This index is a monthly listing of numbers, written by the CCPA's Trish Hennessy, about Canada and its place in the world. Scroll down for a PDF version. For other months, visit: http://policyalternatives.ca/index
1.57 Trillion
Canadians’ household debt in the second quarter of 2011, reaching an all-time high this year. (Source 1, 2)
34.6%
Canadians’ housing equity at the end of 2010. That represents a 20-year low. (Source)
150.8%
Canadians’ household debt ratio to personal disposable income in the second quarter of 2011, higher than our U.S. neighbours. (Source 1, 2 )
148.7%
Canadian households’ credit market debt ratio to personal disposable income, second quarter 2011. (Source)
7.6%
Percentage of Canadian disposable income that goes toward interest payments.(Source)
1 in 10
Number of Canadians who say even with a credit card or line of credit they would have trouble paying an unforeseen $500 expense. (Source)
27%
Percentage of non-retired Canadians who don’t commit to any type of savings, not even for retirement. (Source)
35%
Percentage of Canadians who say their debt is increasing. (Source)
46%
Number of low-income households who report their debt is increasing. (Source)
57%
Percentage of Canadians who say day-to-day living expenses are the main reason for their rising debt. (Source)
1/3
Proportion of retired Canadian households carrying an average debt load of $60,000 into retirement. (Source)
4 in 10
Number of Canadians who don’t feel confident they’ll have enough money in retirement. (Source)
Ask me for sources..all are available
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The Cost of Aging in Canada
OTTAWA - The fiscal conundrum that experts have long warned of has arrived: rising government costs linked to aging and to a growing public debt are truncating Ottawa's ability to cut overall spending.
A new report from the parliamentary budget officer which Harper will not agree with of course, shows while government spending has fallen slightly since last year, it is still 15 per cent higher than before it launched its massive stimulus program in 2009.
The federal government has imposed several cost-cutting exercises that seem to be picking up some steam. But the biggest cost drivers are persistently beyond its control, according to tables in the PBO's analysis of the latest tranche of supplementary estimates.
"This is the beginning of the tough decisions that need to get made," said Chris Ragan, an economist at McGill University who has long warned about the pending fiscal squeeze.
"I think they're starting to realize how tough cutting is."
In figures for government budgeting for the fiscal year to date, the PBO shows health care allocations up by $1.6 billion. That transfer will continue to increase at a six-per-cent clip every year for at least the next four years if the government sticks to its election promises.
Servicing charges on the public debt have also jumped $1.4 billion from the same period a year earlier because higher deficits are more than offsetting the benefits of low interest rates. Those costs, too, will continue to grow as long as the government keeps adding to its debt.
And old-age security payments rose $1.1 billion from last year — partly because of a growing number of beneficiaries and partly because the benefit has been enriched.
The baby boomers have only begun to reach the age to qualify for OAS and their numbers are set to soar, Ragan points out.
"It's really going to kick in starting now."
And despite a hiring freeze in the public service, personnel costs jumped 5.5 per cent this year as the aging workforce places more demands on benefits and requires compensation for experience. Those, too, are trends that are poised to persist, Ragan says.
On the other side of the ledger, the largest cost-reducers are mainly one-time events tied to the end of the government's Economic Action Plan to deal with the last recession.
The single biggest reduction comes from one-time transfers related to the Harmonized Sales Tax.
Only the Department of National Defence showed any sign of finding major savings that would endure, the PBO report said.
As the Afghanistan mission winds up, the department's capital budget is down $700 million and its operating budget is down $600 million compared to the same period the previous year.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said last week he is trying to eliminate the $31-billion deficit by 2015-2016 — a year later than previous commitments. A key component of his deficit reduction plan is to cut government spending by $4 billion a year.
But the details of spending released so far suggest cuts to operations won't be enough, said Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page in an email.
"I think 2011-12 was supposed to be a pivot or watershed year in the government's fiscal strategy," he said.
"The elimination of fiscal stimulus and the onset of spending control on operations with economic recovery was deemed to be sufficient in Budget 2010 and 2011 to turn the corner and restore balance over the medium term."
