Canada

It now costs more to afford basic necessities in Calgary than in any other major city in the country — including Vancouver and Toronto — according to Statistics Canada’s updated market basket measure.

The market basket measure is Canada’s official measure of household income poverty. It defines how much a family of four would have to earn to afford a basic standard of living, and that’s calculated by the cost of a basket of basic goods and services, including food, clothing, shelter and transportation.

Families are considered to be living below the poverty line if their disposable income is less than their city’s market basket measure.

Savvy shoppers should be able to find a few bargains at the grocery store next year, but even with prices for some essentials falling the typical Canadian family’s overall grocery bill is set to increase by about $700 next year.

That’s the main takeaway from a closely watched annual report on the food industry, the 14th version released Friday by Dalhousie University, University of Guelph, University of British Columbia and University of Saskatchewan.

Next stop Government Bugs.

If every government in Canada — federal and provincial — is treating health care as a priority, then why is the system irretrievably broken, year after year?

Born and raised in the South, Mahlena-Rae Johnson moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school. She spent decades in the city working as a writer, eventually finding a partner and a community of people who made California feel like home.

Johnson, a 42-year-old Black woman, said she felt a turning point when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. She said she felt it laid bare profound political and ideological divisions within the nation, which resulted in a growing intolerance toward non-cisgendered Americans.

In 2018, she and her partner relocated to Canada, seeking what they perceived to be a more politically progressive and secure environment to raise their children.