News from "The Hill" and What's Happening in Foreign Policy

Happenings on "The Hill" are published in the weekly "The Hill Times". Tagged as "Canada's politics and government newsweekly", you'll find lots of news stories about what's happening on Parliament Hill.

"Embassy" is Canada's foreign policy newsweekly. Check it out and you'll find news, embassy reports, diplomatic appointments and embassy contacts, etc.

General Rick Hillier Retires

General Rick Hillier announced his retirement yesterday. Succession plans are already underway. General Hillier will be leaving behind a strong legacy. Read more at CBC by clicking here.

Town of Oakville Pesticides Ban - GovInfo

As gardening season approaches, you may be getting enquiries soon about the pesticide by-law that came into force on 1 January/08 for the Town of Oakville. Go to the Town's website and under the section Residents and Environment, you'll find lots of information on the by-law, and links to lists of natural insecticides and permitted product brands available in stores, as well as the document Oakville's Guide to Gardening Naturally which contains a list of native plants for the Halton Region as well as tips for fertilizers to use and how to care for your lawn without chemicals.

Great new government publications - GovInfo

Some great new government publications have just arrived. Check them out at the Oakville Public Library catalogue:

The Economics of Climate Change (also known as the Stern Review)
The Book Retail Sector in Canada
Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan (also known as the Manley Report)
State of the Great Lakes 2007
2008 Ontario Municipal Directory
National Health Expenditure Trends 1975-2007
The Federal Budget, February 2008
Regulation of Agricultural Biotechnology in Canada

Canada Year Book Historical Collection - GovInfo

Canada Year Book Historical Collection was launched today by Statistics Canada. This digital collection, available free of charge from the Statistics Canada website, contains a wealth of historical data covering the first century of Canadian history following Confederation in 1867, through to 1967, with historical text, tables, charts and maps. It's a great site to show students and teachers, because it includes lots of learning resources, including lesson plans and worksheets, but it's also really good for historical statistics. To get an idea of the coverage, look at it under the heading “Browse by Topic” and follow the links , e.g. Photos and Lesson Plans. Topics there include The Great Depression, Canada at War, Ethnocultural Diversity and lots more.

UN Data - Worldwide Country Stats.

http://data.un.org/

Literally a world of information!

This is a free database for all those comparison stats, country profiles, and other questions of the sort from countries around the world.

It searches over 55 million records covering topics such as:
Agriculture
Education
Employment
Energy
Environment
Health
Human development
Industry
Information and Communication Technology
National Accounts
Population
Refugees
Trade
Tourism

A very easy interface to use and search. Try it out!

311 and 211 explained at GovInfo

311 Halton Government Services will be officially launched today Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 2pm.

What are the differences between 311 and 211?
311 is a three-digit telephone number for callers to get access to the following government services in Halton Region:

· Town of Oakville
· City of Burlington
· Town of Milton
· Town of Halton Hills
· Halton District School Board
· Halton Catholic District School Board
· Halton Regional Police Service (non-emergency calls)
Examples would be: program information, request a service or report non-emergency problems.

Ontario 211, on the other hand, provides information about many community, health and social services, regardless of whether the services are provided by government, not-for-profit or community groups. 211 service is available in Toronto, Halton, Windsor-Essex, Niagara, Simcoe County and Thunder Bay, with plans for further expansion. It's free, operates 24/7 and staff has expertise in 150 languages. See today's Toronto Star Budget to offer Hotline Aid for more information on this great service.

Featuring Canadian War History in GovInfo

Veterans Affairs Canada is a great place (and often overlooked) to refer those Grade 10 history students who are looking for information on the First and Second World Wars. They will find details of the battles, background to the wars, video clips and interviews with veterans. The website also contains information on the Boer War the Korean War and Canada's peacekeeping operations in the last 50 years. It's best to look under the History link on the sidebar, but this is a good website to explore a little as there are several hidden gems.
You'll find that the library has some print publications from Veterans Affairs too, such as Valour Remembered: Canada and the Second World War , Canada's Nursing Sisters and Native soldiers, Foreign Battlefields and these are in French and English, so particularly helpful for French Immersion students.

