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Ms. Yalnizyan said the major trend she identifies is that the wealthiest Canadians are increasing their share of income at a historic pace. Looking back over the past 90 years, income is now concentrated in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1920s, she said. In the past decade, almost a third of income growth has gone to the richest 1 per cent, she added.

We will not give in to Opposition demands to impose

This reckless policy would lead to continuing deficits and higher taxes on all Canadians. It would stall our recovery, kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and set families back.

We need to keep protecting and creating jobs now

Keeping taxes low A key part of that foundation is low taxes.

Our tax cuts are also helping employers to invest, grow and create jobs.

Our government will take further action to encourage them to expand and create jobs.

The Hiring Credit for Small Business will provide a one-year EI break for some 525,000 Canadian small businesses

Expanding international trade Beyond this, we will promote new export opportunities for all Canadian businesses

We will provide greater financial security for Canadians, and practical help to make ends meet.

record household debt levels have left this country vulnerable to economic shocks

the Canadian banks will report a slight increase in profit for the quarter as they contend with the impact of declining consumer borrowing, moderating capital markets activity and other headwinds.

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With domestic household debt levels hovering close to where they were in the United States prior to the financial crisis, many observers are warning that Canadians need to start paying down debt if the economy is remain on level footing

anadian consumers continue to pile on mortgage debt despite repeated warnings that they need to crank back on borrowing if this country is to avoid a painful real estate correction

Canadian consumers continue to pile on mortgage debt despite repeated warnings that they need to crank back on borrowing if this country is to avoid a painful real estate correction

growth in the overall home loan market "is continuing to be more robust,"

Canada's fourth-largest lender on Wednesday kicked off second-quarter bank earnings season with a 7.5% increase in profit on the back of lower provisions for bad loans

In 2010, that savings rate has dropped to 4.2 percent — about $2,500 per household.

the recession has shaken out the labour market. “We’re experiencing a gain in jobs, but people are now in jobs that paid less than what they did.

Mortgages account for about two-thirds of the $100,879 owed by the average household, or about $63,126 per household, with 55 per cent holding mortgages and 45 per cent mortgage-free. The other third is consumer debt, which includes credit cards and personal loans.

“The debt-to-income ratio is concerning … but recently, (mortgage) credit demand has slowed and consumer credit demand has slowed considerably as well. It’s now at less than 5 per cent, which is half of what we saw in the previous five years on average.”

Personal debt consolidation and restructuring expert Jim Ferguson said the most common reason people are getting into overbearing debt is the ease of availability of credit

Canadian debt levels, relative to income, are still meaningfully below peak U.S. levels, but that a further sizable increase would be worrisome.

“Household financial assets are also growing fast due to the strong stock market, which dampen concerns about the debt, but assets can vanish more quickly than debts.”

we must recognize that public policy should be designed to benefit all Canadians, rather than a few large retailers. The currencies of resource exporters such as Australia, Canada and Brazil have appreciated sharply in recent years. We should all enjoy the higher standard of living the strong dollar entails, rather than allowing retailers to monopolize these benefits.

Therefore, we must embrace, rather than reject, the economic forces that drive the new U.S. thinking on this issue. Matching the $1,000 exemption would help Canadians realize greater gains from trade, while allowing CBSA to focus on its core mission.

even the government’s own report shows that Canadian imports (of both goods and services) from the EU will increase by twice as much as Canadian exports to the EU, substantially widening the existing bilateral trade deficit.

exports grew less rapidly with FTA partners than with non-FTA partners, but imports grew quicker with FTA partners than with non-FTA partners. 

In the real world, free trade agreements (not surprisingly) tend to make existing trade imbalances even worse: this is true throughout economics, where deregulation generally tends to exacerbate the imbalances and unevenness of market outcomes.

Three scenarios are presented: one in which tariffs are mutually eliminated; one in which EU-Canada trade expands in line with the historical experience of Canada’s previous FTAs; and one in which tariff elimination is combined with the appreciation of Canada’s currency (versus the euro) which has been experienced in fact since the two parties launched free trade negotiations.  In every case, the bilateral trade balance worsens significantly (and in the third scenario, it worsens dramatically – since the higher Canadian dollar reduces Canadian exports, even as imports from the EU are surging).  Based on average employment intensity across 23 goods-producing industries, the simulations suggest an incremental loss of between 28,000 jobs (in the first scenario) and 150,000 jobs (in the third).  Direct losses in Canadian GDP range between 0.56 percent in the first scenario, and almost 3 percent in the third.