But with spending still 15 per cent above pre-recession levels and with no way to manage age-related spending, "this plan may not suffice," Page says.
The report also shows that even as the government is struggling to cut costs in many areas, it is not able to get budgeted money out the door in other areas.
The Green Infrastructure Fund in particular has only dished out 10 per cent of its budgeted $1 billion, despite being three years into its five-year plan, the PBO notes.
But insiders note that infrastructure programs are notoriously slow at booking federal money, mainly because the government does not pay until receipts for projects start coming in.
Also, the Green Infrastructure Fund has had to compete for attention with all the other more short-term infrastructure funds that the government used to deliver stimulus over the past two years.
The fund's website states that the majority of the funding has now been allocated, and it has more than enough project proposals on its desk to use up all the money productively.
A new report from the parliamentary budget officer which Harper will not agree with of course, shows while government spending has fallen slightly since last year, it is still 15 per cent higher than before it launched its massive stimulus program in 2009.
The federal government has imposed several cost-cutting exercises that seem to be picking up some steam. But the biggest cost drivers are persistently beyond its control, according to tables in the PBO's analysis of the latest tranche of supplementary estimates.
"This is the beginning of the tough decisions that need to get made," said Chris Ragan, an economist at McGill University who has long warned about the pending fiscal squeeze.
"I think they're starting to realize how tough cutting is."
In figures for government budgeting for the fiscal year to date, the PBO shows health care allocations up by $1.6 billion. That transfer will continue to increase at a six-per-cent clip every year for at least the next four years if the government sticks to its election promises.
Servicing charges on the public debt have also jumped $1.4 billion from the same period a year earlier because higher deficits are more than offsetting the benefits of low interest rates. Those costs, too, will continue to grow as long as the government keeps adding to its debt.
And old-age security payments rose $1.1 billion from last year — partly because of a growing number of beneficiaries and partly because the benefit has been enriched.
The baby boomers have only begun to reach the age to qualify for OAS and their numbers are set to soar, Ragan points out.
"It's really going to kick in starting now."
And despite a hiring freeze in the public service, personnel costs jumped 5.5 per cent this year as the aging workforce places more demands on benefits and requires compensation for experience. Those, too, are trends that are poised to persist, Ragan says.
On the other side of the ledger, the largest cost-reducers are mainly one-time events tied to the end of the government's Economic Action Plan to deal with the last recession.
The single biggest reduction comes from one-time transfers related to the Harmonized Sales Tax.
Only the Department of National Defence showed any sign of finding major savings that would endure, the PBO report said.
As the Afghanistan mission winds up, the department's capital budget is down $700 million and its operating budget is down $600 million compared to the same period the previous year.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said last week he is trying to eliminate the $31-billion deficit by 2015-2016 — a year later than previous commitments. A key component of his deficit reduction plan is to cut government spending by $4 billion a year.
But the details of spending released so far suggest cuts to operations won't be enough, said Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page in an email.
"I think 2011-12 was supposed to be a pivot or watershed year in the government's fiscal strategy," he said.
"The elimination of fiscal stimulus and the onset of spending control on operations with economic recovery was deemed to be sufficient in Budget 2010 and 2011 to turn the corner and restore balance over the medium term."
But with spending still 15 per cent above pre-recession levels and with no way to manage age-related spending, "this plan may not suffice," Page says.
The report also shows that even as the government is struggling to cut costs in many areas, it is not able to get budgeted money out the door in other areas.
The Green Infrastructure Fund in particular has only dished out 10 per cent of its budgeted $1 billion, despite being three years into its five-year plan, the PBO notes.
But insiders note that infrastructure programs are notoriously slow at booking federal money, mainly because the government does not pay until receipts for projects start coming in.
Also, the Green Infrastructure Fund has had to compete for attention with all the other more short-term infrastructure funds that the government used to deliver stimulus over the past two years.
