Don’t get too many plans for your tax refund, if you’re getting one. According to new data, Canadians are using it just to keep food on the table.
The cash crunch is forcing Canadians to rely on their tax returns to cover their day-to-day expenses. According to data, 40% of Canadians depend on their tax refund to help address cost-of-living expenses, and 28% are going to use it to pay for everyday essentials.
Canadian soldiers transported M777 howitzers to the High Arctic to show their ability to fight in an increasingly contested part of the world. It did not go as planned.
Canada’s military ambitions in the Arctic hinged on a frozen door that wouldn’t open.
Hundreds of troops landing on an island in the High Arctic last month were confronted with wind chill temperatures of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit, frigid even by the area’s standards. The cold kept the locals in the Victoria Island hamlet of Cambridge Bay indoors, suffused the air with tiny ice crystals called diamond dust, and sealed a 30-foot-tall door at an airport hangar.
“It’s frozen,” said an air force detachment commander, “frozen shut.”
For the past seven decades, Canada has been the junior partner in a military agreement with the United States to protect the Canadian Arctic.
The Canadian and American flags could be seen billowing at a distance in the all-white Arctic landscape — the Maple Leaf visibly lower than the Stars and Stripes.
The asymmetry had a simple explanation. Flags across Canada, including this one in the hamlet of Cambridge Bay in the Canadian High Arctic, were flying at half-staff to mourn the recent mass killing at a school in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia.
But its symbolism, however unintended, was a reminder of Canada’s increasingly uncomfortable situation in its Arctic region: Unable to defend it by itself, Canada remains dependent on the United States, whose president has repeatedly threatened to annex it, and who has also set his eyes on Canada’s Arctic neighbor, Greenland.
In the past few weeks, news on the Canadian economic front has tilted negative overall.
Statistics Canada came out with a February jobs report that showed employment declined by a net 84,000, which came on top of a loss of 25,000 jobs in January. The cumulative decline makes it the worst start to a year employment-wise since 2009.
GDP figures released late last month showed that Canada’s economy contracted in the final quarter of 2025, capping the weakest year for growth since the pandemic.
Despite community efforts to feed the city’s youngest residents, the percentage of children using the Saskatoon Food Bank hasn’t declined in the last 18 years that Laurie O’Connor has worked there.
About 40 per cent of the food bank’s requests for hampers are made on behalf of children, according to O’Connor, the food bank’s executive director.
“That number really hasn’t fluctuated much in those two decades. So whether or not we can respond to the need hasn’t made that big of an impact on child poverty,” she told CTV News.
Take a look at the current state of the country and its citizens – by the numbers.
The statistics and facts speak volumes.
Micro-shelter communities are being floated as one way to provide emergency housing for people experiencing homelessness in Toronto.
However, some challenges have emerged, as 44 city-owned properties identified for potential sites have all been deemed unsuitable.
Nonetheless, the City of Toronto is moving forward with a two-year pilot, with the caveat that interested non-profits must come up with private land options.
According to the US government, climate change from man-made greenhouse gases is fake news. Lee Zeldin, director of the Environmental Protection Agency, brands it as nothing but “climate change religion,” while President Trump calls it a hoax and “perhaps the biggest scam in history.” The climate-change debate is dead and over — at least under one roof.
On this track, the US government is now shredding a tall stack of greenhouse-gas regulations. It’s being called the “single largest regulatory action in US history.”
(Incognito)
The Globe and Mail sparked a debate when it reported that Canada’s GDP per capita has fallen behind Alabama’s. The comparison rattled Canadians and triggered a wave of criticism about the validity of using GDP per capita as a measure of national prosperity.
Critics argue that GDP is a flawed metric, pointing to legitimate measurement challenges. But these measurement issues affect every country. The question is not whether GDP per capita is perfect but whether Canada’s trend relative to our peers signals deeper problems.
The evidence suggests it does.
Based on Mark Carney’s view of today’s world, Canada is on the menu rather than at the table. That’s the only way to view what has happened over the last few months as trade talks between Canada and the United States have stalled, but talks between the U.S. and Mexico have been progressing.
Heavy social media use has contributed to a stark decline in well-being among young people, with the effects particularly worrying in teenage girls in English-speaking countries — including Canada — and Western Europe, according to the World Happiness Report 2026 published Thursday.
The annual report, published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, also found that Finland is the happiest country in the world for the ninth year in a row, with other Nordic countries such as Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway ranking among the top 10 countries.
Sunny ways, my friend, sunny ways. @fancypants_s https://t.co/guuBfFr94h
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) March 19, 2026
h/t Patti Jo
Ben Woodfinden: Canada has failed its younger generations, which no longer have the opportunity to live the life that their parents did
In the 2024 World Happiness Report, Canadians over 60 ranked eighth in the world. Canadians under 30 ranked 58th. Happiness is, of course, subjective and hard to measure, but the gap between a country that still works for one generation and has completely failed another points to a broken social contract.
The discussion going on about whether Canada could or should get involved in the war launched against Iran by the United States and Israel is becoming laughable.
We’ve had Prime Minister Mark Carney say that Canada wasn’t consulted nor asked to participate in the strikes last week.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney stood in Beijing last month to announce a new “Strategic Partnership,” he spoke of stability and pragmatism. But for those of us watching the fine print, one document stands out as a glaring threat to Canadian sovereignty: the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on cooperation between the RCMP and China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS).
A study released by the Montreal Economic Institute estimates the federal government’s “Buy Canadian” policy could increase the cost of large infrastructure projects by more than $12 billion per year.
The study states that, among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, total expenditures on public procurement accounted for 12.9 per cent of gross domestic product in 2021.
