Statistics Canada Reports II

[theman23]

Originally Posted by Architype

That price is skewed towards newer vehicles, likely those just one or two years old. Also, AFAIK, in BC (maybe not other provinces) vehicles do not require any inspection. Air care emissions tests, and safety tests, were done away with years ago. Used vehicles purchased outside the province do need inspection though. Like many other things, our vehicle regulations are not very consistent across Canada.

I'm really struggling to figure out what point you're making here. That vehicle likely has bald tires, worn out breaks, and a battery that'll die the first time you stop at the gas station. A safety inspection is a common cash grab from a dealership but also a potential liability, even in provinces that don't require it. If they're refusing to do it, its because they know it wont pass the inspection.

The CPI has generally underestimated the inflation rate for poorer and younger Canadians, who don't benefit from owning large assets whose disposition keeps the cost of living affordable even when actual prices have gone up far more than the interest rate. This is particularly relevant with an increasingly aging population.

For example, a middle-aged Canadian that owns a car might balk at a new car for $50k that was previously going for $40k until they realize used cars have also gone up and price. If their trade in is $30k now instead of 25k, the cost of acquisition would be only $5k more (20k vs 15k). A bit of an aside, but until 2022, the CPI didn't even track the price of used cars and simply pegged their calculations to new car prices. Anyways, this person would also have access to cheaper financing, which would keep the cost low. This is more relevant now as car prices have gone higher and fewer cars are bought with cash.

A poorer or younger Canadian would not have the benefit of having a trade-in to offset the rise in prices, and likely would also not have access to the super low interest rates.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by theman23

I'm really struggling to figure out what point you're making here. That vehicle likely has bald tires, worn out breaks, and a battery that'll die the first time you stop at the gas station. A safety inspection is a common cash grab from a dealership but also a potential liability, even in provinces that don't require it. If they're refusing to do it, its because they know it wont pass the inspection.

The CPI has generally underestimated the inflation rate for poorer and younger Canadians, who don't benefit from owning large assets whose disposition keeps the cost of living affordable even when actual prices have gone up far more than the interest rate. This is particularly relevant with an increasingly aging population.

For example, a middle-aged Canadian that owns a car might balk at a new car for $50k that was previously going for $40k until they realize used cars have also gone up and price. If their trade in is $30k now instead of 25k, the cost of acquisition would be only $5k more (20k vs 15k). A bit of an aside, but until 2022, the CPI didn't even track the price of used cars and simply pegged their calculations to new car prices. Anyways, this person would also have access to cheaper financing, which would keep the cost low. This is more relevant now as car prices have gone higher and fewer cars are bought with cash.

A poorer or younger Canadian would not have the benefit of having a trade-in to offset the rise in prices, and likely would also not have access to the super low interest rates.

I wasn't arguing any of that, costs are higher than they used to be for everything, but you can easily find a used car at a much lower price than $40,000. You can buy a new vehicle for less than that afaik. It depends on what you need the vehicle for; I don't live like most suburban Canadians who are enduring long commutes with kids on freeways etc., so I guess I have a different POV.. I own and drive almost daily, but I know people who are not vehicle owners who spend more on transportation than I do in operating my car. Part of my post was to question whether unsafe vehicles are operating because the government here does not require inspection.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by theman23

I'm really struggling to figure out what point you're making here. That vehicle likely has bald tires, worn out breaks, and a battery that'll die the first time you stop at the gas station. A safety inspection is a common cash grab from a dealership but also a potential liability, even in provinces that don't require it. If they're refusing to do it, its because they know it wont pass the inspection.

The CPI has generally underestimated the inflation rate for poorer and younger Canadians, who don't benefit from owning large assets whose disposition keeps the cost of living affordable even when actual prices have gone up far more than the interest rate. This is particularly relevant with an increasingly aging population.

For example, a middle-aged Canadian that owns a car might balk at a new car for $50k that was previously going for $40k until they realize used cars have also gone up and price. If their trade in is $30k now instead of 25k, the cost of acquisition would be only $5k more (20k vs 15k). A bit of an aside, but until 2022, the CPI didn't even track the price of used cars and simply pegged their calculations to new car prices. Anyways, this person would also have access to cheaper financing, which would keep the cost low. This is more relevant now as car prices have gone higher and fewer cars are bought with cash.

