Online Edition: Friday, January 5, 2007 12:45 AM
Published: Friday, January 5, 2007 12:00 AM Page B2
How do poor families spend so much more money than they earn? By one measure -- the National Council of Welfare -- the average poor Canadian family spends $4,855 a year more than the $14,366 it receives as income, a difference of 33 per cent. By another measure -- the Fraser Institute -- the average poor Canadian family spends $9,370 more than the $9,114 it receives as income, a difference of more than 100 per cent.
Online Edition: Wednesday, January 3, 2007 07:22 AM
Published: Wednesday, January 3, 2007 12:00 AM Page B2
A year ago, in his annual ranking of economic surprises, Stephen Poloz, chief economist at Export Development Canada, nominated -- as ''surprise of the year'' -- the retail price of DVD players. In the autumn of 2005, Mr. Poloz observed, you could buy a DVD player for $39.
He described it as an event of ''profound significance.''
Published: Friday, December 29, 2006 12:00 AM Page B2
Deirdre McCloskey, the controversial Chicago economic historian, writes with elegant, yet direct, first-person intimacy.''I bring you good news about our bourgeois lives,'' Ms.
McCloskey says in her 21st book, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. ''I preach here an apology for capitalism in its American form.'' With remarkable economy of words and without a single direct reference, she here binds capitalism and Christianity together -- the Greek word gospel means good news, and the Greek word apologia, in Christian theology, means the giving of reasons.
Published: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 12:00 AM Page B2
Canadians like to think that they are an exceptionally giving and compassionate people -- especially when compared with Americans. Alas, along with the rest of the world, we are not. Americans donate more than twice as much as Canadians -- in money and time -- to charitable causes.
They give $900 (U.S.) per person.
We give $400 (Canadian) per person (Quebeckers give $175, the least of any province or territory -- 0.6 per cent of average household incomes).
Online Edition: Friday, December 22, 2006 07:09 AM
Published: Friday, December 22, 2006 12:00 AM Page B2
The biblical Abraham was a rich man, depicted in the old legends as a nomadic Arabian chieftain with large flocks of sheep, goats and cattle and with enough retainers and slaves to mount military expeditions.
His great contribution to history was itself an act of exchange: monotheism for land. In his covenant with Yahweh, made perhaps 3,800 years ago, Abraham pledged fidelity to God in exchange for Canaan, the strip of land that his descendants possess today as Israel. Whether regarded as a seminal national leader or as a historic religious reformer, he remains a central, iconic figure for Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Online Edition: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 07:28 AM
Published: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 12:00 AM Page B2
In one of his early acts as Liberal Party Leader, Stephane Dion has appointed a Women's Candidate Search Director to find women to run as Liberal candidates in the next election. He needs 102.8 women to meet his objective, 33 per cent of all 308 Liberal candidates.
In the last election, early this year, 79 women ran as Liberals, 25 per cent of all Liberal candidates. (Twenty-one of them won.) The 2006 election, however, confirmed men's traditional electoral advantage.
On a comprehensive, all-party basis, women had a success rate of 16.8 per cent in the last election; men had a success rate of 19.3 per cent.
In meeting his equality goal, all else equal, Mr. Dion runs a statistical risk of depriving himself of a couple of seats and, perhaps, the opportunity of forming a government.
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