award tour

Canada’s Housing Bubble : An Accident Waiting to Happen. Report by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. Some interesting data on migration, income, and GDP for Toronto and Vancouver.

It’s 2010 and Canadians pay the highest cell phone bills in the world | Wirelessnorth.ca. who doesn’t love a graph of average annual cell phone bill as a percentage of GDP per capita versus cell phone penetration.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Public Pensions and Our Fiscal Future – WSJ.com. “Toughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits”. yikes! Think that’s bad, Ontario has 10 times as much debt per capita.

GROW 2010. I wish I had known about this conference. great single-track line-up and the third day is a choice of outdoor activity. what a great idea!

ING DIRECT Canada: Chequing. ING launched a fee-free chequing account. Free email money transfers too. Maybe this will put some pressure on the big banks in Canada.

The Charity 100 | MoneySense. some really interesting data on how well run different Canadian charities are run. Some really terrible results like the Heart And Stroke Foundation of Ontario : only 55% of money raised goes to programs and they spend $6 to raise every $10.

Wal-Mart moves into retail banking in Canada. not that i’m a fan of wal-mart but any new competition right now is a good thing. Article mentions that it took 2 years for regulators to approve the request.

Crack Shack or Mansion?. try to tell the difference between certified crack houses and houses that cost over $1M in vancouver. hilarious.

Jim Flaherty blasted for $3,100 flight – thestar.com. He took a private flight to London, Ontario to do a photo-op at a Tim Horton’s and talk about controlling government expenses. How many press conferences does the government need to do at Tim Horton’s? And there wasn’t a Tim Horton’s in Ottawa available?

What If Everybody in Canada Flushed At Once?. a graph of water consumption in Edmonton during the gold medal hockey game. people were really holding it until intermission.

Four Seconds – thestar.com. a frame by frame breakdown of Crosby’s gold medal goal.

36 hours in Vancouver – NYTimes.com. Vij’s & Rangoli are going to be so stupidly busy for the next 3 weeks. People line up there before the restaurant opens on a normal day let along during the olympics.

Snow & Ashes – Trailer. interesting looking canadian film about war reporters.

HSBC Business Direct: HSBC Bank Canada. a no fee chequing account for small businesses in Canada. holy crap, i just saw a flying pig!

CBC News – U.S. Steel challenges Investment Canada Act. the gov is suing them over not keeping employment levels they agreed to when they bought Stelco.

Proroguing Parliament – a travesty, yet clever – The Globe and Mail. Mr. Harper in 2002 talking about the Liberal government: “The government will prorogue the House so that it will not be held accountable for its shameful record”

Not a Tax Grab After All: CCPA report on HST | Canadian Capitalist. nice commentary on the sheer hysteria around the HST and a report for the Center for Policy Alternatives calling it a good policy change.

Edmonton shatters cold record. minus 46 outside the city. that doesn’t even include the wind chill. dear lord.