Slashdot Mirror

Well, according to statistics Canada, 18.5% of people in Ottawa take public transit. 22.4% in Toronto, 21.7% in Montreal, 11.5% in Vancouver. Although the percentages are a lot lower in smaller cities, the 4 cities I named make up about a third of the Canadian population as a whole. Public transit can work for a large percentage of the community. These numbers are for 2001, and percentages have gone up since. Public transit may not scale perfectly, but it scales a lot better than everybody owning their own car.

6 months to 2 years? Hardly. I'd be hard pressed to think of any gadget that took longer to get to Canada than the US by any stretch longer than perhaps 2 weeks. When I bought my Canon S-40, I got it in a store here before it was available in the US (Carsand-Mosher has got the hookups!) The device itself was not more expensive than the US version after taking into account exchange (in fact, it was about $10 cheaper... and local bought). GST was added, but that's hardly the 25% premium after 2 year wait you're trying to push.

Considering places like California have between 7.75%-8.75% state sales tax randomly based on a county-by-county basis, GST seems pretty straightforward. For the consumer, anyways.

Gas is more expensive. Not much, but some. During the big gas price spike, there was roughly a 10%-15% difference between the average price in Canada and the US (that was the time I was paying attention to it. I dunno what the difference is at the moment).

As for median incomes, your numbers are way off. The median household income in the US is currently around $44kUSD (~$51kCAD). The median household income in Canada is currently ~$56kCAD (~$48kUSD) and the median household income in vancouver, as of the 2000 Canada Census is ~$77k. Moreover, the downtowns of Vancouver and Toronto are currently in a speculatory bubble environment, not unlike that of Miami, LA, et al. You can get 2000+ sq.ft out in the burbs (maple ridge, for instance) at $100-$200sq ft.

Yeesh, so much intellectual dishonesty. Are you so afraid of an apples-to-apples comparison that you have to be deliberately misleading?

- GDP is a pointless number to base anything on. It counts all the cash that moves around, regardless of whether that cash is spent doing anything productive. You could dig a $1 million dollar hole, then spend another $1 million filling it, and that would increase your GDP by $2 million. Try using purchase price parity or something less... random. Moreover, GDP has basically no effect on the population whatsoever. Median household income is far more pertinent, and currently median household income in Canada (~$56k CAD/year) is around 9% higher than that of the US (~$44k USD/year, or around ~$51k CAD).

- Average total taxation is out of date. The tax situation has changed pretty substantially both north and south of the border since 1998 (for example, exemptions are now indexed to CPI in Canada, dividend income is nontaxable up to 25k, etc). I would love to see an up-to-date version.

- Unemployment rates are calculated completely differently between the US and Canada. Add the 'discouraged' rates to current US unemployment rates, and take into account the difference in labour force utilization (canada routinely has a couple % higher utilization, mostly due to people magically disappearing from US labour force when they don't fall under the specific categories that allows them to be considered employable). Sadly, neither country tracks underemployed people, but I suppose it's a difficult measure to gauge.

- Violent crime statistics in the US are calculated differently than those in Canada. In the US, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, violent crime in the US is comprised of "The number of persons arrested for homicide, forcible rape, robbery or aggravated assault as reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI." Notice that there is no mention of basic assaults (ie. bar fights) that ARE included in the canadian statistics you provided, and which account for the vast vast majority of incidents reported. However, an apples-to-apples comparison is here. In summary: Violent crime in canada is substantially less, whereas property crime is essentially parallel.

If comparisons MUST be made, at the very least they should be intellectually honest.

Here are the links again right from my browser history: http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/07/28 /crime_stats040728.html http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/feddal/r u http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml

Let me say that I enjoy the Canadian way of life myself, but let's look at some numbers:

Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php [worldfactsandfigures.com]
GDP per capita Canada: $29,700
GDP per capita USA: $37,800

Source: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml [readersdigest.ca]
National average total taxation Canada: 48.2 %
National average total taxation USA: 41.4 %

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm [statcan.ca]
National unemployment rate Canada: 6.6%
National unemployment rate USA: 4.9%

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728 a.htm [statcan.ca] & http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [disastercenter.com]
Total Violent crime per 100,000 people Canada: 963
Total violent crime per 100,000 people in USA: 466

By all of these measures you are better off in the USA.

[This may be a duplicate of a previous Anonymous Coward posting that I did not intend.]

