Not only are we not growing, we are stalled:
Canada's economy is showing clear signs of a slowdown, as after shrinking in June, the total value of all goods and services sold was essentially unchanged in July and August — and likely September, too.
Statistics Canada reported Tuesday that the country's gross domestic product was flat in August, as the service sector expanded a little but output from goods-producing industries shrank.
Canada's GDP in August came in at $2.082 trillion during the month. That's barely ahead of just over $2.081 trillion the previous month.
Final numbers for September are not yet available, but early indicators suggest the trend continued into September. That means there's a good chance that Canada's economy has not grown in any meaningful way since May.
The numbers for August were worse than the slight 0.1 per cent uptick that economists were expecting — and worse than the 0.1 per cent uptick that the data agency had forecast in its preliminary estimate.
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There was a “record spike” in the number of immigrants who left Canada between 2016 and 2019, according to a new study that urged the government to make retaining newcomers a top priority to boost the economy.
On average, 0.9 per cent of people who were granted permanent residence in or after 1982 left Canada each year, according to the study conducted by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC) and the Conference Board of Canada.
However, in 2019, that figure went up to 1.18 per cent, which is 31 per cent higher than the average. There was also a spike in 2017, with the migration rate increasing by 43 per cent, to 1.15 per cent from 0.8 per cent in 2016. Put another way, about 67,000 people left Canada in 2019 and nearly 60,000 in 2017, the report’s researchers said at a press conference on Oct. 31.
This means that an abnormally high number of immigrants who were granted permanent residence between 1982 and 2018 preferred to leave the country between 2016 and 2019. The study also said the number of immigrants leaving the country has generally been on the rise since the 1990s.
“We are now seeing people who are coming to Canada and then saying, ‘Ah, no thanks,’ and moving on,” Daniel Bernhard, ICC’s chief executive, said. “And the number of those people are increasing. We have to believe that the lack of availability of housing, of health care, of other types of services are part of it.”
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An analysis of educational attainment and economic outcomes shows limited evidence of broad systemic racism in Canadian society, despite what anti-racism activists and the mandate letters from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to his cabinet might insist, according to new research from The Aristotle Foundation.
“What this study tries to do is introduce some facts and evidence and logic into trying to (assess) the accuracy of this claim that we’re a systemically racist society,” said Matthew Lau, a senior fellow with the think tank who authored the research paper.
The paper points to weekly earnings of Canadian-born men and women in 2016. White Canadians are at the middle of the pack, earning $1,530 for men and $1,120 for women. In comparison, the average Canadian-born woman with Korean heritage makes $1,450 per week, while the average Canadian-born Black woman makes $1,080 per week. Even when controlling for various factors like education and occupation to produce more direct comparisons, the Statistics Canada data shows five minority groups that earn less than white Canadians (Black, Latin American, Filipino and “Other” racial backgrounds) and five others that out-earn whites (South Asian men, Chinese women, South Asian women, Filipino women, and Southeast Asian women.)
“If you take various minority groups, some of them earn more than the white population, some of them earn less. And that’s roughly what you would expect to see if Canada was a society that did not favour the white population,” Lau said. “If all of our institutions and the way our institutions are set up, set up on this notion that we discriminate against minorities, you would expect to see white people with the highest weekly average earnings.
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Ontario-based Canadian Solar Inc.will build an $800-million solar panel factory insoutheastern Indiana that will employ about 1,200 workers once production isfully ramped up, the company said Monday.
Canadian Solar said it will build the new photovoltaic cell factory at the River Ridge Commerce Center in Jeffersonville, an Ohio River city located just north of Louisville, Kentucky.
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In response to growing concern over Canada’s capacity to welcome more newcomers, the federal government says it will incorporate housing, health care and infrastructure planning with provinces and municipalities when setting the country’s annual immigration targets.
On Tuesday, Immigration Minister Marc Miller unveiled a report on the current state of Canadian immigration — along with a road map for tackling those challenges.
“We aim to build a system that is easier to navigate, with an inclusive and co-ordinated plan that aligns our immigration programs and policies with the needs of the country,” Miller said in a statement released the day before he will table his 2024-26 immigration levels plan.
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