● Year in which Canada signed a UN declaration stating “higher education shall be made equally accessible to all”: 1976
● Between February and June 2012, number of student protest-related arrests made in Quebec: 2,500
● Number of arrests made in Quebec after the implementation of the War Measures Act during the 1970 October Crisis: 497
● Number of hours after which the repressive Bill 78 became law that the Quebec Employers Council publicly supported it: 1
● Rank of Canada as being the happiest country in the OECD: 9
● Rank of Denmark and Norway, respectively: 1, 2
● Rank of Canada in the area of “work-life balance”: 21
● Number of hate crimes reported in Canada in 2010: 1,401
● Rank of Ontario in having the highest number of per capita hate crimes: 1
● Percentage of nurses in Ontario who have been “made to feel uncomfortable because of their race” on the job: 41
● Percentage of Canadians who believe that “racism is a significant problem in Canada”: 55
● Number of years an average Canadian will live longer than an average First Nations person: 10
● Factor by which the suicide rate for First Nations people in Canada outpaces the national average: 6
● Chance that a Canadian believes that NAFTA has been “beneficial for Canadian workers”: 1 in 3
● Chance that a Canadian believes it has been “beneficial to Canadian employers”: 1 in 2
● Percentage increase in income taxes on those making over $500,000 a year proposed by the Ontario NDP in April: 2
● Days after which the proposal was made that Financial Post columnist Jim Doak referred to it as “ethnic cleansing”: 2
● Number of fewer jobs there are in the world now compared to the number before the 2008 financial crisis: 50 million
● Number of countries engaged in civil wars that Canadian arms manufacturers have sold weapons to since 2009: 14
● Number of Canadian military export contracts with the United States since 1999: 18,888
● Cost of purchasing sixty-five Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, according to Prime Minister Harper last year: $16 billion
● Current “revised” cost of the fleet, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office: $29 billion
● Federal budget deficit for the last fiscal year: $23.5 billion
● Percentage of undocumented workers in the United States who have been living there for more than a decade: 65
● Chance that a member of the American labour force is an undocumented worker: 1 in 20
● Percentage of undocumented workers deported from the United States who are of Hispanic origin: 97
● Number of undocumented workers deported during the Presidency of George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009: 1.6 million
● Number deported since 2009 under President Obama: 1.1 million
● Number of civilians killed in Pakistan by U.S. drone attacks since President Obama came to office in 2009: 535
● Estimated number of deaths each year in Canada caused from adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs: 20,000
● Average corporate CEO salary in the United States last year: $9.6 million
● Number of years an average income earner in the U.S. would have to work to accumulate that much wealth: 289
● Number of provinces in Canada that have specific whistleblower protection laws: 3
● Maximum amount that a corporation can donate to a political party in Alberta during an election year: $30,000
● Maximum amount they can donate to a political party in Manitoba: $2,000
● Current federal government debt as a percentage of GDP in Canada: 69
● Current corporate and financial debt as a percentage of GDP in Canada: 116
● Number of households in Canada that are currently “food insecure”: 900,000
● Estimated number of employees currently working for the Government of China’s internet censorship bureau: 30,000
● Estimated percentage of Chinese internet users who use online “circumvention tools” to access censored websites: 85
● Number of Chinese government websites hacked and defaced by the online activist group “Anonymous China”: 485
Our Times Tally is written by union communications and media consultant Sean Cain (www.seanc60.sg-host.com).