Let me say that I enjoy the Canadian way of life myself, but let's look at some numbers:

Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php [worldfactsandfigures.com]
GDP per capita Canada: $29,700
GDP per capita USA: $37,800

Source: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml [readersdigest.ca]
National average total taxation Canada: 48.2 %
National average total taxation USA: 41.4 %

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm [statcan.ca]
National unemployment rate Canada: 6.6%
National unemployment rate USA: 4.9%

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728 a.htm [statcan.ca] & http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [disastercenter.com]
Total Violent crime per 100,000 people Canada: 963
Total violent crime per 100,000 people in USA: 466

By all of these measures you are better off in the USA.

[This may be a duplicate of a previous Anonymous Coward posting that I did not intend.]

Let me say that I enjoy the Canadian way of life myself, but let's look at some numbers:

Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php [worldfactsandfigures.com]
GDP per capita Canada: $29,700
GDP per capita USA: $37,800

Source: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml [readersdigest.ca]
National average total taxation Canada: 48.2 %
National average total taxation USA: 41.4 %

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm [statcan.ca]
National unemployment rate Canada: 6.6%
National unemployment rate USA: 4.9%

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728 a.htm [statcan.ca] & http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [disastercenter.com]
Total Violent crime per 100,000 people Canada: 963
Total violent crime per 100,000 people in USA: 466

By all of these measures you are better off in the USA.

Let me say that I enjoy the Canadian way of life myself, but let's look at some numbers:

Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php [worldfactsandfigures.com]
GDP per capita Canada: $29,700
GDP per capita USA: $37,800

Source: http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/1999/06/think_01.h tml [readersdigest.ca]
National average total taxation Canada: 48.2 %
National average total taxation USA: 41.4 %

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm [statcan.ca]
National unemployment rate Canada: 6.6%
National unemployment rate USA: 4.9%

Source: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728 a.htm [statcan.ca] & http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [disastercenter.com]
Total Violent crime per 100,000 people Canada: 963
Total violent crime per 100,000 people in USA: 466

By all of these measures you are better off in the USA.

"The discrepancy comes from my treating gun-deaths as the only source of murders, which, they are not."

There wasn't a discrepancy, what you said was flat wrong. The parent said:

"Canada has a remarkably low murder rate."

You said:

"It's on a par with the U.S., per capita."

Its not. Its 3X higher in the U.S. So now you are claiming you were talking about murder with guns. Well in fact murder with guns is lower still. Only 1/3 of murders in Canada used guns versus 2/3rds in the U.S.

Here is a good article with charts. Violent crime is just consistently higher in the U.S. while Canada is at about parity in non violent property crimes. Here is the wikipedia article on the subject though Wikipedia isn't a very reliable source. It does say:

"Compared to the United States Canada has far lower rates of violent crime such as murder, assault, and rape. Through the 1990s, the homicide rate in the United States was three times higher than it was in Canada, while the American rate for aggravated assault was double the Canadian rate. The rate for robberies was 65% higher in the United States."

"Canada's crime rate is close to the average of Western Europe. Canada has a fair bit more crime than Japan. Canada has a lower crime rate than almost every country in the developing world."

"One of the most common explanations of the higher violent crime rate in the United States are guns. Gun crimes are far more common in the United States. Only one third of Canadian murders involve firearms compared to two thirds in the States. Guns are far more likely to be used in robberies in the United States. Gun ownership rates are much higher in the United States, especially handguns. Most Canadian weapons are rifles or shot guns owned by farmers and target shooters, and are less likely to be used in crimes. More assault weapons are banned in Canada than the United States. Canada also has a national gun registry. Even before the creation of the national gun registry, the two biggest provinces, Ontario and Quebec had a long history of strict gun controls. Paradoxically, however, after declining since the late 1970s, Canada's homicide rate has actually increased slightly since the national gun registry was enacted.
Canada has more guns and fewer controls on them than Western Europe or Japan."

Now to your next claim since you've completely veered off murder since you've been completely debunked there:

"violent crime against women is double in Canada, per capita, than what it is in the U.S."

Why don't you provide a URL to support that. First off I think you mean rape or maybe sexual assault not violent crime. Murder and assault are across the board higher in the U.S. and that doesn't change for women.

Now rape you might have a case because a few of the statistics I find do show Canada is 2X higher per capita than the U.S. But there is a problem. The definition of rape is different in every country, state, etc. This article says this about Rape law in Canada:

"Rape. In 1982, new legislation replaced the offense of rape with the new offense of "sexual assault." Sexual assault can take the form of unwanted touching, and need not involve penetration. There are three levels of sexual assault, graded by the amount of violence involved."

