Today's Opinion by former Government Statistician Calvin Smith raises some major issues about Bermuda's future ? and the policies that Government needs to start considering now.

One of Mr. Smith's conclusions in particular flies in the face of Government policy and the fact that Mr. Smith, a former Government Senator, is floating the idea makes it especially compelling.

Drawing from the 2000 Bermuda Census, Mr. Smith rightly draws the following conclusions:

The Island's Bermudian population is growing at an almost glacial pace, a result of people having children later and generally having smaller families;

The number of young people is shrinking as a proportion of the population, meaning that the number of young Bermudians entering the population is growing smaller, even as the economy expands;

The proportion of the population over the age of 65 is expanding, and will expand even more rapidly as "baby boomers" pass the official retirement age, meaning that a smaller Bermudian working population will be supporting a growing number of senior citizens; and

Most of the growth in the population in the last 40 years has come from expatriates.

These numbers are there for all to see in the 2000 Census, which should be required reading for all policy-makers.

Mr. Smith draws several conclusions from the figures. The first is that the retirement age should be raised to allow those who wish to continue to work to do so.

This will have the effect of reducing demand for labour on the rest of the working population and will also put seniors on a more stable financial footing.

The second and more controversial suggestion is that Government should reverse its policy on term limits for work permits, which at the moment restricts most expatriates from staying on the Island for more than six years unless employers can show that they are key to the success of the business or because their skills cannot easily be replaced either in Bermuda or from overseas.

The reason Mr. Smith makes this suggestion is due to the fact that the Bermudian working population will shrink both as a proportion of the workforce and in real terms.

Thus Bermuda's need for expatriates will grow, even if the local economy does not, an unlikely prospect. The difficulties of finding non-Bermudian workers and then acclimatising them to Bermuda demands that the policy be changed.

No one who knows Mr. Smith would question his pro-Bermudian or labour movement credentials, so when he suggests a change of this kind, it should be clear that he has thought about it deeply and has only come to this kind of conclusion reluctantly.

But he is right. The term limits policy is a solution to a problem ? preventing a class of long term residents demanding rights ? that will be dwarfed by the Island's demand for labour in the next 20 years.

Sadly, few of the Island's leaders appear to have recognised this, as the Island's immigration policies make clear.

And while the former Government introduced mandatory private pensions and the current Government has belatedly begun to raise Government pensions, these measures are unlikely to adequately ensure that senior citizens are financially stable, at least as long as health care and accommodation costs continue to outpace inflation.

Solving these problems is a matter of urgency; Mr. Smith's column today should be a call to action.