Skip to main content

34,278,400


That’s Canada as of December 31, 2010.  Almost exactly 1/10 of America’s population!  The two largest provinces Ontario and Quebec account for 39% and 23% of Canada’s total population.  In 2010, about ¼ of million people emigrated to Canada – not huge but it adds up.

Speaking of growing population an interesting observation was made by a fellow blogist talking about house statistic.  Unlike the rest of the OECD, Canada (and Australia) saw virtually no dip in the value of their housing stocks – partly due to different lending rules in Canada (far more conservative with full lender recourse), but also a result of the strength of Canada’s resource based economy that has powered on.  So this blogist wrote about a commonly used statistic for determining whether housing is over or under priced:  price divided by the median income; generally speaking excessively high prices (aka bubble) are reached when the ration exceeds 400%.  Below are the figures for the period ending December 31, 2010:



Vancouver and Victoria are in a special hell, and many of my friends who live there complain about the cost of housing, partially because these two cities are seen as “haven” or bolt holes for rich Chinese (mainland or Taiwan and Honk Kong).  But across the nation, there is a clear reality that although income has been rising, housing prices have been rising even faster.  Moreover, whereas Canadians used to be spendthrift, statistics are showing that the level of debt (home, credit cards and personal loans) now puts Americans to shame… not good statistics.

A lengthy period of low interest rates has prompted Canadians to rack up debt faster than their disposable income is growing. For the first time in 12 years, Canadian households now have a higher debt-to-income ratio than those in the United States. It hit a record 14 per cent in the third quarter, new Statistics Canada data show.

(Source:  Nicolas Van Praet, National Post, December 2010)

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Janet Yellen from China supporter to Hawk...

There is rarely serious news in the world these days, it seems that most newspapers are filled with headlines and little else, and then Ms Yellen went to China.  Secretary Yellen has long been known in the Biden administration as the voice of moderation when dealing with China, yet as her trip which concluded yesterday a hawk was born:  She warned the Chinese against dumping goods in the United States.    fighting words! The American administration is very concerned about the lack of Chinese domestic consumption.   Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, there were already the beginning signs of a slowdown, automobile sales were off.   China is facing domestic deflation (a clear sign of collapsing demand) China imports few consumer goods, they import raw materials and intermediary goods.   It seems that the American administration is concerned that the Chinese administration will dump consumer goods abroad to keep its manufacturing machinery ...
Post a Comment
Read more