The fund's website states that the majority of the funding has now been allocated, and it has more than enough project proposals on its desk to use up all the money productively.
What are we doing to our Kids
So many Canadian children are taking the drugs known as atypical antipsychotics that doctors are being asked to watch for major complications — including dramatic weight gain, tremors, and abnormal face and jaw movements.
Once reserved for schizophrenia and mania in adults, one antipsychotic alone, risperidone, was recommended by Canadian-office-based doctors for children 17 years old and younger a total of 340,670 times in 2010 — a near-doubling since 2006 — according to data provided to Postmedia News from prescription-drug tracking firm IMS Brogan.
Another antipsychotic — quetiapine — was recommended to Canadian children 160,700 times.
The increase in prescriptions for children as young as six is raising concerns that the drugs are being overused. Some experts say too little is known about the effects on a child's cognitive, social and physical development, and that the side effects may set children up for serious health problems later in life.
Overall, from 2005 to 2009, antipsychotic drug recommendations for children and youth in Canada increased 114 per cent, according to new guidelines published in this month's issue of the journal Paediatrics & Child Health on the use of second-generation atypical antipsychotics in children and youth.
The drugs — which have not been approved in Canada for use in children under 18 — are being used for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders, irritability related to autism, mood disorders, physical or verbal aggression and other behavioural problems.
Doctors say that for many desperate families, the drugs are often the only option because of a dismal lack of access to non-drug therapy for children in crisis.
But the drugs also come with some "common and unfortunate" consequences, Canadian researchers say — including a substantial increase in fat mass and waist circumference. Doctors say the drugs can make children so ravenous that some parents have had to lock the fridge.
Researchers have shown that after a median of 10 1/2 weeks of treatment with olanzapine, children gain an average of 8.5 kilograms; their waist circumference increases an average of 8.5 centimetres. The pills can also cause increases in blood pressure, high cholesterol, triglycerides (a type of blood fat) and glucose abnormalities, with some drugs being bigger offenders than others.
"Antipsychotics cause enormous weight gains in children" with all the attendant risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and, possibly, a shortened life expectancy, said Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, North Carolina. Frances is chair of the task force that developed the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, a massive catalogue of mental illness now undergoing its first major revision in 16 years.
Frances said the drugs are often prescribed "off-label" (meaning they are not Health Canada approved) by primary-care doctors "who have little time and training, without clear indications and with no proven efficacy." He said he worries that proposed changes to the DSM that would expand the diagnosis for some disorders in children while adding new ones — including temper dysregulation disorder — could lead to wider prescribing of antipsychotics to children.
The drugs have been used since the 1990s in the treatment of mental-health disorders in adults. Antipsychotics as a whole were ranked second in Canada, behind cardiovascular medications, as the most prescribed drug class in the country, with 64,853,000 prescriptions filled in 2010, according to IMS Brogan.
Experts say that as doctors have grown more comfortable using the drugs for adults, prescription has spilled over to young people.
As well, public attitudes are changing.
"People's awareness of mental-health disorders overall has improved over the last decade — there's more awareness about it," said Calgary neurologist Dr. Tamara Pringsheim, a member of the Canadian Alliance for Monitoring Effectiveness and Safety of Antipsychotics in Children guideline group.
"When you consider that one in three people will suffer from a mental-health disorder in their lifetime, this is something that happens in every family. People are looking for more help."
The alliance said that multiple randomized controlled clinical trials have looked at the efficacy of many atypical antipsychotics in pediatric mental-health disorders. For many children, though not all children, they're helpful, said Pringsheim, a clinical assistant professor in the department of clinical neurosciences and pediatrics at the University of Calgary.
"I'm not saying they're a panacea . . . I'm just saying that for children with mental health disorders and for families who are really struggling, they can offer some help."
"By no means are these medications a cure for problems," she added. However, "If you can diminish a patient's symptoms by 50 per cent, we consider that helpful."