Oakville's highly educated population

Figures released yesterday from the 2006 Census show Oakville and Richmond Hill residents holding the highest percentage of university degrees in the Greater Toronto Area. Approximately 42% of the residents in both municipalities have university degrees at the bachelor level or higher. The average for Ontario is about 31%. Click here to see full details of Oakville residents' educational attainment.
View this map from the Globe & Mail for a complete snapshot of education, employment and commuting in the provinces, territories and metropolitan areas of Canada in 2006.

New from the Census

Statistics Canada today released data from the 2006 Census this morning, and most of the media coverage has been about labour market activities, and particularly the graying of the workforce (half now over the age of 40). However, there is much more to peruse there – data on industry, occupation, education and language of work. Take a look.
Also provided are three excellent on-line documents Canada's Changing Labour Force, Educational Portrait of Canada, and Using Languages at Work in Canada,

Spending Patterns in Canada

To read a post on what people are buying and where they are buying it in Canada, please check out a post from February 26, 2008 on the Resources for Small Business blog. It references Statistics Canada's 2006 data in a report called Spending Patterns in Canada. Also included in this post is information on doing business in Alberta (because spending growth is very high there).

The Budget

Time for a budget refresher as today is budget day.
Budgets are tabled usually early in the year. They are generally preceded in the fall by another major statement The Economic and Fiscal Update. Past statements and budgets can be viewed at the Department of Finance website
To find out more about how budgets are tabled in the House of Commons, what happens to budgets after they are tabled, and how they fit into the government’s annual financial cycle click here
To follow the Budget today, you can't do better than go to CBC. Coverage begins at 2 p.m. ET with a pre-budget special on CBC Newsworld, then live federal budget coverage at 4 p.m. ET on CBC Radio, CBC TV & CBC Newsworld and live streaming on CBCNews.ca.

Health Issues

Sometimes it seems that people are turning more and more to libraries and the Internet for health information, and either bypass doctors completely, or go to their doctor with information gleaned from the Internet. Two interesting studies in Health Reports, Feb 2008 tend to confirm this. The first Chronic Pain in Canadian Seniors indicates just how great the problem of chronic pain is in the older population. The second article, Getting a Second Opinion: Health Information on the Internet, bases its findings on a 2005 survey and offers many insights into Canadians' habits in getting health information. Needless to say, the Internet figures prominently.

Questions about tax?

If you have questions about personal or corporate tax in Canada, a lot of information is now freely available on the web. This can be supplemented by print publications in the library.

The Department of Finance and Canada Revenue Agency (CDA) are the two federal government bodies that deal with taxes.

Department of Finance
While CDA collects the taxes, it’s the Dept. of Finance who prepares the policies and legislation that determine who gets taxed, how, and how much. Budget papers from 1994 describe tax changes and how taxes will be spent. Coming tax changes are often first mentioned in Department of Finance News Releases. If you want to receive notification by email of new press releases or the posting of a new budget, you can register here.
If you have a question about tax regulations in general, such as how much tax we pay on alcohol, what tax measures are available to help students or families, or about car deduction rates, go to the excellent and lengthy FAQ page. This also gives useful links to websites that deal with related issues, such as student loans or the CPP.

The Bible of federal income tax is the Income Tax Act. Neither the Canada Revenue Agency nor the Department of Finance publishes the act in print or electronically (it is extremely difficult to maintain due to its length and frequent amendments). Go to the Department of Justice website for the unofficial version of the act. Income and tax regulations are published in the Canada Gazette Part II . Consolidations of the Act are available from commercial publishers. The best place to go to see a print copy is the library, Central Branch. You’ll also find the Canada Gazette Part II there, as well as many other books related to tax. Here is a small sample of what you can find:

Canadian Master Tax Guide
How to Reduce the Tax you pay
Income Splitting
Preparing your Corporate Tax Returns..
The Taxman is Watching
Winning the Tax Game

Canada Revenue Agency

This is a website packed full of information. Here are a few pointers to help guide you, though the site is very easy to navigate. If you are a business owner go straight to the link for business on the sidebar Clickherefor current corporate tax rates.
Click here for current personal tax rates.
You can find tax forms listed by number or tax forms listed by topic.
Access the excellent series of Tax Guides and Pamphlets that CRA produces on a variety of topics, for example Canadian Residents Abroad, Preparing a Tax Return for a Deceased Person, Canadian Residents Going Down South, Using your Home for Day Care.

