CSI Blog & Newsroom

Photographer: Adam Wilson

“There were more hospital admissions in Canada last year for alcohol-related conditions than for heart attacks,” wrote Sherry Noik for CBC News on June 22, 2017.

Noik continued, “Alcohol poisoning, alcohol withdrawal, liver disease, chronic alcohol abuse and other conditions that are “100 per cent caused by the harmful consumption of alcohol” accounted for about 77,000 admissions, according to a report released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

That’s 212 each day, on average, not including those who were treated in emergency departments and released.

The 2015–2016 year was the first time CIHI has looked at this statistic, believing that its impact on the health system can provide insight generally into the harms caused by alcohol.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Chanan Greenblatt

“Almost one in every two Canadians is expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, and one in four Canadians will die from the disease, a new report by the Canadian Cancer Society predicts,” wrote The Canadian Press posted on CBC News on June 20, 2017.

The Canadian Press continued, “In 2017, an estimated 206,200 Canadians will be diagnosed with some form of cancer and an estimated 80,800 will succumb to their malignancy — making cancer the leading cause of death in Canada, the charitable organization said Tuesday in its annual cancer statistics report.

“Currently, every year we’re seeing an increase in the number of cancer cases in Canada,” said the society’s epidemiologist, Leah Smith. “So between now and 2030, for example, we expect to continue to see a dramatic increase in the number of cancers diagnosed in Canada.

“That is a reflection of the growing and aging population,” she said. “About 90 per cent of all the cancers that we expect to be diagnosed in 2017 will be among Canadians 50 years of age and older.”

About 45 per cent of those cases will occur in people age 70 and older, said Smith, noting that as more people move into old age, the number of cancer cases will rise.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Skitter Photo

“Firefighters extinguished the last of the flames in the devastating west London blaze as they searched for more victims Thursday, a day after the highrise apartment building fire that killed at least 17 people. Entire families were missing, and the death toll is certain to rise,” wrote The Associated Press for CBC News on June 15, 2017.

The Associated Press continued, “Fire commissioner Dany Cotton said authorities genuinely don’t know how many people died and firefighters have been traumatized by the inability to save more people.

“Tragically now we are not expecting to find anyone else alive,” Cotton told Sky News. “The severity and the heat of the fire will mean that it will be an absolute miracle for anyone to be left alive.”

“I spoke to one of my officers who was very near when someone came out the window, and he was in tears and he is a professional fire officer,” Cotton said. “We like to think of ourselves as ‘roughty, toughty’ and heroes — they are heroes — but they have feelings, and people were absolutely devastated by yesterday’s events.” 

More than 200 firefighters worked through the night and parts of the building were still seen as being unsafe. Now that the smoke has cleared, the public could only gape at the huge burned-out hulk in the working class, multi-ethnic neighbourhood.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Mike Birdy

“The time-honoured tradition of buying a shiny new sports car or a chrome-lined pickup truck from a lot may no longer exist a decade from now, according to a new report that paints a bleak future for auto dealerships in North America,” wrote Meegan Read for CBC News on June 13, 2017.

Read continued, “According to a study from RethinkX, an independent think tank in San Francisco, greater demand for electric cars, coupled with increased demand for ride sharing, will eventually eliminate the need for dealerships altogether.

The authors of the report — technology investor James Arbib and Stanford University economist Tony Seba — aren’t the first to prognosticate the death of dealerships, but it is the speed with which they think it will happen that is notable.

They believe it will occur in the next seven years.

It’s the “radically lower cost” of ride-sharing and electric vehicles that “really drives the speed and the adoption scale of this disruption we’re forecasting,” said Arbib.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Peter Lloyd

“The first day of summer is just two weeks away and that means unplugging from technology and heading out to beaches, barbecues and outdoor activities. Or does it? New Canadian research suggests the next big thing in summertime fun might be video-conferencing,” wrote Dan Misener for CBC News on June 6, 2017.

Misener continued, “The new research — published in Human-Computer Interaction — comes from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and it’s all about using live video like Skype or FaceTime or Google Hangouts to share outdoor experiences between friends and family members; basically, video-conferencing while you’re outside, having fun.

The researchers recognized that video-conferencing is on the rise in corporate and professional environments, and it’s also increasingly popular for family and friends to stay in touch. But most video-conferencing happens indoors, so the question becomes what are some of the ways we might use this technology outside?

Now, outdoor video-conferencing is not hugely popular at the moment. We don’t see a lot of people Skyping at the beach, or FaceTiming while they’re on a picnic, but the team at Simon Fraser believes it’s coming, and that it’s a natural extension of the ways in which we use video today. They wanted to get ahead of that trend and investigate the potential, the limitations and the potential challenges.”

Read the full article here. 

“Canada’s housing agency saw a sharp decline in the number of home buyers who qualified for mortgage insurance under tougher rules implemented last fall,” wrote Pete Evans for CBC News on May 30, 2017.