Rape is unfortunately statistically impossible to track. The definition varies in every jurisdiction. The percentage of actual versus reported cases is also wildly unpredictable. A place with strong shield laws is going to have more rapes cases filed than one that doesn't.

To be honest if this is the best you can do in your crusade to crucify your homeland maybe you should go back to the drawing board.

They represent less than 25% of the population but somehow every damn government we get seems to pander to them and pay them off.

From a statistical point of view, that's already better than pandering to the 9.9% of the population that is Alberta .

They are a have-not province. That alone is ridiculous. That means basically that they're a fcking welfare state, that makes our laws, takes our money and shits on our flag.

Now don't you get too american on us.

You can't get any government job of note without being bi-lingual which is BLATANT DISCRIMINATION!

Well, this worlks both ways. In Quebec, you also have to be bilingual to get a federal job of note even though the anglo population is small. But your frustation is understandable.

We shoulda shipped them back to france over a 100 years ago.

Like when Alberta did not even exist yet?

America got that part right. Speak english or get out.

I don't remember the americans doing that. You just get assimilated into the great melting pot although language laws have been creeping up in the last decades. The British did deport 10 to 12 thousand acadians between 1755-1762.

If the damn easterners vote in another corrupt liberal gov't after this last fiasco, Alberta will separate.

Quebec has been voting Bloc for the last ten years or so. You can't blame us for voting in the liberal government for that last decade. The Rest of Canada has been doing a great job at that without our help. It's not as if we liked Chrétien anyway.

We don't need Canada for anything. We have NO DEBT, billions in the bank, good healthcare and people that want to work.

And none of that is of your doing. I wonder how rich was Alberta before they started investing in the oil fields after the 1947 discovery of oil in Leduc (a french name by the way). Only because you're sitting on an oil field doesn't make you any better at administration or government (see the Middle East, not that i'm comparing Alberta to Saudi Arabia). Give me a pile of cash from oil and i'll make my province the richest.

damn french

You're funny.

The only reason Canada keeps pushing bilingualism outside of Quebec is because the power structures are misproportionally representative of that province.

There are 7.5 millions of us you know! that's nearly a quarter of the population of the country (32M). Only Ontario is more populous (12,4M).

That being said, the US and Canadian unemployment rates -- without correction for the difference in methodology -- have been just one point apart since 2002.

Also, in some countries, you can receive benefits if you register as unemployed, even if you're a homemaker or student. The US does not have this system. So some countries have higher numbers of registered unemployed people, simply because of benefits available.

I'm just going on what I learned in undergrad and grad school courses, as well as articles I've read over the years. I'd be interested in hearing a rebuttal to these points, though.

For a dose of perspective, 33 million is about the current population of Canada...

http://www.statcan.ca/english/census96/table1.htm/

According to the stats shown we have 5,000,000 million ACTIVE high speed hook-ups.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=8160/

I just don't buy that HALF of the households in Canada have active high speed internet connectivity. Availability, yes. But active. No.

Canada has 40% unemployment?

Do a google search you xenophobic fucking idiot.

http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/ lfs-en.htm

Wow it's 7% in Canada.

What's it in the USA?

http://www.bls.gov/

It's 5%.

Yeah, we're SOOO WORSE off here in Canada....

Tom

There's only 30 Million people in Canada

Population estimate (Janurary 2005): 32,078,819.

The US has 80.3 percent urban population

Canada has 79.6 percent urban

People clump around cities, it's an industrialized nation thing.

As another note, here in Canada almost everyone has cable or satalite TV. We don't have the population density to get more then a couple of channels.

US stats - see p32

Canadian stats

...Yes.

http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/82-221-XIE/0 1201/tables/html/P44.htm

Next question?

Canada land area: 9,093,507

Cost of cable broadband: $40CDN
Cost of DSL broadband: $29CDN

Moral of the story: There's more to it than just geography.

In 2000, 79% of the US population lived in urban areas, the 2001 Canadian census lists 79.7% there is hardly any difference there and yet claims about "Oh, but Canada lives closer to the border" still persist. Urban vs Rural is NOT the big issue. The big issue is GREED by companies and COMPLACENCY of the population to bend over on issues such as this.

