Category Livio Di Matteo
Public Health Spending and Pandemic Preparedness
As the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada begins to peak, there have several discussions and perspectives offered on how prepared Canada was for this pandemic as well as whether we moved quickly enough to address the situation. Obviously, the situation has improved markedly given that there is now time for these retrospectives […]
Rising Health Spending Is Not Just About Seniors
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has released its 23rd annual report on health spending in Canada – National Health Expenditure Trends, 1975 to 2019. As a member of the CIHI National Health Expenditures advisory panel, it is always great to see the wealth of data on trends in health spending across Canada. Total […]
Historical Canadian Government Data Sources
I recently received the following message from Ryan MacDonald at Statistics Canada: “I recently came upon a number [of] scans done by our library to place the historical publications into pdfs. They can sometimes be a little difficult to search for, so I thought I would pass along a few links that may be of […]
Reflections on Westeros
Well, it is the May long weekend and a celebration of Queen Victoria but this year it has also coincided with the end of Game of Thrones and its own set of Kings, Queens and associated dysfunctional noble figures. There has been a lot of angst expressed about how inadequate the final season has been […]
The Hospitalization Life Cycle
The Canadian Institute for Health Information has just released a report on Hospital Stays in Canada which provides a plethora of interesting tables on hospital stays in Canada at a national and provincial level. Both the age-standardized hospitalization rate (per 100,000 population) and the age standardized average length of stay (in days) in Canada have […]
Hopefully, Tomorrow Won’t Be Yesterday
A short quick post. Yesterday’s job numbers for Canada were greeted with surprise. With 55,900 jobs added in February, the sentiment as best summarized by Doug Porter, Chief Economist with BMO Capital Markets is that: “The economy clearly is not falling off a cliff by any means, arguably quite the opposite”. This is despite what […]
The Federal Debt of the United States, 1791 to 2018: A Presidential Ranking
A recent story in the National Post by Tristan Hopper highlighted the “utterly unbelievable scale” of current US federal public debt levels. As is always the case, it is useful to get some historical perspective on the evolution of the U.S. federal debt over time – which under President Trump has become the biggest U.S. […]
NAFTA – The “Worst” Trade Deal Ever
With time on my hands over the last week of the holiday season, I spent a bit more time than usual surfing news channels and watched a press conference by U.S. President Donald Trump in which among other things he again reiterated how the United States had been hard done by NAFTA and that it […]
Becoming Sustainable: The Six Stages of Provincial-Territorial Government Health Spending
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has released its 22nd annual edition of National Health Expenditure Trends covering the period 1975 to 2018 and the basic highlights are as follows: Total health expenditure is expected to reach $253.5 billion or $6,839 per Canadian in 2018. In 2018, total health expenditure is expected to rise […]
Australian Economic Growth in Longer Term Perspective
A recent issue of The Economist highlighted the stellar economic performance of Australia – or as it was termed, “The Wonder Down Under” – arguing its economy is most arguably the most successful in the rich world. Australia has apparently not seen a recession for 27 years, seen its median income has grown four times […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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