Your concerns about poverty in Canada are well-founded, Sawzaw. It's particularly dire in Native Canadian communities in the rural North where there is a terribly high suicide rate, unemployment, juvenile crime, and other family problems, not to mention a lot of drug use.

My town of Orillia has quite a reputation for its high population of unwed mothers. You see these waifs pushing their babies around in little carriages downtown. Where are the teenage fathers? God knows...but they probably wouldn't be any good at raising their offspring anyway in most cases, so perhaps it's better that those young mothers are on their own.

Then there's the problem of jobs. There ain't many! You can get a job flipping burgers, mind you, although the competition is fierce.

Yes, the financial strains that are afflicting the entire western world have certainly made their presence known in this country, no doubt about it.

The ever-sinking American dollar has caused our Canadian dollar to get stronger and stronger. It's now at about parity with the American dollar. You might think that would be good for Canada....it's not. It causes all our exports (the majority of which are to the USA) to become less competitive and it causes Canadian to buy more American goods. The more threadbare and shaky the American economy gets, the stronger our Canadian dollar gets, and the worse that makes it for everybody.

Yuck. I imagine the Chinese are not so happy about it either, as it must be affecting them in a similar manner.

When did you ever get the idea that I think everything is perfect in Canada??? ;-) It's just relatively kind of nice here, what with our universal health care, but it's certainly not perfect.