Tag: economics

News Politics

Viola Desmond On New Canadian $10 Bill

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Canadian hero Viola Desmond is the face on the new $10 bill in Canada, which goes into circulation at the end of March.

Viola Desmond was thrown in jail in Nova Scotia in 1946 because, in a movie theatre, she wanted to sit downstairs where the white people were allowed to sit. She didn’t want to sit up in the balcony, where the black people had to sit. The police held her in jail overnight. The dignified and brave Desmond paid a fine of $20 the next day, even though she had done nothing wrong. Today, we think of her for being a brave advocate for the rights of African-Canadians and helping to inspire the human rights movement in Canada.

It is a great honour to have your face on a country’s money. This is the first time an African-Canadian woman has been featured on Canadian paper money.

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News Politics

Canada Makes A New Trade Deal With The EU

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Canada has a new deal with the European Union. The agreement is expected to increase the amount of trade between Canada and many countries in Europe.

Trade, in this case, is when one country buys something from another country and vice-versa.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said the new deal could increase trade by 20 per cent, beginning in 2015, and add $12-billion to Canada’s income (the money it makes) each year.

The new trade deal is called CETA, which stands for Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement.

It is expected to create 80,000 new jobs in Canada.

Canada and the European Union have been working on the new trade deal for the past four years.

Canada’s largest trading partner is the United States, but increased trade with other partners is good so Canada is not as dependent on any single country.

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News

Canada’s Economists Need To Improve Their Writing Skills: Report

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It’s important to be able to write clearly. Some of Canada’s economists are finding out just how important.

An “internal report card” gave mediocre grades to economists at the Bank of Canada on their writing skills.

The Bank of Canada is Canada’s central, or main, bank. “Economists” at the Bank of Canada are in charge of making sure Canada’s economy is healthy.

Every once in awhile, organizations like the Bank of Canada take a look at how well they’re doing.

Just like school report cards, they grade themselves in many different areas so they can see where they need to improve.

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News

New Designs For Canadian $5 And $10 Bills “Cartoonish” And “Outdated”

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The Bank of Canada is ready to show people what its new polymer $5 and $10 bills will look like.

But according to a report, some people say the new bills look too cartoonish or outdated.

The report was obtained by a news service called Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The report says that the Bank asked focus groups what they thought about the look of newly designed $5 and $10 bills.

The people in the focus groups said they thought the space images on the bill looked too childish.

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News

Volunteering In Canada Worth More Than $50-Billion

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In Canada, more than 13.3 million people volunteer. That means that on their own time, and without being paid, they work on a project to help others in some way.

This week (April 21 to 27) is National Volunteer Week in Canada, according to an organization called Volunteer Canada.

In a recent report, two economists* have put a dollar figure on all of that volunteering.

Volunteering creates $50-billion in economic value every year for Canadians, Craig Alexander and Sonya Gulati, economists with the TD Bank, say in a report.

They call volunteering “the life-blood that keeps (many organizations) running.”

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Politics

Cyprus The Latest Country To Get A Bailout

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Cyprus is the latest country to require a financial “bailout” from other European countries to keep its banks and economy from collapsing.

Like Greece, which was bailed out of an economic crisis last year, Cyprus is one of 17 countries in Europe that uses a type of currency, or money, called the Euro.

The problems for Cyprus began with the country’s banks, which loaned money to people who didn’t pay it back. Governments of other countries that use the Euro became nervous that Cyprus banks would fail if they were re-paid, and that the problems could spread to their countries.

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News Politics

The Euro’s Tenth Birthday Not A Happy One

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This year, the “euro” celebrates its tenth anniversary.

The euro is a unit of money (or “currency”) that is used by 17 countries in Europe.

It wasn’t always that way.

Before the euro, every country had its own currency.

For instance, France had the franc, Italy had the lira, Germany had the Deutschmark and so on.

The euro was created in 2002 when a group of European politicians and financial leaders decided it would be helpful if they had the same type of money.

The idea of the euro was to make it easier for countries to buy and sell more easily between themselves, because they would all be using the same currency.

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News Politics

Gap Between Rich-Poor Growing: OECD

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Canada’s rich people are getting richer and the country’s poor people are getting poorer.

That’s because the gap — or distance — between the amount of money the richest and poorest people earn at their jobs is widening.

The richest Canadians earn 10 times more than the poorest.

That means if the average rich person earns about $100,000 a year, the poorest earns only about $10,000 for a whole year.

A new report by an international organization called the OECD* said the same thing has been happening in many countries including the United States.

It has been happening since the 1990s, before the new millennium.

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News Politics

What’s Happening In Europe?

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A number of countries in Europe are having problems with their finances and their leaders.

This year, four prime ministers in Europe have quit their jobs or been forced out of office.

That’s because their countries have spent more money than they make and now they can’t pay their debts.

Some of the countries are making deals with other countries in Europe and the International Monetary Fund for a “bailout.”

A bailout is a loan to a country to keep it from going bankrupt.

The richer countries agree to put in more money to save the poorer countries.

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News

Canada Trading More With India, China

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Canada has always done a lot of trading with the United States, the biggest buyer of the products and natural resources it sells.

But now companies in Canada are finding other countries to trade with, like India and China.

A new report written by experts at one of Canada’s biggest banks says that by the end of this decade — the year 2020 — Canada will only trade about 60 per cent of its goods with its neighbouring country, the United States. That’s down from 75 per cent right now.

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