A free trade agreement with the EU will exacerbate Canada’s existing large bilateral deficit, at the expense of output and employment in many important sectors of the economy. 

“If house prices are to fall, there needs to be a mechanism — an excess of supply relative to demand,”

Last year, the Canadian Real Estate Association modified its forecasts at least four times. After initially predicting housing prices would increase in 2011, it now says prices will fall by 1.3 per cent — far below the eye-catching 25 per cent forecast by Capital Economics.

Financial agencies such as the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation, which provides mortgage loan insurance, could also be exposed to significant losses

The Capital Economics forecast is not the first to predict a bubble in the Canadian market. Gluskin Sheff & Associates chief economist David Rosenberg has also predicted a 25 per cent drop in Canadian housing prices, as has The Economist magazine.

As in the U.S., financial innovation and very low interest rates have allowed Canadian consumers to take on more debt, and house prices are high relative to income

However, consumers have remained complacent because low rates are keeping mortgage payments low.

The historical home price-to-income ratio is 3.5, but now it's hovering around the 5.5 mark, meaning average house prices are more than five times the income of workers

corporate tax cuts are not creating jobs or investments, and they are not helping Canadians recover from the global recession

House of Commons committee on poverty released a report proposing a guaranteed basic income for Canadians with disabilities, on the model already available to seniors. The Senate released a similar report this spring calling for a study of how it would work for all low-income Canadians.

Within a year, working with counsellors who helped them with their plans and purchases, nine of the 15 participants were moving to some form of housing. The results were not perfect: A couple of people moved back out of housing again, and at least one was imprisoned. But most spent far less than the money available to them, mostly on clothing, food and rent. On the other hand, one person who chose to remain on the street asked for music lessons, and that was all right too.

Economists continue to bounce the idea around. Two years ago, Canadian researchers started their own chapter of the Basic Income Earth Network (a group founded in Belgium in 1986) to co-ordinate an ongoing discussion. Some say it might actually accomplish what political rhetoric has been promising for years: the eradication of poverty.

In Britain, an experiment was recently conducted with a small group of people who had been living on the streets for more than five years. They were given a budget that they could spend however they wished. The idea was to see whether the “personalized budgets” Britain gives to seniors and people with disabilities to pay for care (which include some conditions) would work for the very poor as well.

In Quebec, a government task force went further, recommending a minimum guaranteed income starting at $12,000 for everyone in the province.

The idea of a guaranteed annual income has been tested before in Canada – in the mid-1970s, in Dauphin, Man., a farming town with then about 10,000 residents. In the only experiment of its kind in North America, every household in Dauphin was given access to a guaranteed annual budget, subject to their income level. For a family of five, payments equalled about $18,000 a year in today's dollars. Politicians primarily wanted to see if people would stop working. While the project was pre-empted by a change in government, a second look by researchers has found that there was only a slight decline in work – mostly among mothers, who chose to stay home with their children, and teenaged boys, who stayed in school longer.

“Very often, services are about getting people off the streets, come what may,” says Joe Batty, who managed the program. “This is about normalizing people.” The program was considered so successful, he says, that the city of London is now providing financial support to expand it.

Evelyn Forget, a researcher in medicine at the University of Manitoba, reports that Dauphin also experienced a 10-per-cent drop in hospital admissions and fewer doctor visits, especially for mental-health issues.

But a guaranteed-annual-income program would be expensive. In developing nations, a small amount of money can bring about big changes. In a country like Canada, the basic income needed to pull everyone out of poverty would have to be larger, balanced against higher taxes.

cost analysis of the Quebec proposal estimated it could run the province as much as $2-billion, including the cost in lost taxes if minimum-wage workers did the math and left those jobs.

Other experts argue that poverty reduction needs to be tailored to individual circumstances, especially in cases involving mental health and addiction.

Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, one of the more vocal proponents of no-strings-attached aid for the poor, points out that the guaranteed-income program for seniors has greatly reduced poverty, especially among women. “There's a bias that when given the chance people will be lazy,” he says. “That's not my sense of reality.” Mr. Segal argues that giving money with no conditions removes the stigma and shame around poverty, allowing people to focus instead on how to improve their lot.

