Bermuda is carrying obligations it does not yet know how to pay for, and unless we grow our way out of this problem through population growth, through skilled workers, through a thriving tourism sector, through structural reform, the people who will bear the cost are our own Bermudian families sitting at kitchen tables right now, wondering why everything costs so much.

Let’s start with pensions. The Public Service Superannuation Fund, the fund that pays the pensions of our teachers, police officers, nurses, prison officers, firefighters, and all other public servants, is only 37 per cent funded. That means for every dollar owed in pensions, the fund has only 37 cents in assets. The most recent actuarial valuation, as of March 2023, shows a deficit of just over $1 billion. Without reform, the fund was projected to deplete its assets by 2034. A subsequent assessment extended that timeline to 2045, still well within the working lifetime of many Bermudians now in the public service.

The Contributory Pension Fund, which provides pensions to more than 14,000 Bermudians, faces a grimmer picture still. It is projected to be entirely depleted by 2042. Already, the benefits being paid out exceed social insurance contributions coming in by nearly $70 million annually. The next year will be the first in which benefits exceed the combined sum of contributions and investment income, beginning the downward trajectory that ends in exhaustion.

Sit with that number — 2042. That is 16 years from now, meaning a Bermudian beginning their career today could reach retirement age and find the fund exhausted. That is not a theoretical risk. That is the conclusion of independent actuaries working from the government's own figures.

The legislation passed last year to stabilise the PSSF was necessary and right, but it only addresses one fund. The CPF remains deeply vulnerable, and the demographic pressures driving its depletion, namely an ageing population, more retirees and fewer contributors, are what a growing, younger workforce would ease. This straightforward mathematics. More working people paying into social insurance equals more sustainability for the fund. Fewer working people means the opposite.

Now let me turn to the national debt. Bermuda's net government debt stands at approximately $3.2 billion. As of the 2025/26 budget, total gross debt is $3.29 billion, and a $500 million repayment is planned for the fiscal year ahead.

The Government has set out an ambitious debt reduction path, with net debt projected to fall from $3.2 billion to below $2.5 billion by 2027/28. The initial Corporate Income Tax receipts totalled $279 million in 2025/26, significantly exceeding the initial forecast of $187.5 million. For 2026/27, the government projects CIT revenue of $753 million.

These are encouraging numbers, but CIT is not a guaranteed annual sum. It is not a reliable base to build a budget around. The government itself has acknowledged that analysts indicate 2025 may represent the high point of the CIT revenue cycle.

That is precisely why the government has committed, rightly, to not using CIT revenues to fund the everyday costs of running government, which the OBA made clear from the very beginning. The Tax Reform Commission's own “waterfall” model for allocating CIT revenues prioritises fiscal stability and debt reduction above current spending. These instincts are correct.

However, here is the uncomfortable truth that no amount of CIT revenue resolves on its own. Bermuda's structural costs are too high, and if we allow those costs to remain elevated, we will squeeze ourselves out of our own economy. When everything is expensive, the people who suffer most are not wealthy expatriates with employer-provided accommodation allowances. They are Bermudians. Middle-income Bermudians who cannot afford a mortgage. Young Bermudians who cannot afford to stay here. Working Bermudians who find that even a full-time salary leaves them dependent on second and third jobs, financial assistance for healthcare or housing.

Growing the population brings more payroll tax revenue and permits relief elsewhere. More residents means a broader customs duty base, which means duties per person can fall. More workers mean fewer empty properties and a housing market that is less pressurised for buyers and renters alike. Traditional tax mechanisms like payroll tax, customs duties and land tax will still be required even in a healthy CIT environment but the burden each Bermudian carries depends on how many people are sharing the weight.

This brings me back to immigration. Not immigration as an ideological question, and not immigration as a political football. Immigration as mathematics. At the moment with the main Government pension funds, benefits are already exceeding contributions. Every working person who leaves Bermuda is a person no longer paying into the system. Every working person who comes to Bermuda, and stays, is a person contributing to social insurance, paying payroll tax, renting a property, spending in our restaurants and shops, and paying into the healthcare system that our ageing population depends upon.

Younger, healthier workers pay into our healthcare system and the Mutual Reinsurance Fund, which in turn subsidises HIP and FutureCare, the programmes that our most vulnerable residents rely on. Our median age was 26 in 1960 and 41 in 2010. The trajectory is clear. Without intervention, the ratio of workers to retirees will continue to worsen. The social safety net will come under pressure that even the most optimistic CIT projections cannot fully offset.

The OBA understands that immigration is the most difficult topic in Bermuda politics. We have always understood that. We have also always believed that the difficulty of a conversation is not a reason to avoid it and it is precisely the reason to have it with more care, more empathy and more honesty than the political environment usually allows. We as Bermudians, are not wrong to ask who benefits. We are not wrong to demand that the government keeps costs low, that housing remains attainable, that a Bermudian born on this island can build a life here.

Those are legitimate demands. They are my demands too. However, meeting them requires growth. It requires a population large enough to share the fiscal burden. It requires a housing market that rewards vertical density, reduces per-unit costs and opens homeownership to the next generation of Bermudians. It requires a tourism sector that creates Bermudian jobs from January to December, not just in the high summer. It requires fiscal discipline that distinguishes between windfall CIT revenues and the reliable, traditional tax base that funds our schools, our hospitals and our pensions. It requires, most of all, the willingness to make the case plainly, persistently and without apology that a growing Bermuda is a better Bermuda for Bermudians.

We have made that case before. We make it again now, and we will keep making it until the numbers prove otherwise. They have not yet. Finally, as we consider our futures, ask yourself if Caricom will be the answer, or is a convenient distraction from the facts and figures and tough matters that have been raised in the last three articles? You decide.

· Michael Fahy is the Shadow Minister of Economy & Labour and Housing, and is the MP for Pembroke South West, Constituency 20. He can be reached on mfahy@oba.bm or opedfahy@gmail.com