English is not an official language of Israel. It is required in school for practical reasons, not because of any official status. Technically, a student is allowed to take French instead of English as their required second language, but no one does. Arabic is an official language, but is considered a second-class citizen to Hebrew. I should have noted Arabic is also an official language.

Yes, 6.5 is less than 7. And 9.5 is greater than 7, which was my point, or can't you add? Those 3 million people are, for all intents and purposes, part of Israel. If you don't want to count them, then yes, London is slightly larger. I count them, because Israel is the effective government for much of that space (the PA is the ineffective government pretty much solely on tolerance of the Israelis).

You want GOOD data on French speakers in Canada? Fine. Statistics Canada, using data from the 2001 Census, says that 30% of Canadians speak French, and 13% speak French exclusively. 23% speak French as their native language. If you think that data is grossly inflated, you can argue with the Canadian census, but I'm pretty sure they know a lot more about it than you do. The numbers here have changed slightly from my original post because I took the time to find census data this time and calculate from that source data, rather than relying on reported data from other places. However, you'll note that my original post was within 4 percent on all counts, and closer on all but the overall French-speaking population.

Palestinians who speak Hebrew: hard to find good data on this. Ethnologue estimates roughly 15-20% of those living in the West Bank and Gaza speak Hebrew; however, they're basing this estimate on a total population of various sets of data. I'd say that number seems accurate, or even possibly low, based on my personal knowledge, having both been there and having friends and family there. I'll accept that you might disagree, but the fact remains that a significant number of Palestinians (the ones most likely to interact with Israelis, I'll add) do speak Hebrew.

It's pretty obvious you're British. I'll repeat it again for your benefit; there's a world of difference between Gaelic and Welsh, and French-Canadians or Israelis. Welsh-speakers make up less than 1% of the UK's population; not native Welsh speakers, I mean people who can speak it at all. The number of Welsh-only speakers *is* insignificant. Gaelic is even worse off, being spoken by around 1% of the population in Scotland, and much less of the population of the UK as a whole. Compare that to the relative percentages, or even the absolute numbers, of French-only Canadians or Hebrew-speaking Israelis. You can try to project the situations you're familiar with on to other places, places where those situations are inaccurate, or you can look at the numbers I've provided and actually think about it.

Should Slashdot support Hebrew? There's no real reason they should, being as it is an English website. However, moving from that to saying that no one should speak Hebrew is a bit of jump. Maybe you should back down from that one.

Although the potential of infection of AIDS is scary, it's nowhere near as dangerous as it is hyped to be.

For years, AIDS has been used to categorize and victimize specific groups (mostly gay men and coloured people in general). This created a lot of hype and pushed AIDS to the top of the chart of [scary font] DeSeAsEs To FeAr [/scary font].

The truth however, is that AIDS still manage to kill a relative minority of people, compared to other deseases.

A quick chart from Canadian residents can be found here: StatCan. I use this chart because it was easy to consult but these numbers are quite in line with those for the US: CDC

To summarize, Cancer should be given the scariest font and perhaps even the blink tag too. It scores a whoping 27% of desease-related deaths in Canada.

Compare this with 0.3% (yes, "zero point three") for HIV infection.

Hearth deseases come in 2nd with 26% and then the numbers drop sharply to 7% for cerebrovascular deseases.

Suicides score a whoping 1.7%. Still far more than HIV.

If I worked for WHO, my recomendations would be these: screw responsibly and slack off on smoking and the super-sized fries. Enjoy life. Be happy.

"(even though they're still seeing amazing profits)"

Out of curiosity, what is the typical net profit margin in the record industry? In Canada, it was 12 points in 2000, down from 16 points in 1993. Is it higher elsewhere?

If anybody's wondering if a net margin is 12 points is obscenely high, here are some recently reported net margins for various companies near and dear to our hearts:

• Microsoft: 21%
• Apple Computer: 3%
• Creative Labs: 12%
• Red Hat: 20%
• Sony Corporation: 1.3% (yeah, one point three)
• Electronic Arts: 18%

If high profit margins relate to evilness, it looks like the record industry as a whole is more evil than Apple or Sony (which, of course, itself owns a record label), about as evil as Creative Labs, but less evil than EA, Microsoft or Red Hat.

rate per 100,000 population (2003)
Canada vs US
All: 8884.8 vs 8126.8
Violence: 962.8 vs 475.0
Homicide: 1.7 vs 5.7
Attempted homicide: 2.2 vs ?
Assaults: 746.5 vs 327.1
Sexual assault: 74.1 vs 32.1
Robbery: 89.6 vs 142.2
Property crimes: 4121.4 vs 3588.4
Auto Theft: 540.7 vs 433.4
Theft over $5000: 63.6 vs ?
Traffic offences: 366.3 vs ?