Additional useful websites with free tax related information:
BDA Dunwoody Tax Publications – excellent electronic bulletins and newsletters, tax rates, tax tips, budget updates.
Tax Facts and Figures for Individuals and Corporations - an annual electronic publication from PricewaterhouseCoopers
Deloitte & Touche’s Quick Tax Facts
Canadian Income tax FAQs for Small Businesses .

For more on Canadian tax see:
Caruso, Agnese. “What a Taxing Day! A Survival Guide for Researching and Answering Canadian Tax Questions.” Feliciter, Issue 1, 2007, p.40.

Ontario Gov. Docs archive now online

Gov. Docs. from the Legislative Library of Ontario are now available on the OurOntario site http://govdocs.ourontario.ca/index.html and searchable by keyword - Advanced search option also available. There's a browsable index by author, title, department, subject, date. Documents are captured from publicly available websites and archived in PDF format. Not all Government of Ontario documents are included, but at the moment there are 14,000 monographs and 900 serials, and the archive will be added to on a monthly basis. This has been in the works for some time so it's great to see it up and working with a good search engine. Try it out using keywords like "Walkerton" or "Ipperwash" or "ontario electricity system" - it brings up good results

New series of articles - cities and suburbs

Canadian Social Trends is a quarterly magazine from Statistics Canada that contains a wealth of information. It's available electronically from the Statistics Canada website (look under Publications, free Internet publications, then under Society & Community). OPL also has a print subscription. The magazine has just launched a new series of articles that explore a wide range of issues related to life in our cities and suburbs. The first two articles have just been published in the Jan. 2008 issue, entitled "The city/suburb contrast: How can we measure it" and "Dependence on cars in urban neighbourhoods". Take a look. The articles are short - and relevant to Oakville.

Profile of Oakville

With so much data now released from the 2006 Census (population & dwelling counts, housing, immigration, and language, among others) it's interesting to take a look at Oakville and see how it's evolving. What is the population? How has it increased from 2001? What is the median age? How many people in Oakville are widowed? Divorced? Single parents? How many dwellings were built between 1986 and 2006? How many families are French speaking? How many immigrants have come to Oakville since 2001? Since 1991? How many aboriginals live here? How does our community compare with Ontario in general? This and much more can be found by clicking on Community Profiles from the Statistics Canada home page
It's worthwhile taking a look, and play around with the "Select a View" capability, which allows you to pick and choose the data you want, then click on the Print-friendly button or download the data to an Excel spreadsheet.

2006 census data for Aboriginal peoples

The new release of 2006 data from Statistics Canada presents the Aboriginal peoples of Canada and their demographic characteristics, including the growth of the Aboriginal population, information on age distribution, Aboriginal languages, living arrangements, housing characteristics and geographic mobility. Separate data are provided for Inuit, Métis and First Nations people. Click here to view. If you want all that information in a nutshell, then read the excellent summary provided in Aboriginal Peoples in Canada in 2006: Inuit, Métis and First Nations, 2006 Census

Trans fat comparisons

From Health Canada, results of the trans fat monitoring program. Great place to find the fat content of a Krispy Kreme jam buster doughnut as opposed to a Tim Hortons honey glazed! And lots more - main fast food restaurants monitored in 2006/7.

Wikipedia now legitimized

At OPL, we have included links in our "Best of the Web" describing Oakville's population. This is because we know that some customers only use open web sites such as Google or Wikipedia for their information needs. Here is encouraging news from Research Buzz:

WIKIPEDIA is now politically correct to use as a reference resource
The full report, from 8th December 2007, ResearchBuzz noted:
"OCLC Hooks Up With Wikipedia"
. . . " search over a billion items in
over 10,000 libraries around the world."