Requiring the poor to prove continually that they are deserving of assistance or threatening to pull help away without notice only discourages the risk-taking and confidence required to get out of poverty.

“If you think of the core premise of charity, it is not to treat people as lesser,” Mr. Segal says. “[It] is to give people a leg-up so they can have some measure of independence and can make some of their own choices.”

To do that effectively, he argues, we need to let them decide the steps they take to get there. Or – as Ms. Gray in Victoria puts it, saying she would go back to school for more training if she could count on covering rent and daycare – give some autonomy back to “people who are trying to be somebody in this world.”

Canadians are doing a better job of managing their credit card debt which was down $25 on a year over year basis to an average of $3,539 at the end of the first quarter

irst quarter data shows a continued increase in the total debt per consumer, although the trend still remains modest compared to the double digit, pre-recession levels

Lines of credit continue to drive debt and are the largest contributor after mortgages, accounting for 41% of the outstanding debt in Canada at the end of the first. Delinquency longer than 90 days were .21%

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The survey interviewed 2,014 people and had a margin of error of 2.2 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

Third of non-retired Canadians report not saving

Many Canadians are not aware of how the economic downturn has impacted their financial situation and continue to load up their credit cards and lines of credit

The report finds that 32 per cent of non-retired respondents said they were not devoting any funds toward saving, even for retirement, up from 25 per cent in 2007

Of those making under $35,000 a year, 49 per cent surveyed reported that their debt levels rose in the last three years. In comparison, 42 per cent of those making $35,000 to $75,000 a year reported their debt levels rose, while 38 per cent of those making over $75,000 annually reported an increase

Personal lines of credit expanded to a new high of $181 billion outstanding in April, an increase of 6.2 per cent year-to-date, and up 20.4 per cent from a year earlier. This type of debt has bloated from $100 billion five years ago and less than $50 billion at the start of the decade.

Personal loans from banks totalled $48.5 billion, up 8.1 per cent from a year earlier, and bank credit-card receivables were up 8.9 per cent at $51.5 billion.

"radical restructuring" of industry, Mr. Tal says, where "much more is being produced with less labour."

In Canada, where overall industrial production has stabilized in recent quarters, manufacturing activity in capital intensive sectors has also outpaced activity in labour intensive sectors, though to a lesser degree than in the U.S

Examples include Canada's chemical, electronics and computer manufacturing sectors that still utilize a much lower capital-to-labour ratio than in the U.S.

The high labour intensity of Canadian manufacturing means that jobs growth here will be relatively stronger during the economic recovery to meet demand, even with a strong Canadian dollar. "However, given the increased prevalence of better-capitalized and more efficient production facilities stateside, Canadian manufacturers will find it even more difficult to compete when the dust settles."

Bank of Canada held its benchmark overnight rate steady at just 1 per cent, citing global uncertainty and the impact of the strong Canadian dollar, but said rates must eventually rise

Annual personal credit growth slowed to a year-over-year pace of 6.4 per cent in April, compared to an average 10.9 per cent in a period spanning 2004 to 2008

The moderation in credit growth has been evident in all measures of debt

The debt-service ratio, the interest households must pay on their debt each month as a share of personal disposable income, climbed to a two-year high of 7.6 per cent in [the first quarter of] 2011, despite still record low interest rates.

still net borrowers, meaning they borrow more than they save

consumer spending will not be the engine of economic growth in the coming quarters and the inevitable future rebalancing of monetary policy will be a shock to many households

some of the drop in household indebtedness is explained by strong income gains, not by debt repayment per se

sustainable personal growth is likely in a range of 4.0-4.5 per cent. Credit continues to grow at a pace that is two percentage points above that

the level of Canadian household debt — which in December officially surpassed those of our neighbours to the south — is unsustainable

total consumer debt load is reported to be about $1.5 trillion

Data released late last year suggested Canadians owed on average $112,000 — a figure that includes all kinds of debt, including mortgages — and a debt-to-income ratio of 150 per cent means they were spending $1,500 for every $1,000 in take-home pay

Factors that will moderate credit growth over the short term include spending fatigue, a soft landing in the housing market, stricter mortgage rules and Canadians preparing for the higher interest rates that are sure to come as the economy recovers.