A report published last month as part of Statistics Canada’s Economic Insights series finds that average real wage rates increased by only 14 percent in Canada from 1981 to 2011. According to the report, real hourly wages, meaning hourly wages after adjusting for inflation, increased from approximately $20.70 in 1981, to $23.70 in 2011, a $3 wage gain in 30 years. Median […]
Read moreStatistics Canada reported this week that the incidence of police reported crime declined 6 percent in 2011 from the previous year, and is now at the lowest level it has been since 1972. The Crime Severity Index, which measures the severity of crime, also fell 6 percent, while the Violent Crime Severity Index, which measures the severity of only violent […]
Read moreA report that first surfaced on Canada Day stating that Canada now has higher average household net worth than the US set the news media on both sides of the border buzzing. Advocates of robust government intervention in the economy pointed to this development as vindication of their faith in their economic ideology, while Republicans blamed the news on Obama’s […]
Read moreThe growing income gap between recent immigrants and longer-established Canadians received special news coverage today with a report in the Financial Post by the deputy chief economist of CIBC, Benjamin Tal. The article describes the deteriorating position of newly arrived immigrants relative to native-born Canadians by comparing what it was in the 1970s to what it is today: A male immigrant […]
Read moreStudy findings suggesting that immigration reduces crime have been picked up today by the online version of MacLean’s magazine, one of Canada’s largest weekly news magazines, in an article, Does immigration reduce crime? One study referenced, conducted by researchers Ronit Dinovitzer and Ron Levi at the University of Toronto, compared the rate of youth delinquency in a group of 900 […]
Read moreCitizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the provincial government of Alberta jointly announced this week that the Alberta temporary worker pilot program will be expanded to include more occupations. The pilot project began in June 2011 and issues special work permits to foreign nationals who meet the program’s requirements, including being qualified in an eligible occupation, which allows them to […]
Read moreAfter a maelstrom of criticism for closing the bank accounts of dozens of Canadians of Iranian descent, in some cases with little to no explanation, TD Bank announced this week that it is looking to address the complaints and handle its enforcement of financial sanctions against Iran more delicately. In an interview on Monday, a spokesman for TD Bank, Mohammed Nakhooda, said the bank […]
Read moreCitizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) announced last week that it has issued 500,000 temporary visitor visas in 2012, a 10 percent increase from the number issued this time last year. The total number of people who visit Canada far exceeds the number of temporary visas issued, as ninety percent of international visitors to Canada are from one of the over […]
Read moreAfter a report last week by the Ottawa Citizen detailing the case of several Iranian-Canadians who had their bank accounts closed by TD Bank with little to no explanation, it has emerged that the scale of the closures is much larger than the initial report indicated. At least one hundred Canadians of Iranian descent have come forward in the last […]
Read moreTomTom, a provider of automotive navigation products and services, has released its first quarterly congestion index, and it puts Vancouver in second place behind Los Angeles in a ranking of North American cities by their level of traffic congestion. The next most congested Canadian cities, Toronto and Ottawa, place ninth and tenth, with vehicle commutes taking 47 percent and 55 […]
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