Current Issues
When immigration increases, higher unemployment and lower wages result.
Over the past 50 years, wages in Canada have stayed the same while personal debt has quintupled. In Ontario, the percentage of workers in minimum wage jobs has increased 500% since 1997.
What has caused Canada to so completely miss the international trend to higher wages and fuller employment that many more successful nations in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have enjoyed? How were their policies different?
Are We Working Too Hard?
The Human Effort Index looks at how hard people have to work to produce the food, clothing and shelter we need, along with the extra material comforts we crave.
In regions with moderate climate and abundant resources, it’s taken relatively little effort to produce a good living. In more marginal lands with harsher climates, much more effort is required for survival.
In the Canadian Arctic, for example, indigenous people had to work constantly to eke out the barest living, often punctuated by periods of starvation and population decline. Their material possessions were minimal, their food storage capacity low and their educational system completely survival oriented.
Why Can’t Canada Ever Hit It’s GHG Emission Targets?
Most Canadians believe the climate is changing and that human activity is responsible. Many Canadians are aware that Canada’s record of greenhouse gas emission (GHG) increases is among the worst in the world. And if asked where the increase in carbon emissions is coming from, virtually every Canadian would say the oil sands.
And they would be wrong. For despite the rapid development of the oil sands and its inherently GHG emissions intensive nature, they constitute only a fraction of Canada’s emissions increase.
Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?
Natural and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel global system
Capture & store carbon dioxide
The outgoing government in Norway has buried much-vaunted plans to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground amid mounting costs and delays.
Perpetual economic growth - is it possible
The benefits of--and need for--economic growth are so widely assumed that they are hardly ever debated. And yet, maintaining perpetual growth on a finite planet is impossible--logically, physically, and yes, economically.
