Fairfax weighs in on Tembec takeover vote + MORE Jul 21st

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When the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation announced earlier this week that mortgage delinquency rates had fallen to the lowest level in decades during the fourth quarter, there was a rash of stories patting Canadians on the back for their financial prudence. If you listened to the experts and commentators, you would certainly think that Canadians are the sound personal fiscal managers the world thinks we are.
But do these numbers really support that belief?
This question rankles many of us in the trenches of the debt business. Licensed insolvency trustees regularly see people who manage to meet their mortgage payments for months, even years, while the rest of their fiscal house falls down around them.
Before going any further, let me state I understand that our typical client may not reflect the average Canadian households. But as I wrote in Maclean’s in April, we were seeing a significant increase in the number of people coming into our offices who ought to be doing a lot better financially…

This week, Natixis Global Asset Management released its fifth annual Global Retirement Index (GRI), which looks at key factors that drive retirement security across 43 countries. The GRI’s aim is to provide a measure of how well retirees are set up to succeed across various countries in the developed world.
So how did Canada do? According to the summary, Canada ranked 11th in the world for retirement security, slipping one spot from last year’s results. The reason for the decline? In part, it was because prosperity has lagged behind for lower-income Canadians.
The Index creates an overall security score based on four factors that affect the lives of Canadians. According to the report, Canada’s score this year was 76% and several factors affected the outcome:

A decline in prosperity. Canada ranks 21 for income inequality—indicating that many Canadians are missing out on economic growth and may be struggling to save for retirement.
Robust finances. Although Canada finishes among the top 10 countries for financial stability, it’s old-age dependency ratio, which measures the proportion of people age 65 and older to those of working age, has increased, which stresses the government programs that support retirees…

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