Evans continued, “In its quarterly financial results posted Tuesday, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said that it insured just over 48,000 new mortgages between January and March, a 41 per cent decline from the previous three-month period.

The value of those loans dropped to just under $8.3 billion, down from $14.3 billion in the quarter that closed out 2016.

The January to March period in question is the first full quarter since Ottawa changed the mortgage rules last October. Among the new rules is a requirement that borrowers pass a “stress test” to gauge their ability to pay back the loan if mortgage rates were to rise.

The goal of that policy effectively was to make it harder to get insurance, which would help make sure that people buying houses are financially able to do so. Judging by Tuesday’s numbers, that policy seems to be having its desired effect, as the CMHC said the new regulations were the biggest factor in the decline in new insured mortgages.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: Negative Space

“Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has announced a plan to increase the provincial minimum wage to $15 an hour by Jan. 1, 2019,” wrote CBC News on May 30, 2017.

CBC News continued, “The increase would be phased in over the next 18 months, rising to $14 an hour on Jan. 1, 2018, and then to $15 the following January. 

After that, it will rise annually with inflation. 

“People are working longer, jobs are less secure, benefits are harder to come by and protections are fewer and fewer,” said Wynne. “In a time of change like this, when the very nature of work is being transformed, we need to make certain that our workers are treated fairly.” 

Currently, Ontario’s minimum wage is $11.40 an hour.

Across Canada, the current minimum ranges from $10.72 in Saskatchewan to $13 in Nunavut. Alberta became the first province to pass a $15 hourly wage in September 2016, but it doesn’t go into effect until October 2018.

The wage increase is part of a larger piece of proposed legislation: The Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, which aims to better protect part-time or contract workers. 

Among the proposed changes are the requirement that after five years with the same employer, the minimum vacation entitlement for workers would rise to three weeks per year.”

Read the full article here. 

Photographer: NeONBRAND

“Almost three quarters of Canadian homeowners would have difficulty paying their mortgage every month if their payments increased by as little as 10 per cent, a new survey from Manulife Bank suggests,” wrote CBC News on May 23, 2017.

CBC News continued, “The bank polled 2,098 homeowners — between the ages of 20 to 69 with household incomes of $50,000 or higher — online in the first two weeks of February.

Because they aren’t randomized samples, polling experts say online polls don’t have a margin of error, but the survey nonetheless highlights just how tight the budgets are for many Canadians.

Fourteen per cent of respondents to Manulife’s survey said they wouldn’t be able to withstand any increase in their monthly payments, while 38 per cent of those polled said they could withstand a payment hike of between one and five per cent before having difficulty. An additional 20 per cent said they could stomach a hike of between six and 10 per cent before feeling the pinch.”

Read the full article here.  

Photographer: Caleb Woods

“Parents dealing with how to talk to their children about violent incidents like the attack Monday night in Manchester, England, after Ariana Grande’s concert first need to reassure them that they are safe, psychologists suggest,” wrote CBC News on May 23, 2017.

CBC News continued, “The first question children usually ask during violent world events is whether they’re in danger, said Dr. Sandra Mendlowitz, a psychologist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

“You need to tell the truth,” Mendlowitz said in a CBC News Facebook Live. “You need to tell it in a way that’s developmentally appropriate.”

We live with uncertainty every day and Monday’s event is unusual, Mendlowitz said. 

“If it happened all the time, people wouldn’t be on Twitter so much.” 

The instantaneous nature of social media and the fact that we live in a complicated world are part of what’s changed, Mendlowitz said. 

“We cannot live our lives in fear,” she stressed. 

Rather, Mendlowitz suggested turning the event into something positive, such as :

• Writing letters of support to affected families.
• Collecting donations.
• Talking about what to do if you can’t reach each other by cellphone. “

Read the full article here.  

Photographer: Binyamin Mellish

“It’s the question lingering behind every headline. It’s whispered among homeowners, would-be buyers and sellers, economists and policy-makers. What actually happens if Canadian real estate prices crash?,” wrote Peter Armstrong for CBC News on May 16, 2017.

Armstrong continued, “On the one hand, a crash might be good for some Canadians already priced out of the market. And even a dramatic 40 per cent drop in prices would set homeowners in markets like Toronto or Vancouver back, what, two or three years?

But there are broader concerns for the market and the economy itself that could prove devastating.

Home prices are notoriously off the charts. Everyone from the governor of the Bank of Canada to the chatty guy in your local cafe has said, repeatedly, that this increase in prices is not sustainable. But what that means, precisely, is vague.

The latest numbers from the Canadian Real Estate Association show the average home price in Canada climbed by 10 per cent to $559,317 in April. Notably, the number of sales in Toronto’s red-hot market fell by almost seven per cent but prices continued to rise.”

Read the full article here.