Country rankings for trade, business, fiscal, monetary, financial, labor and investment freedoms

Country rankings for trade, business, fiscal, monetary, financial, labor and investment freedoms

Canada ranks high on 'better life index'

Canadians make more, work less, are happier with their lives and better educated than most residents of the 34 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a new index suggests.

The OECD launched the "better life index" Tuesday, which allows comparisons between the member countries that go beyond the traditional economic measures, such as gross domestic product.

"Canada performs exceptionally well in measures of well-being," the agency said, citing statistics such as:

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  Nearly four out of five Canadians are satisfied with their lives, compared with three out of five for the OECD as a whole.
• Average Canadian household income of $27,015 US in 2008, more than $4,700 above the OECD average.
• Nearly 72 per cent of Canadians 15 to 64 have a paid job, above the OECD average of 65 per cent.
• Canadians work 40 hours a year (a work week) less than the OECD average.
• About 87 per cent of Canadians have the equivalent of a high-school diploma, much higher than the OECD average of 73 per cent.
• Life expectancy in Canada is 80.7 years, a year above the OECD average.
• The level of atmospheric PM10, tiny particles that are small enough to damage the lungs, is 15 micrograms per cubic metre, lower than the OECD average of 22.

But in terms of voter turnout, "a measure of public trust in government and of citizens' participation in the political process," Canada ranks at 60 per cent, below the OECD average of 72 per cent.

P.O.V.

What makes you happy about living in Canada?

Canada's rankings are based on assigning an equal weight to each of 11 topics. But using the OECD's interactive index, individuals can adjust the weight of the topics and create their own index. The 11 items are housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life balance.

The index "has extraordinary potential to help us deliver better policies for better lives,” said OECD secretary general Angel Gurría.

It's part of an OECD plan to measure well-being and progress.

The organization includes many European countries, the U.S., Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

Related articles

• Canada ranks high on 'better life index' (cbc.ca)
• Canadians trail only Aussies in quality of life: Study (windsorstar.com)
• Is everybody happy? Canada scores well on OECD index (theglobeandmail.com)
• Canadians can’t complain: Better Life Index (theglobeandmail.com)
• There's more to life than gross domestic product (theglobeandmail.com)
• Britain has good quality of life study finds (telegraph.co.uk)
• OECD Looks to Compare Happiness Across Nations (blogs.wsj.com)
• OECD Report: How to Measure Life Satisfaction (time.com)
• OECD Better Life Index: Comparing the Well-Being of Countries by Flowers (infosthetics.com)
• Better Life Index measures well-being across countries (flowingdata.com)

Gearing up for a new labour crunch

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE - The Globe and Mail

Canada’s oil patch is scrambling to bring back foreign workers, desperate to avoid a repeat of the labour crunch that clobbered the industry three years ago.

With oil prices hovering at a lofty $100 (U.S.) a barrel, new discoveries scarce and Asian energy demand on the rise, Canadian companies are taking every measure to ensure oil sands projects aren’t slowed down by labour shortages. The federal government has resumed granting approval for companies to fly in trades workers from other countries. And labour recruiters are drafting corporate international hiring plans and reopening skills training centres to prepare workers in places like Mexico to come to Canada.

The surge in hiring comes amid forecasts that Alberta will need tens of thousands of new workers in coming years as it attempts to cope with a spending spree expected to top the heights of the last boom, which peaked when crude hit $147 a barrel in 2008. Then, a shortage of workers and soaring labour costs caused widespread pain, bringing delays, multibillion-dollar increases to project costs and shoddy work that has plagued newly built facilities.

Companies have since instituted labour caps, chopped projects into smaller sizes that are easier to manage, committed to finish engineering before building, and hired overseas firms to manufacture key components. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is even promising to halt major construction from Dec. 15 to Feb. 1, a time when cold weather and holidays hurt productivity.

But for all those efforts, the industry is again hurtling into a situation that may prove worse than last time. The oil sands have attracted major spending commitments from some of the world’s largest petroleum companies, including giants from Europe, the U.S. and Asia. The vast, known oil reserves in the Fort McMurray area have proven a powerful lure.

The result is a tide of spending that is now hitting Alberta’s bitumen-rich boreal forest. Wildfires have recently forced production shutdowns and affected project construction in some areas, but the interruptions are expected to be temporary.

In 2008, oil sands capital spending hit about $18-billion (Canadian). Projections by Calgary-based investment dealer Peters & Co. suggest industry will surpass that level by next year. By 2014, the firm forecasts capital spending will exceed 2008 levels by nearly 25 per cent.

The Alberta government says the province will be short 77,000 workers in the next 10 years. The Petroleum Human Resources Council has predicted up to 130,000 new workers will be needed in the coming decade, both to staff new jobs and replace retirements.

For Flint Energy Services Ltd., the pinch is already on. The project construction, oilfield transportation and equipment design company has brought in 20 Filipino insulators this year. It has authority from the federal government to bring in 60 more foreign workers, and expects to apply for more later this year.

