Current Affairs
Health reform has been talked about enough.
The need to reform Canada’s health-care systems has long been a hot topic of debate. After all, Canada is an easy target. It has one of the highest price tags among countries with universal health systems in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, but its performance has lagged for years.
The effect of the poor performance of Canada’s health-care systems on the lives of patients is bad enough, but now the lack of capacity is interfering with the daily lives of all Canadians. Indeed, the (re-)re-introduction of strict public health measures in several provinces in response to the Omicron wave has been repeatedly justified by our health systems’ lack of capacity.
So how do we fix them? On one side of the debate, there are those who believe throwing more money at the problem would be a miraculous cure. Unfortunately, several provincial premiers seem to be of this opinion, with their plea to substantially increase the Canadian health transfer.
And yet, health-care spending in Canada has increased at an average yearly pace of over seven per cent since 1975, without delivering better results for patients. In fact, 55 per cent of Canadians believe the additional amounts of money injected over the past decade have either had no effect at all or actually worsened their health-care system. At this point, spending even more taxpayer dollars would simply be placing our health systems on an artificial respirator…read more.
Canada’s central bank is holding interest rates at 0.25 per cent, but warns that increases will be coming to combat high inflation.
On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada (BOC) maintained interest rates at their current levels, despite the economy having recovered from the pandemic, including job numbers returning to pre-pandemic levels by the end of last year. In its decision, the bank says global recovery remains uneven and the Omicron variant continues to cause supply chain bottlenecks.
Inflation rose to 4.8 per cent in December for the first time since 1991. The bank argues the causes of high inflation — such as supply chain shortages — are temporary and will ease to three per cent by the end of 2022.
“Interest rates need to increase to control inflation,” Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.
“Canadians should expect a rising path for interest rates. We are committed to bringing inflation back to target.”…read more.
Cryptocurrencies rebounded strongly on Tuesday, breaking a string of heavy losses over the previous few days and defying broad weakness on the stock market.
Financial markets have experienced wild volatility as investors await the outcome of the Federal Reserve’s first policy meeting of the year this week. Investors will scour policymakers’ comments to gauge how quickly the central bank is likely to raise interest rates this year and withdraw the economic stimulus put in place during the depths of the pandemic.
The era of ultra-low interest rates and benign inflation appear to be coming to an end, which has rattled the asset classes that benefit most from this combination, such as technology stocks and speculative assets like bitcoin. The Nasdaq 100 index of tech stocks is now firmly in correction territory, while bitcoin is now worth less than half of what it was when it hit a record of around $69,000 in November.
Leading digital currency bitcoin was up 8% in the last 24 hours to $36,455, having hit a six-month low below $33,000, which analysts said may leave it vulnerable to another selloff. Ether was up 7% on the day at around $2,417, but was still nursing a weekly loss of 23%, according to CoinMarketCap…read more.
Renewable sources of energy are expected to replace fossil fuels over the coming decades, and this large-scale transition will have a downstream effect on the demand of raw materials. More green energy means more wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries needed, and more clean energy metals necessary to build these technologies.
This visualization, based on data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), illustrates where the extraction and processing of key metals for the green revolution take place.
It shows that despite being the world’s biggest carbon polluter, China is also the largest producer of most of the world’s critical minerals for the green revolution.
China produces 60% of all rare earth elements used as components in high technology devices, including smartphones and computers.
The country also has a 13% share of the lithium production market, which is still dominated by Australia (52%) and Chile (22%). The highly reactive element is key to producing rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops, and electric vehicles…read more.
Canadian real estate is now some of the most expensive in the world. Home prices across the country, not in pricey hubs, are now comically overvalued. At this point, not even a major housing crash can restore affordability. Many think this is pandemic-related, but overvaluation has long been a concern. For at least a decade, the central bank, government, and various agencies have rung the alarms. Let’s go through some of the numbers and see what price points they felt were a concern, and proceeded to do nothing.
More Than Half Of Canadian Households Couldn’t Buy A Home Today
First, let’s start where the Canadian real estate market is currently sitting. The composite benchmark, (a.k.a. a typical home) was $798,200 in December, up 27.8% from a year before. It is at an all-time high for both price and annual growth. How does this stack up with household incomes?
National Bank of Canada’s latest estimate shows a down payment and income are far out of reach for most. A median household needs 6 years of savings for a down payment, double the average from 2000. Even if you have the down payment, incomes need to rise 88% higher to qualify for a mortgage. More than half of the country has zero chance of qualifying for a mortgage.
Good thing more than half of the country already owns a home, so this is just a problem for young people. To complicate the issue further, the academic-led non-profit Generation Squeeze highlights income disparity. When you say median income, you’re also referencing more established and older households. The median buyer looking to get into the market makes much less. On an inflation-adjusted basis, people between 25 and 34 years of age make less than they did in the 1970s. Affordability is rough for everyone, but try being at the bottom of experience and skill…read more.
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