In many places, Pringsheim said, "the only help that a family can get is medical help. They're not able to access behavioural programs to try and help with aggressive behaviour in a child. It means both the child and the clinician are stuck saying, 'Either this child is going to be in danger daily of hurting themselves and other people, or we can try a medication that may help.' "
Even then putting a child on an antipsychotic is a hard decision for parents to make. "They just hear the name 'antipsychotic' and they're afraid. But some situations become quite desperate."
In addition to weight gain, many of the drugs can cause neurological side effects that can include restlessness and a constant need to move; a decrease in facial expression or a "mask-like" face; abnormal movements of the face, mouth, lips, jaw or tongue; drug-induced tremors and abnormal muscle movements, including neck stretching and writhing.
These extra movements can be "scary and horrible," said Dr. Wendy Roberts, a developmental pediatrician at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and professor of pediatrics at the University of Toronto. "They're usually reversible, but we don't have a lot of evidence to say how many might not be reversible. It certainly behooves us to warn parents so they're not taken totally by surprise this is happening."
Pringsheim and her co-authors said doctors need to exercise a "high degree of vigilance" when prescribing the drugs to children and youth.
"I think it is your duty as a clinician," she said. "If we're vigilant, if we are watching carefully, we can avoid a number of these situations just by being proactive.
"If we catch a neurological side effect, if we catch a metabolic side effect early, it's much easier to treat them. Things haven't gone so far that it takes months to get things back to where they were."
She said she believes most doctors are being cautious in using the drugs on children.
"A psychiatrist once said to me, 'Your hand should tremble every time you write a prescription for an antipsychotic medication.'
"And I think most clinicians take that to heart. They're not writing it carelessly or flippantly. They're writing a prescription in an effort to help a child and a family that is clearly suffering."
Others say more needs to be done to ensure doctors understand the limits of the benefits.
"In older children and adolescents with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — which thankfully are rare — there is good evidence that antipsychotic medications are appropriate and can meaningfully improve the lives of the young who receive them," said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.
But the drugs are more commonly given to children with ADHD and other disruptive behaviours, he said. Whether that's appropriate is less clear, according to Olfson.
Before agreeing to put their child on an antipsychotic, experts say parents should ask the doctor what specific symptoms the drug is targeting, and whether there are other options, including parent management training or parent-child interaction therapy for younger children.
I wonder if cowardly parenting has something to do with this growth?
Once reserved for schizophrenia and mania in adults, one antipsychotic alone, risperidone, was recommended by Canadian-office-based doctors for children 17 years old and younger a total of 340,670 times in 2010 — a near-doubling since 2006 — according to data provided to Postmedia News from prescription-drug tracking firm IMS Brogan.
Another antipsychotic — quetiapine — was recommended to Canadian children 160,700 times.
The increase in prescriptions for children as young as six is raising concerns that the drugs are being overused. Some experts say too little is known about the effects on a child's cognitive, social and physical development, and that the side effects may set children up for serious health problems later in life.
Overall, from 2005 to 2009, antipsychotic drug recommendations for children and youth in Canada increased 114 per cent, according to new guidelines published in this month's issue of the journal Paediatrics & Child Health on the use of second-generation atypical antipsychotics in children and youth.
The drugs — which have not been approved in Canada for use in children under 18 — are being used for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders, irritability related to autism, mood disorders, physical or verbal aggression and other behavioural problems.
Doctors say that for many desperate families, the drugs are often the only option because of a dismal lack of access to non-drug therapy for children in crisis.
But the drugs also come with some "common and unfortunate" consequences, Canadian researchers say — including a substantial increase in fat mass and waist circumference. Doctors say the drugs can make children so ravenous that some parents have had to lock the fridge.
Researchers have shown that after a median of 10 1/2 weeks of treatment with olanzapine, children gain an average of 8.5 kilograms; their waist circumference increases an average of 8.5 centimetres. The pills can also cause increases in blood pressure, high cholesterol, triglycerides (a type of blood fat) and glucose abnormalities, with some drugs being bigger offenders than others.
