The Agrinautica

Youve pretty much summed up canada as well. Our health care is government funded and we have to pay for dental and pills (thank god my company has a very good medical plan). My family Dr gave me a referral to a gastrointerolagest, and that was 2 months ago. My appointment is at the end of September. We cant keep specialists here becasue the government cant pay them what they can make in the states so a lot of them move down there. Its a problem that is getting worse. Our housing market has skyrocketed as well. In Toronto the average price for a house is around 350,000 dollars. Average price of a new home is around 900,000. The city I live in, Burlington wich is a suburb of Toronto, a new house runs around 700,000 and you cant find a place for less than 350. Now what will happen when the price starts to crash and the intrest rates start to rise? the same thing that happend here in the early 1980s. Intrest rates hit 20 percent and a lot of people lost their houses. Now Interest rates run around the 5 percent mark, and with the price of houses being so high that if the rates went up a few percent a lot of people wont be able to afford their mortgauges because so many people live off their credit cards and carry a lot of consumer debt. The cost of living here is going up a lot too. One litre of gas (thats what we call petrol here) runs anywhere from 95 cents to 1.20. Its not as bad as it is in the UK where its over 2 dollars at times. I have noticed too that a lot of things like food have gone up in price over the last few years. I could imagine it being worse where you are due to the fact as you said, that its very dry. Its getting to the point where people who are lower income families cant afford even the bare nessesities. Our federal government last year did us all a favor by giving every family with children under 6 100 dollars a month each to help pay for childcare, and everyone gets it regardless of if they need it or not. Its nice for us cuz we have 2 kids under 6 so we get a 200 dollar cheque in the mail every month. I think A lot of governments like to hide figures, but this one decided to use surpluses to help out young families.