● Average number of people who use a food bank in Canada each month: 833,000
● Chance that a food bank user in Canada is receiving some form of social assistance: 1 in 2
● Number of additional suicides committed in Europe and North America since 2007 due to the financial crisis: 10,000
● Average hourly productivity per worker in Canada as a percentage to that of the United States: 71
● Percentage to that of the United States in 1989 when the U.S. – Canada Free Trade Agreement came into effect: 89
● Date on which Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century became Amazon’s top selling book: 04/22/2014
● Total labour compensation as a percentage of GDP in Canada in 1976: 57
● Total labour compensation as a percentage of GDP in Canada today: 52
● Of the 30 most developed economies, number that have seen declines in labour compensation as a % of GDP since 1999: 26
● Percentage of British citizens who support the re-nationalization of the rail transportation industry: 66
● Percentage of British Conservative Party supporters who do: 52
● Estimated number of Canadians who are homeless or use homeless emergency services each year: 200,000
● Annual cost of homelessness in Canada, including use of shelters, health and social services, and policing: $7 billion
● Estimated annual cost of providing social housing to all homeless Canadians: $1 billion
● Statistical correlation found by the OECD in 2013 between strong labour protections and higher rates of unemployment: 0
● Number of guns per 100 residents in the United States: 102
● Number of guns per 100 residents in Canada: 31
● Number of mass shootings in American schools since December 2012: 74
● Percentage of Americans who support a ban on handguns: 26
● Percentage who supported a ban on handguns in 1959: 60
● Median annual income in Canada: $29,300
● Average annual income from capital gains by the richest 1% of income earners in Canada: $60,000
● Average annual income from capital gains by the bottom 50% of income earners in Canada: $100
● Government spending as percentage of GDP in Canada in 1985: 48
● Percentage today: 41.9
● Percentage in the United States: 41.6
● Percentage in Venezuela: 40.1
● Year in which a living wage policy was first adopted by a Canadian jurisdiction: 2010
● Percentage of the U.S. urban population living in a city with an official living wage policy: 50
● Number of software engineers currently engaged in a class action lawsuit against Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe: 64,613
● Amount of wealth the software engineer plaintiffs say they are owed in restitution by the four companies: $3 billion
● Total value of street, bank, gas station and convenience store robberies in the United States in 2012: $139 million
● Total value of back wages illegally withheld by employers recovered by the Department of Labor in 2012: $280 million
● Percentage of Canadians who believe that expanding private, for-profit health care would strengthen the system overall: 28
● Number of environmentalist and land rights activists murdered throughout the world since 2002: 908
● Number of these which took place in Brazil: 448
● Number of journalists murdered throughout the world during the same period: 913
● Percentage of Canadians who believe that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program leads to the abuse of employees: 81
● Cost of social assistance provided to McDonald’s employees in the United States each year: $1.2 billion
● Year in which the McDonald’s corporation launched a program to help employees make and keep monthly budgets: 2013
● Amount that the McDonald’s sample budget allotted employees each month for health insurance costs: $20
Our Times Tally is written by union communications and media consultant Sean Cain (www.labourmedia.org).