Homicide by method
Canada vs US
Per 100,000 (all): 1.7 vs 5.7
All: 548 vs 14408
Shooting: 161 (29.4%) vs 9638 (66.9%)
Stabbing: 142 (25.9%) vs 1816 (12.6%)
Beating: 120 (21.9%) vs 1597 (11.1%)
Strangulation: 63 (11.5%) vs 184 (1.3%)
Fire: 12 (2.2%) vs 163 (1.1%)
Other: 27 (4.9%) vs 182 (1.3%)
Unknown: 23 (4.2%) vs 828 (5.7%)

There are you actual statistics. I couldn't find some for the US, but I think this gives an accurate enough impression. All statistics are for the year 2003, taken from Statistics Canada Crime and Justice Reports http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/justic.htm and the FBI Uniform Crime Reports http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/03cius.htm

The rate of violent crime in the USA in 2002 was about 2500 per 100,000 people. (Source: USA Today)

The rate of serious violent crime in the USA in 2002 was about 500 per 100,000 (Source: FBI). Note that this only includes murder and manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault ("a reckless attack with intent to injure seriously (as with a deadly weapon)"), and so does not include all of the "minor assaults" that made up the majority of the Canadian violent crime rate.

In fact, those "simple assaults" happen at the rate of 1550 per 100,000 (Source: USDOJ), demonstrating why the comparable US violent crime rate is indeed the 2500 per 100,000 reported by USAToday, and not the artificially low number you used.

As the site you pulled your numbers from stated:

Different nations use different criteria to define "murder" and "serious assault," therefore ability to use this data to compare between nations is limited...

Using more comparable numbers seems to give very different results than you had suggested: Canada's violent crime rate is 40% of America's.

I'm not saying that all of Canada is colder than everywhere else, but in the Ottawa / Montreal area, there have been a couple of good power outages in the past few years... A quick google for "ice storm ottawa power alternatives" or "ice storm montreal power alternatives" should give you lots of ideas... In 1998, in the winter, almost a million people went without power for about a week...

Actually, the USD is going down in value and the CAD is going up. See this article from the Statistics Canada website.

After doing a little digging, it turns out that Mauser is on record as saying that Canada's violent crime rate has undergone a "horrifying increase" in the last decade, despite the fact that violent crime has actually decreased 11% in that time period.

If Mauser is willing to deceive people by claiming that violent crime has increased when the readily-available facts show that violent crime has decreased, the worth of any study he is responsible for is called seriously into question. Evidence suggests "The Failed Experiment" is little more than a biased opinion piece. Too bad - I'd hoped for much more.

A moment with Google and a quick look at the actual homicide statistics in Canada shows that the parent poster is completely wrong. The summary of Canada's homicide trend in the last several years is:

The national homicide rate fell 7% last year [2003] to its lowest level in over 35 years.


> John Lott has an article discussing the abysmal failure of Canada's gun control program here.

If you're getting your information from John Lott, that helps explain why you have no idea what the truth is. Lott is a known liar whose research has come under increasing fire as poorly supported and possibly entirely fabricated.

If you want a pro-gun researcher to tout, check out Kleck. His studies have some serious methodological problems, too, but at least he seems honest.

After all, this false logic which says the software prices will fall, is like expecting Nike prices to fall just because they are made for $1 in Indonesian and Thai sweathouse factories
Actually the industry price for shoes HAS fallen because of the sweatshops. Seen any cobblers around? It used to be the cost for shoes (relative to what people made) was higher, hence, the need for repairs rather than buying a new pair. You can buy a decent pair of shoes for $5, heck even $2 when payless has a sale. The only reason Nike can charge $100 is because of name recognition (the marketing guys are good for something).
The price of business software has been falling between 2-5% each year. Some software (ie microsoft stuff) hasn't fallen because of their market dominance (same reason Nike can charge such outrageous sums), but most other business software has dropped.
An example of jobs being created from cheap software is open source. Now that businesses can get Linux at no cost, they can have their programmers customize it for their particular needs. Overall jobs aren't destroyed, they are just changed to further enhance the value of cheap software.

