employee.
Sunil Hirjee: [00:10:18] There's an opportunity to help Canadians understand a little bit better, that there's a lot of programs available to make sure that my well-being is kept as optimal as possible.
Calissa Ngozi: [00:10:29] In this episode, we learned that many Canadians are dealing with financial pressure. Now, behind a series like this, our sponsor, Beneva, is here to meet you where you're at. With their products, their services, they really do care about what Canadians need to succeed.
Screen [00:10:46]: All third-party statistics and research referenced in this episode are sourced from materials cited in Beneva's Connecting the Dots report.
[00:10:51] beneva People protecting people
© Beneva Inc. 2026. ™ Beneva name and logo are registered trademarks of Beneva Group Inc. used under licence.
[00:10:55] Episode 02
Shock: The turning point
Calissa Ngozi: [10:55] Many of us are dealing with unexpected life events that we didn't see coming. In this episode, we're going to talk with individuals that have lived this story. We're going to hear from experts that are going to lean in and let us know, how do we move forward? How do we deal with what's going on?
END OF TRANSCRIPT
La pression financière affecte de plus en plus notre santé mentale, physique et émotionnelle tout au long de la vie.
Dans cet épisode spécial de Parole d’experts, animé par Calissa Ngozi, on s’intéresse aux réalités des jeunes adultes, des personnes en milieu de carrière et de celles qui approchent de la retraite. Insécurité financière, responsabilités de proche aidance, maladie grave et préparation à la retraite font partie des enjeux abordés.
L’épisode met aussi en lumière les avantages d’un régime d’assurance collective bien conçu. Car la pression financière n’est pas seulement une question économique. C’est aussi un enjeu de santé qui peut nous toucher à toutes les étapes de la vie.
Animation : Calissa Ngozi
00:00
11:12
Screen [00:00:05]: Mental illness accounts for more lost workdays than any other chronic condition.
Its cost to the Canadian economy is estimated at $50 billion each year.
Calissa Ngozi: [00:00:11] Money and health are more connected than we often think. Financial pressure affects how we sleep, how we cope, and how we show up at work. In this series, we follow real people from different generations, each facing that pressure in their own way. And we bring in the experts who help us understand what can actually help. This is where group insurance has a role to play, not only in how a plan is designed, but in how it is sustained. It is all about keeping it strong enough to hold when people need it most.
Four episodes’ four stories, with a different angle each time. To see these challenges clearly, we first need to understand them.
Screen [00:00:58]: Ask the experts
Decoding the real impact of financial pressure
[00:01:03] Episode 01
When pressure takes over
[00:01:09] Calissa Ngozi
Mental Health Export, Child & Youth Care Professor, Professional Keynote Speaker
Calissa Ngozi [01:08]: Many Canadians are dealing with financial pressure. No matter what generation they're in, everyone is feeling it. I'm going to be talking to experts that are going to lend their insights, as well as individuals that will tell us about their stories and how they're dealing with the pressures at hand.
Screen [00:01:29]: Young adults
Ages 18 to 30: The new talent on the block
[00:01:31] Corey
26 years old
Calissa Ngozi: [01:31] So, Corey, you're 26 years old. You have created a beautiful life for yourself. You're dealing with complex trauma. You've got the loss of your father, who you've labeled as one of your best friends and your biggest supports. You've got your mother, who is now dealing with this diagnosis of cancer, and you're trying to start your life. How are you able to persevere?
Corey: [00:01:49] Oh, it was really, really hard starting out. My plan initially had been to move out and to get a job in the city and finish up school, and everything was going to be fine. I had landed an apartment and I came home to tell my mom, and that's when she told me about her diagnosis.
So we both made sacrifices. We both worked really hard together. I was driving her to hospital appointments. We were worrying about what she could eat and then also planning my dad's funeral. But, you know, you're working 20 hours a week at minimum wage. It's not like I was raking in a lot. So it added to that feeling of being stuck.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:02:26] 80% of Canadian young adults say they do not feel financially secure. That is more than any other generation.