A poorer or younger Canadian would not have the benefit of having a trade-in to offset the rise in prices, and likely would also not have access to the super low interest rates.

you could argue this about many things in CPI - and the response would always be that CPI is intended to be an average for all canadians. Many experience higher rates of inflation, many experience lower. It's the average.

What you describe there (being tougher when you don't have money) has always been the case as well. It's not new, making money is always easier when you have money.

[Innsertnamehere]

a nice easy fix to housing problems of late..



Who looks at that graph and thinks "yea, that's normal and should continue!"?

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Nite

of course they buy plane tickets and cars.
A minimum wage worker in Ontario makes $34,400 If full time.
you know you can buy a plane ticket between Canada 2 largest cities for $105 or a car for under $1,500
that's 0.3% and 4.4% of their yearly income respectively if they decide to pay all at once


here is said flight and car:

flight from toronto to montreal for $105
https://www.flyporter.com/en_ca/flig...to-to-montreal

2012 ford focus for $1,488
https://www.autotrader.ca/a/ford/foc...%205J4&sprx=-1

Speaking as someone who has purchased several cars on a budget ($3,200-$5,000) before, a 2012 Focus that has ~320,000km and likely won't pass safety (needed for registration) because of corrosion issues and severely used-up brakes (see the grooves in the rotors), that's a parts car. It's the art of wading through so much garbage to find something decent - my trick used to be to find manual transmission versions of unpopular cars that were decently reliable. If one is mechanically inclined enough to keep that heap on the road, one is probably talented enough to work as an auto tech.

Second, the running costs of a vehicle are a fair potion of the total costs. Great, you found a unicorn cheap car. Insure it for $2k per year, then add fuel and whatever parts/maintenance it's going to need. It's $3,500/year, minimum.

Third, the consumption habits of those earning $34k per year (less taxes and all that jazz so more like $30k) is going to be biased very much in favour of shelter. A $1,200-$1,500/mo. apartment soaks up $14,400-$18,000/year in income. Even under the most optimistic scenario ($14.4k rent/$34k in your bank account per year), that's 42% of income right there on shelter. Planning on eating? Nudging 50%, easy. Plane tickets are cheap, sure. If you're losing better than 50% of your income to survive under an optimistic scenario, does one have the luxury of enjoying a $105 plane ticket?

Yes, CPI is meant to deal in averages. But as I mentioned before, averages are a wonderful way of obscuring problems, and one ignores festering problems at their own peril.

[Nashe]

All this talk of averages and where the increases are coming FROM... I wonder what the mean salary increase is.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

a nice easy fix to housing problems of late..



Who looks at that graph and thinks "yea, that's normal and should continue!"?

The Liberal Party of Canada?

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

"This vehicle is being sold "as-is" unfit, not e-tested, and is not represented as being in road-worthy condition, mechanically sound, or maintained at any guaranteed level of quality. The vehicle may not be fit for use as a means of transportation and may require substantial repairs at the purchaser's expense. It may not be possible to register the vehicle to be driven in its current condition."

I don't know if you've bought a car anytime in the past few years, but good luck actually finding something drivable at that price. The average price of a used car in Canada in 2023 is $39,645 (obviously would skew lower for older, lower-end models).




I dunno, probably because most of us have gotten poorer and seen our quality of life decline in the past 2 years or so (and/or have worked hard, advanced in our careers, and yet are no further ahead than we were then)?

If life is better for you now than it was a few years ago, you're either coming from a position of extreme privilege or at least luck.

Even if it's "only" housing that's gotten worse, that's a pretty big one and it affects every other aspect of the economy and of people's lives. Being that its most households' single biggest cost for and kind of an essential - and it has downstream effects on everything from family formation and social cohesion to crime & disorder to cannibalizing other sectors of the economy.

1. yea - floor for a used car which can be reasonably expected to run is like $3-4k these days. Still not a ton of cash.. but not $1,500 lol. It's not uncommon at the low price range of vehicles that dealers don't certify them however, which is why you get those claims of "not certified as fit for roads".