Software prices have been falling. Microsoft isn't a good example because of their market dominance, but if you look at most business oriented softare the price for software has been decreasing. Open source will also further pressure prices lower. What the market will become is cheap off the shelf foreign software/OSS with domestic customization to further increase productivity for individual businesses.

40% is conservative actually. In fact I'd say a more accurate figure would be 45-65% depending on the position. There is also a shortage of work. The % of unemployment has been steady between 3-3.5% higher than in the US for years now. Not to forget we are the true embodiment of a *working class taxed to death*. There is also laws which make it extremely difficult for outside companies to setup shop in canada and the tax bracket is so high that most small to medium size companies will not be willing to open up branches in Canada. Not to mention the new *medicare tax* we were slapped on this summer, (which translates into another $1000 CAD for someone in their mid 50Ks salary) to pay to the gevernment. In the mean time I haven't gone to the doctor in at least 6 years for anything......but I must give the fat a$$ed governemt beurocrats more money, so they can enjoy a better vacation. Our Liberal government is also close friends with CUBA, RUSSIA and CHINA. I wonder is that rings any bells to anyone...if not, let me just say that the Liberal flag is all red. It's only missing a star (that's because they are affraid of the US)

Stats canada

And I remember something about how the banking industry isn't that good up there, so you don't get decent interest rates. Or something like that, I can't remember. I just meant to say that it is no "wonderland", they do have their own issues.

Wow, now that's a concrete and profound statement.

Canada has Chartered Banks. This is a wonderful thing. It means that when you travel, you can find a branch of your own Bank! It also means that there is excellent inter-bank co-operation and the level of service is generaly quite good. It's certainly less risky and less confusion than all the Mom & Pop S&Ls that seem to dot the landscape south of 49.

In fact, they look to be in fine shape.

why is this insightful? could the high tax rate in canada be due to the low population and the low relative cost of living from a combination of subsidised farming and efficient (cost cutting) production and distribution to a larger population in the US?

You cannot deduce that high taxes (or even higher taxes) in Canada are the direct result of *universal* health care through cause and effect.

1. Denmark: 5.1% (optimal)
   
2. USA: 5.6% (near optimal, same as our "peak" in the 90s).
   
3. Canada: 7.2% and improving, probably partially thanks to the improving U.S. economy. People would want to see heads rolling at this rate in the U.S., though.
   
4. France: a miserable 9.6%. Apparently that 35 hour work week was a wonderful idea.
   
5. Germany: 10.6%.
   

I think that there are almost as many Francaphones in Ontario (485,630) as there are Anglophones in Quebec (557,040) according to statscan. Granted the total population is about four times greater in ON.

I think we can only call all of the money a "waste" if we can demonstrate that the extra boards are needlessly duplicating services that would be more efficiently delivered with a single board. I suspect that is the case, but it is not automatically so.

Who lives paycheck to paycheck these days?

Elsewhere someone posted that the figure was 7 million guns for 10 million households in Canada. According to this, there are as many guns in the US as *adults* (presumably there is more than one adult in most households). Even if the Canadian number should be 14 million guns (as suggested here), this is still less than the number of adults (22 million according to this).

Slightly off topic, I suppose, but you know that the unemployment rate in Canada is currently higher (7.3% April 2004) than the US unemployment rate (5.6% April 2004), right?

And you're a Canadian citizen or have compelling reason to believe that you'll be offered a work visa (personal connections, obscure and valuable skills)?

You then must consider Canada. We have a very very similiar ethnic mix, but have lower teen pregnancy. Stats for Canada and the united States. Check the 15-19 range for the US and Canada. We have under half of what you have. As well we have ghettos and a comprehensive plan to support single mothers, more so then the states. I am a minority group that has some of this happen (chinese) and I work and interact with another minority group that has this happen rampantly (Black/Jamaican). And still our rates are 1/2 yours. Why? We have Sex ed starting at grade 7 in each and every school, catholic or otherwise (The new islamix schools most likly will not). Thats one reason there are many more, it's not black and white but it does help.

• canada's senate functions superbly, especially in comparison to other national systems.

• there is no political in-fighting at senate, there are no axes to grind. the appointment process needs to be reformed but the senate is the smoothest operation in federal government

• west of manitoba the alliance won just two seats

• the tories left ontario in a shambles, it turns out all of their cost-cutting was just going into tax breaks for the rich, and now the middle-class is left with the tab and no services. smart. ndp governments have been extremely successful provincially

And white people just don't blend in everywhere. During the Cold War black intelligence agents sometimes felt that their career growth was stunted because the best assignments were in the USSR and black people just didn't fit in there. We need to go to war against Canada or England so we can make better use of our human capital.