“Everybody’s got a bit of a guess at all of this, but the numbers are like nothing we’ve seen before,” said international recruitment lead Brent Guthrie. “Whereas Flint was bringing in hundreds in 2008, an expectation of going to 1,000 is not unheard of going forward … The local market gets burned out quite quickly on these major projects, and then everybody’s scrambling.”

PCL Industrial Contractors Inc., the arm of the construction giant that is heavily involved in building the oil sands, hit 350 temporary foreign workers in the last boom. Today it has little more than a dozen, but is laying plans for a spree starting early next year that far outstrips the past.

“We’re looking at the 1,000-person mark for a prolonged period, probably peaking in late 2012,” said Gary Truhn, the company’s director of construction and labour relations. “We think there’s some major projects that are going to be there for quite a while.”

The hiring will begin months before, however. Depending on the country of origin – a factor that affects the speed of visa processing at local embassies – it can take between four and six months to gain government approval to bring in a foreign worker. That’s why companies are working now to start the process.

In the first four months of this year, Alberta companies applied to bring in 9,910 temporary foreign workers, according to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

Peter Veress, president of immigration consultants Vermax Group Inc., recently set up a new training centre in Saltillo, Mexico. In early May, it welcomed its first group of workers to a course designed to impart safety, language and other skills to pipe-fitters and welders before they head north.

“Companies are a little more proactive this time around. They don’t want to get caught like they did last time around,” he said.

It’s not cheap, though. Between paperwork, training and travel, it can easily cost $10,000 to bring in a temporary foreign worker. And in Alberta, hiring can be uncertain. Workers in certified trades have a year to pass Red Seal exams in their area of specialty. If they can’t, they must go back home.

For those who have found work in Canada, the resurrection of temporary foreign worker hiring is cause for celebration. Luis Arce, from Pachuca, just north of Mexico City, first came to Alberta in 2008 to work in the concrete industry. He was laid off in 2009, but had made enough to buy his first house. In the months of unemployment that followed, however, he began to despair that he would lose it – until, last September, he was called back to Canada to work as an electrician in Edmonton.

“I’m happy, because I know the work is good – and the pay is very good,” he said. “Working in Canada, I make in one day what I would make in a week in Mexico.”

But the hiring of foreign workers is fraught with controversy.

On the East Coast, where many trade and construction workers remain unemployed, the mention of overseas hiring rankles.

“We have probably 150 guys on the out-of-work list,” said Ian MacIsaac, business representative for local 1178 of the Nova Scotia & PEI Regional Council of Carpenters, Millwrights & Allied Workers, which has 240 members.

Temporary foreign worker “is a bad word to me,” he said.

The Alberta government is starting to feel the same way. It recently released a strategy to keep older workers in the labour pool. Thomas Lukaszuk, Minister of Employment and Immigration, has called on Ottawa to shrink employment insurance eligibility in other provinces, in hopes of compelling workers from elsewhere in Canada to come to Alberta. He also wants authority for the province to nominate far more foreign workers to become permanent residents.

“We will be severely short on workers, not [just] the next few years but the next few decades,” he said.

Canada's The Indus Entrepreneurs turning Indian immigrants into millionaires

TORONTO: The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) in Canada is making its mark by turning struggling Indian immigrants into successful entrepreneurs. 

Under its mentorship programme, TiE Toronto has turned million-dollar dreams of many budding entrepreneurs into reality. "Many of the entrepreneurs we have mentored for the past 10 have created multi-million-dollar companies in a matter of years,'' TiE Toronto president Suresh Madan told media . 

Giving the latest example of successful entrepreneurs mentored by Indian techies, Madan said: "Just last November, Indo-Canadian Haroon Mirza sold his start-up Cognovision to Intel for $25 million. An engineering graduate, Mirza had a vision, but he didn't know how to go about it. 

"So he came to TiE in 2006 and our people guided him to set up his company. By 2010, he became a multi-millionaire when Intel bought his company.'' 

Cognovision, which created a unique software to measure customer attention span on a particular product while browsing in a superstore, was also chosen 'Canada's 2009 Innovation Leader.' 

"Cognovision's software helps advertisers and product companies to know which product is getting how much attention from customers,'' Madan said. 

According to him, another entrepreneur mentored by TiE has just sold his company - Ecologic Engineering - for eight million dollars. "Considering that two of the entrepreneurs mentored by us have sold their companies for millions in the last six months shows that TiE mentoring has been very successful in Canada.'' 

"At TiE, we - a group of successful entrepreneurs - have come together to give back to the community. Rather than donating at temples or charities, we have decided to do something practical to help budding entrepreneurs,'' he said. 

Currently, 75 TiE members are mentoring 400 budding entrepreneurs - more than 75 percent of whom are Indo-Canadians. 

"At 40, when you land here as an immigrant, you either update your skills and join some job at the bottom or become an entrepreneur. That's what TiE is teaching so that new immigrants become their own masters,'' the TiE chief said. 

