Single-Parent Families

Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a trend among Canadians toward fewer marriages. The result is that more children are being raised in common-law relationships or by single parents. The trend toward common-law relationships has been especially pronounced in Quebec. But are there regional differences across Canada with respect to single-parent families?

As the map and tables illustrate, the percentage of families led by a single parent is far higher…

Life Expectancy at Birth

By international standards, a child born in Canada this year can expect to live a good, long life. Whatever the method used to predict life expectancy, Canada always ranks in or near the top 10 list of countries for this indicator, with an average life expectancy of about 81 years. According to the Conference Board's How Canada Performs rankings, this puts Canada in seventh place, behind such countries as Japan, Switzerland, and Australia, but ahead of the United…

Electors Per Electoral District (2008 Election)

The concept that people should be equally represented in Parliament regardless of where in the country they live ("representation by population") is somewhat more complicated to implement in Canada than it may first appear.

Elections Canada provides an interesting history of the development of the formula that is currently used to determine the allocation of seats in the House of Commons. Over the years, there have been considerations for…

Daily Smokers (percentage of adult population)

Ever-increasing taxes on tobacco, anti-smoking campaigns in the media, health warnings, and graphic images of smoking-related diseases on cigarette packs have helped to reduce smoking in Canada over the past few decades.

But as the smoke clears in Southern Canada, things aren't getting better in the North. In some communities in Northern Quebec, for example, the share of smokers is 10 times higher than it is in communities in Southern British…

Death From Unintentional Injuries

They are words that family and friends dread: "There has been an accident."

Deaths caused by "unintentional injury" (as defined by Statistics Canada) can be the result of various types of incidents--motor vehicle collisions, falls, drowning, burns, poisoning. These dangers confront Canadians from coast to coast to coast on a daily basis.

But is one part of the country more dangerous than others? We know that urban and suburban areas are generally safer than…

1999-2008 Percentage Growth in GDP per Capita (2002 $)

Canada's economy changed a lot between 1999 and 2009, starting with a stock market collapse that stretched from 2000 to 2002, followed by a resource-led recovery over the next few years, and ending with a world-wide recession that began in 2008.

The map Land of Opportunity showed us that GDP per capita was highest in Canada's northwestern regions in 2009, largely because a relatively low number of people are extracting great value from…

2009 GDP Per Capita

Many of the maps in this series so far have described the sharp socio-economic dividing line that Canada's North-South boundary usually represents. Almost always, social and economic conditions are worse in the North. But fortunes can change--as they have with the relatively recent discovery of diamonds in the Northwest Territories and nickel in Northern Newfoundland and Labrador.

Natural resource extraction can have a huge effect on GDP per capita because it takes…

Males as a Percentage of the Total Population (2006 Census)

At the time of the 2006 census, Canada was 48.95 per cent male. But do demographic, economic, and geographic factors play out across Canada to make some places more "male" or "female" than others? As shown on the map and in the table, they do. Canada's North is more male than its South.

The highest percentage of males is in Census Division 16, in northeastern Alberta's oil sands country, where almost 54 per cent of the population is…

Doctors per 10,000 Population (2006 Census)

It's no medical secret--Canada suffers from a shortage of doctors. But while the shortage is an issue of national concern, the pain is not felt evenly across the country.

Canadian Medical Association president Jeff Turnbull notes that while we "lag behind other developed countries" in terms of our physician-to-resident ratio, there is a "serious lack" of physicians in many of the country's rural areas. Dr. Turnbull points to the Northwest…