Judith Plotkin: [00:02:37] They're literally trying to establish themselves at a time where finances are so uncertain. So those folks give up.
Screen [00:02:44]: Judith Plotkin
Vice-President, Health Solutions People Corporation
Judith Plotkin: [02:44] They become hopeless. They experience a bit of disengagement, and when they start to disengage and feel there's no hope financially, they isolate at a time where they need to be social.
Screen [00:02:56]: Sunil Hirjee
Vice-President
Sales and Partner Experience,
Ontario, Western & Atlantic Canada
Beneva
Sunil Hirjee: [00:02:56] 50% of young adults, half of their earnings is going to just the basics, the necessities of life. And then at the same time, they grew up in a social media world. There's this constant comparison, and it has led to kind of an earlier onset of anxiety and stress. That unique reality that they're faced with these financial pressures at a much younger age than maybe the prior generations were – it's something that employers need to pay attention to.
Judith Plotkin: [00:03:25] We know these days managers have as much impact on our mental health as our spouses. So how do you help your managers, your supervisors, your leaders develop empathy? Because empathetic leaders create a culture of health and wellness.
Screen [00:03:49]: Mid-life adults
Ages 31 to 50: The sandwich generation
Sarah
44 years old
Sarah: [00:03:49] The sandwich generation, to me, is not so much about age, but about overlapping responsibilities. As you get older, if you have young children, you also start to have aging parents that you start to worry about, care for. And it often happens during peak career years, kind of juggling with all of this all at once.
Four years ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer, and that involved caretaking on my part, staying late, coming back from the hospitals. I was so worried all the time that I wasn't sleeping very well either. It's exhausting emotionally. You don't want the children to see you cry all the time. You're hoping your employer will understand because you don't want to lose your job, either. So I probably could have benefited from a couple more months off, but I did have accumulated a certain amount of debt, and I didn't want to be put aside of other possibilities or promotions. So it was a short break.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:04:43] In Canada, caregivers from the sandwich generation are 14% more likely to reduce their working hours, causing them to make less money. This puts them at risk, considering that Canadians worried about their financial situation are twice as likely to report being in poor health.
Judith Plotkin: [00:05:03] It's interesting we call them “sandwich” because they really are caught in between little kids, school-aged kids, step kids, mortgages, and then older parents or step parents. So there's a ton of pressure and they really feel it a lot.
Screen [00:05:20]: Samantha Farquhar
Assistant Director, Partner Experience
Beneva
Samantha Farquhar: [00:05:20] You're not thinking about yourself. You're thinking about your kids. You're thinking about your parents. You're thinking of buying a house or $700 for a week of camp. It's a lot to think about.
Sunil Hirjee: [00:05:29] Having anxiety regarding financial pressure only makes our situation worse. All of this energy needs to be directed to my wellbeing.
Judith Plotkin: [00:05:37] And what's a little bit different from the younger generation is they don't have time to get help because with all these stresses and pressures and the pressure of home life and busy family life and trying to get ahead at work, you often have people that don't get the help they need.
Screen [00:05:55]: Pre-retirees
Ages 51 to 65: The seasoned experts in the room
David
Early 50’s
David: [00:05:55] Before music, I did computer IT stuff. I was working yeah, pretty much 60 or more hours per week on call. It was expected, even during my vacations, to be on call. Unreasonable expectations with managers. [laugh] Financially, it filled a purpose. But in reality, I'm an artist musician.
Retirement is going to look different than the traditional way that my father or mother did, right, depending on music and other things. It's probably going to be a lot later. 65? I don't know if that's fathomable. So I find alternatives. I do consulting work on the side to balance out my work to release the financial pressures.
I can't deny that it's going to be a stress to think about if I'm going to be still healthy then, or having a roof over my head, three square meals, being able to pay my bills, and hopefully being healthy mentally and physically.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:06:48] 75% of early retirees say they have $100,000 or less in savings, and 44% have less than $5,000. 59% fear they will run out of savings before they die.