"Antipsychotics cause enormous weight gains in children" with all the attendant risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and, possibly, a shortened life expectancy, said Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, North Carolina. Frances is chair of the task force that developed the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, a massive catalogue of mental illness now undergoing its first major revision in 16 years.
Frances said the drugs are often prescribed "off-label" (meaning they are not Health Canada approved) by primary-care doctors "who have little time and training, without clear indications and with no proven efficacy." He said he worries that proposed changes to the DSM that would expand the diagnosis for some disorders in children while adding new ones — including temper dysregulation disorder — could lead to wider prescribing of antipsychotics to children.
The drugs have been used since the 1990s in the treatment of mental-health disorders in adults. Antipsychotics as a whole were ranked second in Canada, behind cardiovascular medications, as the most prescribed drug class in the country, with 64,853,000 prescriptions filled in 2010, according to IMS Brogan.
Experts say that as doctors have grown more comfortable using the drugs for adults, prescription has spilled over to young people.
As well, public attitudes are changing.
"People's awareness of mental-health disorders overall has improved over the last decade — there's more awareness about it," said Calgary neurologist Dr. Tamara Pringsheim, a member of the Canadian Alliance for Monitoring Effectiveness and Safety of Antipsychotics in Children guideline group.
"When you consider that one in three people will suffer from a mental-health disorder in their lifetime, this is something that happens in every family. People are looking for more help."
The alliance said that multiple randomized controlled clinical trials have looked at the efficacy of many atypical antipsychotics in pediatric mental-health disorders. For many children, though not all children, they're helpful, said Pringsheim, a clinical assistant professor in the department of clinical neurosciences and pediatrics at the University of Calgary.
"I'm not saying they're a panacea . . . I'm just saying that for children with mental health disorders and for families who are really struggling, they can offer some help."
"By no means are these medications a cure for problems," she added. However, "If you can diminish a patient's symptoms by 50 per cent, we consider that helpful."
In many places, Pringsheim said, "the only help that a family can get is medical help. They're not able to access behavioural programs to try and help with aggressive behaviour in a child. It means both the child and the clinician are stuck saying, 'Either this child is going to be in danger daily of hurting themselves and other people, or we can try a medication that may help.' "
Even then putting a child on an antipsychotic is a hard decision for parents to make. "They just hear the name 'antipsychotic' and they're afraid. But some situations become quite desperate."
In addition to weight gain, many of the drugs can cause neurological side effects that can include restlessness and a constant need to move; a decrease in facial expression or a "mask-like" face; abnormal movements of the face, mouth, lips, jaw or tongue; drug-induced tremors and abnormal muscle movements, including neck stretching and writhing.
These extra movements can be "scary and horrible," said Dr. Wendy Roberts, a developmental pediatrician at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and professor of pediatrics at the University of Toronto. "They're usually reversible, but we don't have a lot of evidence to say how many might not be reversible. It certainly behooves us to warn parents so they're not taken totally by surprise this is happening."
Pringsheim and her co-authors said doctors need to exercise a "high degree of vigilance" when prescribing the drugs to children and youth.
"I think it is your duty as a clinician," she said. "If we're vigilant, if we are watching carefully, we can avoid a number of these situations just by being proactive.
"If we catch a neurological side effect, if we catch a metabolic side effect early, it's much easier to treat them. Things haven't gone so far that it takes months to get things back to where they were."
She said she believes most doctors are being cautious in using the drugs on children.
"A psychiatrist once said to me, 'Your hand should tremble every time you write a prescription for an antipsychotic medication.'
"And I think most clinicians take that to heart. They're not writing it carelessly or flippantly. They're writing a prescription in an effort to help a child and a family that is clearly suffering."
Others say more needs to be done to ensure doctors understand the limits of the benefits.
"In older children and adolescents with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — which thankfully are rare — there is good evidence that antipsychotic medications are appropriate and can meaningfully improve the lives of the young who receive them," said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.
But the drugs are more commonly given to children with ADHD and other disruptive behaviours, he said. Whether that's appropriate is less clear, according to Olfson.