Canada's population is 31.6 million (2003).

I looked at it as I wondered whether the Netherlands (16 million) would win in the spam/capita contest. Nah, canada wins. 3x the spam, 2x the population.

Reinout

Hmmm, it looks like the Median Family Income in Canada is
$72,524 (Canadian Dollars).

But it's probably pretty stable work, considering that the rich are still pretty darn rich and will keep buying diamonds.

Maybe a more worthwhile story would be on the fact that the entire diamond industry is created by incredibly strict control of the supply, which is kept artificially low to dramatically inflate price

OMG!OMG! Canadian diamonds!

"The average salary for all workers employed in the diamond mining industry in the Northwest Territories from 1998 to 2001 was $61,639. The average for production employees, those involved in the mining operations, was slightly higher, at $64,336."

*Door slams on scarf trailing from parka*

The information on that page seems to be from the CIA "Factbook". I would not trust anything coming out any spy agency, even if it were my own country. First of all, CIA most likely manipulates information to suit its own purposes (eg. claim a country is made up of this many people of a particular group when in fact it isn't (Iraq and the census "controversy" comes to mind)). Second, as you pointed out, the listing is totally useless since it uses inconsistent antiquated, obsolete, and racist categories (eg. mongoloid*). I would not trust anything out of the CIA, whether it claims to be correct or not. Lastly, the listed info is totally useless--even if it were true--because someone (CIA in this case) chose whether to lump people togeter into categories or not (eg. white vs Italian/German/etc vs European).

The best place to get information is from the UN or some NGO. I don't think the UN collects ethnic data (at least not for all countries) so probably nothing there. I don't know of any NGO either (although I'm sure there are some). So the last place to find ethnic info is from census carried out by each country (needless to say, one should ignore everything coming out of totalitarian countries, dictatorships, monarchies, etc**).

Just looked up some info and here are some links:

US Census
Canadian data Canadian data that is detailed (but includes people who are doublecounted)

Having posted thos links, I have to admit that they are not directly comparable. US census is too simplistic (at least from what I can find). On top of that, it would be preferable to have percentages worked out in a pie-chart, instead of just a bunch of numbers :( Overall, I think Canada is FAR more diverse than USA.

I do think though that if you look at those numbers objectively, the lower numbers of black, and hispanic populations in Canada would swing the pendulum in the US's favor.

Not really. Even though Canada doesn't have the same size of black and hispanics***, it has many more smaller ethnic groups (like chinese, south Asians, Arabs, etc). So Canada is indeed more diverse.

Having said that, some cities in USA are very diverse. A city like New York is diverse (in fact, it is one of the most diverse cities in the world).

But checkboxes on a census form is not the entire answer. Because 'white' could mean many things. We do have a huge Russian population here, where they are maintaining a lot of their Russian culture. So, while they are 'white', their culture is different.

You CAN figure out ethnic groups with a census but the way USA does it is very unscientific and primitive. I imagine it is done that way because of conservative influences. Conservatives attempt to assimilate people (eg. USA) whereas liberals attempt to diverse people (eg. Canada). First of all, you should not use something vague like skin colour. Something like "white" or "black" is totally meaningless. Instead of asking whether people are white, the government should be asking to check off 'German', 'English', and so forth.

(* Mongoloid isn't exactly discriminatory but it is very inaccurate).

(** If you must know why one can't trust ethnic information coming out of an autocratic country, it is because governments use that to carry out their discriminatory activities. For instance, many services provided by government are tied to the size of the population (eg. a library gets a grant based on the size of the population in that area. By manipulating ethnic data, governments can alter their fiscal policies to discriminate against others. This is generally true outside multicultural countries like USA and Canada since ethnic groups are geogra

The information on that page seems to be from the CIA "Factbook". I would not trust anything coming out any spy agency, even if it were my own country. First of all, CIA most likely manipulates information to suit its own purposes (eg. claim a country is made up of this many people of a particular group when in fact it isn't (Iraq and the census "controversy" comes to mind)). Second, as you pointed out, the listing is totally useless since it uses inconsistent antiquated, obsolete, and racist categories (eg. mongoloid*). I would not trust anything out of the CIA, whether it claims to be correct or not. Lastly, the listed info is totally useless--even if it were true--because someone (CIA in this case) chose whether to lump people togeter into categories or not (eg. white vs Italian/German/etc vs European).

