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Page: 63[240] Justice La Forest acknowledged that age had not been historically recognized as anunacceptable ground of discrimination, although he recognized that there had been “a profoundalteration in society's view of age discrimination in recent years and, in consequence, of mandatoryretirement”: at paras. 85-86.[241] In finding that the Legislature had a reasonable basis for concluding that subsection 9(a) ofthe Code impaired older workers’ right to equality as little as possible, Justice La Forestcharacterized the issue of mandatory retirement as “a complex socio-economic problem that2011 FC 120 (CanLII)involves the basic and interconnected rules of the workplace throughout the whole of our society”:at para. 96. Mandatory retirement is part of “a complex, interrelated, lifetime contractualarrangement involving something like deferred compensation”, particularly in union-organizedworkplaces, where “seniority serves as something of a functional equivalent to tenure”: at para. 108.[242] Justice La Forest observed that the ramifications that abolishing mandatory retirementwould have for the organization of the workplace, and for society in general, were things that couldnot readily be measured: at para. 104. He anticipated, however, that evidence as to the actualimpact of the abolition of mandatory retirement would be available in 15-20 years, in light of thefact that by 1990, mandatory retirement had been abolished in several provinces: at para. 113.[243] The evidence of the labour economists in this case was given with the benefit of twodecades of experience as to the impact that the abolition of mandatory retirement in Canada hasactually had for organization of the workplace, including its impact on matters such as deferredcompensation and seniority, pension and benefit schemes. This evidence seriously calls into