Mas numeros de la conferencia

Sobre las ciudades en Canada. George, if I had been invited I would said exactly the same. Montreal is dead last in income and standard, but hey holds lots of degrees, may be that explains the program to stop nuclear proliferation prepared on a PHD programme, by the driver who took me home last night. read on
(By the way published this morning from McGill University)

Montrealers tops in getting payments from government

KAZI STASTNA
The Gazette

Tuesday, February 10, 2004
From pensions to pogey, Montrealers get more support from government than other big-city Canadians.
And although we’re better educated, we don’t compare well economically with our counterparts in Canada’s other large cities, according to census data.
The data was compiled by sociologist Jack Jedwab for the three-day Challenging Cities in Canada conference that begins tomorrow at the Hotel Omni.
Montreal outperforms both Vancouver and Calgary – as well as Edmonton, Victoria and other cities – in terms of the proportion of residents who hold university degrees: 22 per cent.
Yet among the 12 cities Jedwab examined, Montreal had the highest unemployment rate (10 per cent in 2003), the highest incidence of low-income households (22 per cent in 2001) and the highest proportion of residents receiving some government assistance (14 per cent in 2001).
(Statistics Canada defines a «low-income household» as one that spends 70 per cent or more of its total income on food, shelter and clothing.)
In comparison, Toronto had an unemployment rate of 8 per cent in 2003. As well, in 2001, it had only 16.7 per cent of its residents on low income and 9.5 per cent receiving government support – old-age security, employment insurance benefits, welfare payments, child benefits, veterans’ allowances and the like.
Quebec City, which in 2003 had a lower unemployment rate than Montreal and Toronto – 6.9 per cent – still had 13 per cent of residents getting government assistance and about 19 per cent of households on low income.
The reliance on government payments in this province could be partly explained by Quebec’s higher proportion of seniors, Jedwab said. Montreal is second to Victoria in this regard, with about 14 per cent of the population age 65 or older, vs. roughly 17 per cent in Victoria.
Montreal and Quebec City also rank behind other large Canadian cities in terms of average employment income.
Full-time employees in Montreal earn $41,763 a year, on average, while in Toronto they make $50,516 and in Calgary $49,018.
The best-off workers live in Ottawa, where average employment income is $53,520 a year.