The best place to get information is from the UN or some NGO. I don't think the UN collects ethnic data (at least not for all countries) so probably nothing there. I don't know of any NGO either (although I'm sure there are some). So the last place to find ethnic info is from census carried out by each country (needless to say, one should ignore everything coming out of totalitarian countries, dictatorships, monarchies, etc**).

Just looked up some info and here are some links:

US Census
Canadian data Canadian data that is detailed (but includes people who are doublecounted)

Having posted thos links, I have to admit that they are not directly comparable. US census is too simplistic (at least from what I can find). On top of that, it would be preferable to have percentages worked out in a pie-chart, instead of just a bunch of numbers :( Overall, I think Canada is FAR more diverse than USA.

I do think though that if you look at those numbers objectively, the lower numbers of black, and hispanic populations in Canada would swing the pendulum in the US's favor.

Not really. Even though Canada doesn't have the same size of black and hispanics***, it has many more smaller ethnic groups (like chinese, south Asians, Arabs, etc). So Canada is indeed more diverse.

Having said that, some cities in USA are very diverse. A city like New York is diverse (in fact, it is one of the most diverse cities in the world).

But checkboxes on a census form is not the entire answer. Because 'white' could mean many things. We do have a huge Russian population here, where they are maintaining a lot of their Russian culture. So, while they are 'white', their culture is different.

You CAN figure out ethnic groups with a census but the way USA does it is very unscientific and primitive. I imagine it is done that way because of conservative influences. Conservatives attempt to assimilate people (eg. USA) whereas liberals attempt to diverse people (eg. Canada). First of all, you should not use something vague like skin colour. Something like "white" or "black" is totally meaningless. Instead of asking whether people are white, the government should be asking to check off 'German', 'English', and so forth.

(* Mongoloid isn't exactly discriminatory but it is very inaccurate).

(** If you must know why one can't trust ethnic information coming out of an autocratic country, it is because governments use that to carry out their discriminatory activities. For instance, many services provided by government are tied to the size of the population (eg. a library gets a grant based on the size of the population in that area. By manipulating ethnic data, governments can alter their fiscal policies to discriminate against others. This is generally true outside multicultural countries like USA and Canada since ethnic groups are geogra

The reason that no-one has remarked on the minority status of men is not, as you suppose, that only you have noticed this sinister development. It is because everyone has known it for years and years and years. Women make up a majority of the population in most countries. Over the last three decades, the population of the UK has fluctuated very little from a 48.7:51.3 male-to-female ratio. This is entirely due to women's greater life expectancy. In fact, the population under the age of 65 has a majority of males (52.4%). Although I don't have the age-based numbers to hand, the USA and Canada both have largely female populations (about 50.9% in the USA, 50.5% in Canada). I think you'll find similar numbers elsewhere.

I'm paying $20 for mine ($15.71 USD @ 0.785237). I wouldn't call it a deal really though, since the government sees fit to subsidize them. Its a whole other debate whether this kind of thing is in the same category as highways and other infrastructure. I just don't think its fair to compare US ISP prices to Canadian ones, the rules of the game are very different.

I'm not sure what you meant by the Canadians have less money thing though. The gap between rich-vs-poor is probably much smaller in Canada than the US. But I don't think you can make a general assumption that we have less money. For example, if you compare your average Canadian Joe with his southern counterpart, Canada Joe is much better off this January than he was last January. I tried to take a look at the overall median income for both countries in 2000 (The only common recent year I can seem to find statistical data for), we're pretty equal.

USA $42,148 USD ($60,832.21 CDN @ 0.6929 - Dec1999 exchange rate) or at todays rate $53,679.69 CDN
Canada = $55,016 CDN

I don't know exactly how to compare the two considering the rise and fall of the US $ over the past few years. There's too many other factors like taxation rates, and services available, and regional conditions for me to make a call on it. My idea of an urban ghetto is probably very different than USA Joe's too. I say urban ghetto, because my previous job had me travelling in northern Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Let me tell you, some of those reserves are scary places to be, but I think the reasons may be very different, and the populations are much much smaller.

I'm going to submit before I get the urge to haul out my Stats 100 text. (Which reminds me, the comparison of US to Canadian tuition rates would be another interesting study)

Yes, guns do cause more crime. The rest of the world learnt (sic) to read a bar chart years ago.. do they teach them in your schools yet?