Vancouver Housing Prices Pass New York and London as Chinese ‘Move’ In

By TraderMark May 17, 2011, 2:31 PM Author's Website  

Pardon the pun in the title, simply could not resist.

Quite a fascinating article in Bloomberg, as it seems the recent clampdown on property in China has led many to head east (well …..to the “west”) spiking the already red hot Vancouver housing market.  One that already had the warning flags last summer. One (of a myriad) of reasons you could see the U.S. housing market getting out of control was the complete disassociation between median incomes and housing prices. To say this has happened as well in Canada – and especially Vancouver – is an understatement.  That said, they have the same very loose monetary policy, and an influx of buyers – many of them cash – from outside the country itself, so it is definitely setting up an interesting scenario.   One wonders what happens when their central bank actually begins to raise rates in earnest.

At this point, using the measure above (median household income to median price), Vancouver is now more expensive than New York or London.  And I am sure a lot less investment bankers work there, than in either of those 2 locales.

Some of the growth measures in this story seem nearly impossible – looks like some mass herding effect out of China and into Canada…

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• Vancouver’s Royal Pacific Realty had such a surge of business during the first two weeks of February that agents and assistants worked day and night shifts to find homes for Chinese buyers visiting during the Lunar New Year.  “It was unprecedented,” said Royal Pacific Chief Executive Officer David Choi.
• Sales of detached homes, townhouses and condominiums in metropolitan Vancouver jumped 70 percent in February from January, to 3,097 units from 1,819, and were up 25 percent from a year earlier. In March, sales climbed 32 percent from February. Sales increased by 80 percent from two years ago.
• Buyers from mainland China are leading a wave of Asian investment in Vancouver real estate as China tries to damp property speculation at home. Good schools, a marine climate and the large, established Asian community as a result of Canada’s liberal immigration policy make Vancouver attractive, said Cathy Gong, who moved from Shanghai to the Shaughnessy neighborhood on Vancouver’s Westside about three years ago.
• China, where home prices rose 28 percent in Beijing and 26 percent in Shanghai last year, has taken steps to curb property speculation within its borders.  Premier Wen Jiabao placed curbs on mortgage lending, boosted down-payment requirements and limited the number of purchases.
• In 2010, Vancouver had the third-highest housing costs among English-speaking cities worldwide. Only Hong Kong and Sydney, another magnet of Asian immigration, were more expensive.
• Vancouver’s median home price of C$602,000 ($618,000) was 9.5 times the annual median household income of C$63,100. Canada had a 4.6 national multiple, making it “seriously unaffordable,” while the U.S. at 3.3 was “moderately unaffordable,” the study showed. To be affordable, the multiple must be 3 or less.
• Vancouver was more expensive than San Francisco, London and New York by that measure.
• Unlike London or New York, “we don’t have enough jobs with high incomes to justify” the home prices, said Ladner. He noted Australia has placed restrictions on foreign home ownership.
• Holidays in China have been a popular time to look for houses in Vancouver. Sales picked up in October during China’s weeklong national holiday, said Winnie Chung, a Royal Pacific agent who represented buyers or sellers in C$285 million of home sales in 2009 and 2010 combined.

• Mainland Chinese are buying houses primarily in Vancouver’s Westside, boosting the median sales price to C$2 million in the district known for its wide boulevards, beaches, expansive parks and stucco Tudor mansions.
• “Our office has done 50 sales this year, which is pretty incredible,” said Vancouver realtor Tom Gradecak at his office in Point Grey, where he has one colleague who speaks Mandarin and Cantonese and is hiring a second. “Half of those sales are from mainland China.”
• Some buyers acquire multiple homes, one to live in and others for investment, said Chung, the broker. Her clients made their money in a variety of businesses, she said, including mining, stainless steel manufacturing and real estate. About 10 percent of them speak English, she said.
• Westside home prices rose 77 percent during the past five years through April amid the housing collapse in the U.S.
• In 2010, the average home price in greater Vancouver rose 14 percent from 2009.
• The current group of Chinese homebuyers in Vancouver is the third “wave” from Asia since 1990, following Taiwanese and Hong Kong immigration, said Manyee Lui, a veteran Vancouver realtor. “People from mainland China are the new immigrants,” Lui said.
• Chinese buyers frequently are absentee owners, wealthy businessmen who buy second or third houses for their wives and children while continuing to live in China for work.   “You see a lot of these satellite families,” said Chow. He said it’s not unusual to see college-age kids of wealthy Chinese parents driving Bentleys, Maseratis and Porsches around the Westside.
• Low interest rates inflated home prices and created a bubble, said Lawrence Wong, an immigration lawyer with many Chinese clients. “There is this psychological fear that ‘Ok, if I don’t get into the market, I might not be able to get in later on,” said Wong.

Fun random fact….

• Starting about 18 months ago, so many homeowners applied to change the last two digits of their addresses to remove or shift the number 4, which in Chinese sounds like the word for death, or add the numeral 8, which is considered lucky, that Vancouver began turning down some requests, said Bonnie Lee, addressing coordinator for the city.