Before agreeing to put their child on an antipsychotic, experts say parents should ask the doctor what specific symptoms the drug is targeting, and whether there are other options, including parent management training or parent-child interaction therapy for younger children.
I wonder if cowardly parenting has something to do with this growth?
Leading causes of death- Canada
Cancer and heart disease, the two leading causes of death in Canada, were responsible for just over one-half (51%) of the 238,617 deaths in 2008. I wonder why it takes so long to get these figures when they are automatically recorded by assigned authorities. Perhaps if they were issued earlier then public concern and even outrage might happen..? Yes in Canada.
For the first time, cancer was the leading cause of death in every province and territory. In 2007, it was the leading cause everywhere except Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territories.
Heart disease was the second leading cause of death in every province and territory in 2008, except Nunavut where suicide ranked second.
Cancer accounted for 30% of all deaths in 2008, followed by heart disease (21%) and stroke (6%).
Ranked in order, the other seven leading causes of death were chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents (unintentional injuries), diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide.
These 10 leading causes accounted for 77% of all deaths in 2008, compared with 80% in 2000.
By age group, there were differences in the leading causes of death. Congenital abnormalities was the leading cause of death for infants under one year of age, accidents (unintentional injuries) for people aged 1 to 34, cancer for those aged 35 to 84 and heart disease for those aged 85 and over.
For young adults aged 15 to 24, the top three causes of death in order were accidents, suicide and homicide. Perhaps this is why the figures are 3 years behind.?
To control for the impact of population aging on death rates, comparisons over time are made using the "age-standardized mortality rate." This removes the impact of differences in the age structure of populations among areas and over time.
Between 2000 and 2008, age-standardized mortality rates were on a downward trend in general for all 10 leading causes of death. However, in 2008, age-standardized mortality rates for Alzheimer's disease increased 8% from 2007, as did the standardized rate for suicide, up 2%.
In 2008, 3,705 people committed suicide, up almost 3% from 2007. Of these, 2,777 were men, three times the total for women (928). Suicide was the second leading cause of death for men aged 15 to 44 and for women aged 15 to 24 and the third leading cause of death for women aged 25 to 44.
In 2008, 6,573 people died of Alzheimer's disease, up 11% from 2007. A total of 4,606 women died of Alzheimer's disease, more than twice the total for men (1,967).
For the first time, cancer was the leading cause of death in every province and territory. In 2007, it was the leading cause everywhere except Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territories.
Heart disease was the second leading cause of death in every province and territory in 2008, except Nunavut where suicide ranked second.
Cancer accounted for 30% of all deaths in 2008, followed by heart disease (21%) and stroke (6%).
Ranked in order, the other seven leading causes of death were chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents (unintentional injuries), diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide.
These 10 leading causes accounted for 77% of all deaths in 2008, compared with 80% in 2000.
By age group, there were differences in the leading causes of death. Congenital abnormalities was the leading cause of death for infants under one year of age, accidents (unintentional injuries) for people aged 1 to 34, cancer for those aged 35 to 84 and heart disease for those aged 85 and over.
For young adults aged 15 to 24, the top three causes of death in order were accidents, suicide and homicide. Perhaps this is why the figures are 3 years behind.?
To control for the impact of population aging on death rates, comparisons over time are made using the "age-standardized mortality rate." This removes the impact of differences in the age structure of populations among areas and over time.
Between 2000 and 2008, age-standardized mortality rates were on a downward trend in general for all 10 leading causes of death. However, in 2008, age-standardized mortality rates for Alzheimer's disease increased 8% from 2007, as did the standardized rate for suicide, up 2%.
In 2008, 3,705 people committed suicide, up almost 3% from 2007. Of these, 2,777 were men, three times the total for women (928). Suicide was the second leading cause of death for men aged 15 to 44 and for women aged 15 to 24 and the third leading cause of death for women aged 25 to 44.
In 2008, 6,573 people died of Alzheimer's disease, up 11% from 2007. A total of 4,606 women died of Alzheimer's disease, more than twice the total for men (1,967).