2. I've acknowledged that the last 2 years hasn't been great - inflation and interest rates have caused a lot of havoc and caused a lot of people to get the short end of the stick. I'm not denying that.

We are in what is effectively a recession now though - they suck, but they go away. We have to be careful to parse out temporary economic conditions in evaluating the long-term trajectory of the country and economy. And that trajectory isn't as gloomy as people on here make it out to be. There is a lot of temporary pain right now around inflation and interest rates causing a lot of problems, especially for people whose wages haven't increased with inflation (of which there are many, but which statistics show is far from everyone).

I'm not saying Canada doesn't have problems - look at the graph I posted. I'm saying that the problems aren't as large as most people are making them out to be and when discussing government programs we have to look at them from a societal, not individual level. For that, you have to look at statistics. For cars for example, car ownership rates in Canada remain at record highs. People can afford more cars then ever before. Wages, inflation adjusted, remain at record highs. Unemployment is at close to record lows. These are facts, actual, hard data. Of course people have wide varieties of experiences within this as they represent averages across 40 million Canadians, and individual experiences vary massively. And with the economic conditions of the last 2 years, these individual variances have been even larger than normal, which is why I think we see so much greif here. And it sucks if you are on that short end of the stick - but data is not saying that is the experience for the average Canadian right now outside of housing, which is evidentially a very large component of quality of life.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by Nite

of course they buy plane tickets and cars.
A minimum wage worker in Ontario makes $34,400 If full time.
you know you can buy a plane ticket between Canada 2 largest cities for $105 or a car for under $1,500
that's 0.3% and 4.4% of their yearly income respectively if they decide to pay all at once


here is said flight and car:

flight from toronto to montreal for $105
https://www.flyporter.com/en_ca/flig...to-to-montreal

2012 ford focus for $1,488
https://www.autotrader.ca/a/ford/foc...%205J4&sprx=-1

You really don't understand how the finances of the poor working classes work do you? I guess McKinsey must be consulting you...

Maybe consider volunteering at a foodbank or credit counselling, and that can give you some perspective. The majority of minimum wage workers unfortunately carry a lot of debt, often times credit card debt, legacy student debts or even worse pay-day loan debts with sky-high interest rates. Many of them borrowed to get through a rainy day, pay unexpected expenses or tide them through cash flow shortfalls, because they don't have savings to get them through..

With rents where they are right now (and they are disproportionately impacted by evictions), it's already a struggle to feed a family, especially if they are living in the GTA, Southern Ontario or BC. So no, unless absolutely necessary they are not splurging on airline tickets or cars.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

you could argue this about many things in CPI - and the response would always be that CPI is intended to be an average for all canadians. Many experience higher rates of inflation, many experience lower. It's the average.

What you describe there (being tougher when you don't have money) has always been the case as well. It's not new, making money is always easier when you have money.

In the last ~15 low interest rates have led to a growth of asset prices far beyond the level of inflation to an extent that we really haven't been seen in living memory, so no. This is not the normal.

It has nothing to with having money. The amount of money you have is irrelevant as the cost of living is independent of your income. It merely reflects your ability to absorb cost increases, but the CPI does not measure that. OTOH the valuation of your assets however does reduce your cost for housing and transportation, since asset disposition is used to offset these calculations in the CPI. As these assets inflate further beyond the rate of wage growth, the CPI will become an increasingly meaningless measure of the actual cost of living.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

1. yea - floor for a used car which can be reasonably expected to run is like $3-4k these days. Still not a ton of cash.. but not $1,500 lol. It's not uncommon at the low price range of vehicles that dealers don't certify them however, which is why you get those claims of "not certified as fit for roads".

2. I've acknowledged that the last 2 years hasn't been great - inflation and interest rates have caused a lot of havoc and caused a lot of people to get the short end of the stick. I'm not denying that.

We are in what is effectively a recession now though - they suck, but they go away. We have to be careful to parse out temporary economic conditions in evaluating the long-term trajectory of the country and economy. And that trajectory isn't as gloomy as people on here make it out to be. There is a lot of temporary pain right now around inflation and interest rates causing a lot of problems, especially for people whose wages haven't increased with inflation (of which there are many, but which statistics show is far from everyone).

