Canada

A Cure Worse Than the Disease

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Despite the relentless media drum-banging around the alarmist COVID-19 narrative, this particular virus is not the Black Death. Official numbers have the Canadian death count so far just below 11,000, bad for sure, but not hugely off the yearly flu toll in Canada which kills 6,500 to 8,000 people.  read more »

Canada’s Resurgent Population Growth and Exodus From Unaffordability

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Canada is experiencing resurgent growth, according to the latest population estimates from Statistics Canada. Between 2015 and 2019, the nation added 1.30 percent to its population annually. This is up about one-third from the annual rate between 2010 and 2015. The growth surge has been even greater in the larger labor markets (the 44 Census Metropolitan Areas [CMAs] and Census Agglomerations [CAs] over 100,000 population), where the annual rate has risen about approximately 30 percent, from 1.20 percent to 1.57 percent.  read more »

Standard of Living Crisis Evident in New Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey

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One of the principal advances of the past two centuries has been the drastic reduction in poverty and the rise of a large middle-class, a process expertly detailed by economists Diedre McClosky and Robert Gordon.  read more »

Australia's China Syndrome

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Australia continues to benefit from China’s rise, though few countries are more threatened by its expanding power. Once closely tied to the British Commonwealth, and later to the United States, the Australian subcontinent, with only 24 million people, now relies on China for one-third of its trade—more than with Japan and the U.S. combined. Australia’s major economic sectors rely on Chinese support; investors poured in $17.4 billion in 2017.   read more »

Down Payment Takes Half a Century in Vancouver: Report

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As a recently released Organization for International Cooperation and Development (OECD) noted, house prices have been generally rising far in excess of incomes in a number of nations (Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class). OECD finds that these rapidly rising house prices have been a principal contributorto rising cost of living that has already resulted in economic reversals for the middle-class.  read more »

Will Canada Break Up Over Carbon Dioxide?

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Countries have broken up for very serious reasons like slavery, religious differences and ethnic tensions. But, so far, never in history has a country been at risk of breaking up because of a harmless gas – carbon-dioxide. Canada could, thanks to an ideologically-driven federal government.  read more »

Canadian Families Denied Preferred Detached Houses, Forced into Condos: Survey

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A new poll by Sotheby’s International Realty suggests substantial disappointment among Canada’s young urban families, unable to afford to purchase the types of houses that they prefer. The poll determined that young urban households in Canada strongly prefer detached houses, but they are often “motivated by (financial) necessity to purchases houses, especially condominiums, they do not prefer."  read more »

Eyes From the Street – The Neighbourhood Fabric That Matters

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In the 50 plus years since Jane Jacobs coined the phrase “eyes on the street”, most planners have taken it as an article of faith. After all, some argue, it is common sense. But as we found out when looking at complex, self-organising systems such as cities, common sense is woefully inadequate to explain, let alone predict, outcomes.  read more »

Commuting in Canada: 2016 Census Report

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Statistics Canada has just released the employment access data out of the 2016 Census, based on the main mode of commuting. Generally, there is little change between the modes, as Figure 1 indicates, compared to the 2011 Census results. (See: New Data on Commuting in Canada).  read more »

RBC Report Highlights Increasing Housing Affordability Challenges in Canada

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Households could face even greater housing affordability challenges in the years to come, according to the September 2017 RBC Economics (RBC) Housing Trends and Affordability report.  read more »