Screen [00:07:04]: Michael Kondrat
Director of Sales and Partner Experience
Beneva
Michael Kondrat: [00:07:04] The financial pressures of the younger generation, perhaps talking about housing, cost of living. Those pressures are pushing upwards towards this generation that we're speaking about, and a lot of these individuals are having to support adult children that are still living with them at home. People are nervous that they're going to outlive their savings and their retirement savings, and therefore, that keeps them in the workforce maybe longer than they had originally anticipated.
Judith Plotkin: [00:07:30] They worry about, “What's my RSP going to be worth now? What are my investments going to be worth? What is my house going to be worth? Am I going to be able to…”
Calissa Ngozi: [00:07:37] Afford life.
Judith Plotkin: [00:07:37] Afford life once I retire? They just want to make sure that they have enough financial cushion to retire healthy and happy and not become dependent.
Screen [00:07:56]: Critical illness
The minority that needs priority
Susan
58 years old
Susan: [00:07:56] In 2022. I underwent a routine mammogram and was diagnosed with invasive lobular cancer. I'm blessed that in Ontario, we don't have to pay for our surgeries and things like that. However, there is a domino effect of side effects. And all of those side effects create extra expenses. So there was just thousands upon thousands of dollars of expenses that we hadn't really worked into our plan.
When you're diagnosed with a critical illness, you're going to throw everything you've got at it. So these expenses and my continuing care are part of that journey.
Calissa Ngozi and on screen: [00:08:32] The total cost of cancer care in Canada amounted to 26.2 billion dollars in 2021, of which approximately 20% was paid directly by patients and their families. Over the course of their lives, cancer patients and their caregivers can expect to pay nearly $33,000 in cancer related expenses.
Sunil Hirjee: [00:08:56] I come from a first-generation immigrant family. I grew up in Small Paris, Ontario. We had an impact in our household when my mother was diagnosed with a chronic condition. And as newer members to the country, they weren't familiar with the support that was available to them, and she ended up leaving her job because she had to. But then I very clearly saw a direct impact that a chronic condition has, not only on a home from an emotional perspective, but from the financial.
Michael Kondrat: [00:09:26] They're on costly medications, generally. They can feel that financial pressure as well. And unfortunately, that can lead to nonadherence of drugs, so taking your prescriptions, not refilling prescriptions because the cost burden is too high. This condition gets worse, and then you've got a bigger problem to deal with down the road.
Judith Plotkin: [00:09:43] Folks who are struggling to manage a critical illness or who've had a disability often say that that pressure, financially, causes them to compress their recovery time, and they push themselves to return to work or stay at work when they really need some time to recover.
Screen [00:10:00]: Sarah Morden
Right Path Advisor
Selectpath
Sarah Morden: [00:10:00] I work with employers all day long that want to do right by their employees. They want to offer more support, but it's expensive. So I think the one thing I often find myself saying right now is, we don't need to necessarily add more. Let's do a better job with what we already have in a way that connects with the employee.
Sunil Hirjee: [00:10:18] There's an opportunity to help Canadians understand a little bit better, that there's a lot of programs available to make sure that my well-being is kept as optimal as possible.
Calissa Ngozi: [00:10:29] In this episode, we learned that many Canadians are dealing with financial pressure. Now, behind a series like this, our sponsor, Beneva, is here to meet you where you're at. With their products, their services, they really do care about what Canadians need to succeed.
Screen [00:10:46]: All third-party statistics and research referenced in this episode are sourced from materials cited in Beneva's Connecting the Dots report.
[00:10:51] beneva People protecting people
© Beneva Inc. 2026. ™ Beneva name and logo are registered trademarks of Beneva Group Inc. used under licence.
[00:10:55] Episode 02
Shock: The turning point
Calissa Ngozi: [10:55] Many of us are dealing with unexpected life events that we didn't see coming. In this episode, we're going to talk with individuals that have lived this story. We're going to hear from experts that are going to lean in and let us know, how do we move forward? How do we deal with what's going on?
END OF TRANSCRIPT