I'm not saying Canada doesn't have problems - look at the graph I posted. I'm saying that the problems aren't as large as most people are making them out to be and when discussing government programs we have to look at them from a societal, not individual level. For that, you have to look at statistics. For cars for example, car ownership rates in Canada remain at record highs. People can afford more cars then ever before. Wages, inflation adjusted, remain at record highs. Unemployment is at close to record lows. These are facts, actual, hard data. Of course people have wide varieties of experiences within this as they represent averages across 40 million Canadians, and individual experiences vary massively. And with the economic conditions of the last 2 years, these individual variances have been even larger than normal, which is why I think we see so much greif here. And it sucks if you are on that short end of the stick - but data is not saying that is the experience for the average Canadian right now outside of housing, which is evidentially a very large component of quality of life.

Fair enough. I certainly won't be as bullish on Canada's future as you are any time soon, but you're also not wrong that we (this board collectively) have turned into a bunch of grumpy old curmudgeons. We most certainly can be unnecessarily pessimistic at times.

Still, I think even a lot of the seemingly positive statistics obfuscate what's happening on the ground, which is mostly a story of growing disparity. The windfalls of our good fortune is being captured by an increasingly small (but also increasingly well-off) minority.

[FrAnKs]

Is it just me or Saskatchewan's population is stagnating?
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...018005-eng.htm

[Architype]

Originally Posted by FrAnKs

Is it just me or Saskatchewan's population is stagnating?
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...018005-eng.htm

It's also contributing to the rest of Canada's isn't it? Some provinces don't do that as much.

[Acajack]

Life expectancy declining in Canada.

In Saskatchewan for example, it's 18 months less than it was in 2019.

https://twitter.com/AnatoleMarsouin/...167094/photo/1

[Nashe]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Life expectancy declining in Canada.

In Saskatchewan for example, it's 18 months less than it was in 2019.

https://twitter.com/AnatoleMarsouin/...167094/photo/1

I assume COVID was a BIG part of that.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Nashe

I assume COVID was a BIG part of that.

Given that Quebec went down the least, and Western Canada the most, I think the big driver is opioid overdoses.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Given that Quebec went down the least, and Western Canada the most, I think the big driver is opioid overdoses.

Yeah, the biggest plunges on the graph seem to be post-COVID.

Opiods are of course a problem in Quebec, but you hear about the issue a lot less than in other provinces or the US.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Yeah, the biggest plunges on the graph seem to be post-COVID.

Opiods are of course a problem in Quebec, but you hear about the issue a lot less than in other provinces or the US.

More people died of COVID in 2022 than any earlier year (in Canada).

Surviving could still easily shorten your life. Many people die of various respiratory infections, it's easily possible that COVID's long term damage made those more deadly.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Given that Quebec went down the least, and Western Canada the most, I think the big driver is opioid overdoses.

In BC at one point a public health report mentioned that the net increase in pandemic-era overdose deaths resulted in more QALY loss than covid. Part of what is going on there is that 23 year olds dying will have more impact on life expectancy than 83 year olds. Depressingly, when this topic came up during the pandemic it was often interpreted as being about the value of old people with the consensus being that we don't value them enough and need to invest more.

Not sure if any progress has been made lately but my basic view is that most people don't understand what's happening to even a rough first-order approximation, policies are not really working (for example it's not really at root a mental health or medical issue, although improvements in those areas can help; part of it is just that fentanyl is mixed into the drug supply and tiny amounts are deadly), and it is getting worse.

[MonctonRad]

The two biggies for the reduction in life expectancy over the last several years are certainly COVID and the opioid crisis.

Other factors are homelessness, despair, despondency, suicide and almost certainly MAID (especially as the indication broaden and become much looser).

MAID is probably destined to become full blown physician assisted suicide as soon as 20-something depressives with symptoms too much to bear are granted access to the procedure, as will almost certainly happen in the next several years.

Canada is already one of the most enthusiastic jurisdictions in the world regarding MAID.