Canada

Young Canadians are increasingly miserable. Government priorities show why

Government budgets shape how we live – and how we feel. If you want to see the consequences of government policy choices, look at how Canadians now rate their life satisfaction.

For nearly two decades, the World Happiness Report has asked people around the globe to evaluate their happiness on a scale from zero to ten. The latest evidence for Canada is frightening.

Research by three Canadian academics shows that the average life satisfaction of younger Canadians – those under 30 – has fallen from 7.6 in the late 2000s to 6.4 in recent years. This steep decline, they report, “places Canada just above Venezuela, Lebanon and Afghanistan on the list of countries experiencing the greatest fall.”

Canada’s largest oil refinery is looking for new supply options as the U.S. war on Iran threatens one of its most reliable, and long-standing, sources of crude oil.

Irving Oil recently got permission from federal regulators to use a foreign-owned ship to bring crude oil from Newfoundland’s offshore fields to Saint John, in southern New Brunswick.

Saudi Arabia has been the most reliable source of crude for Irving’s Saint John refinery since it opened in 1960, but Irving told regulators last month that this is no longer certain.

If it weren’t for this newspaper you’re reading right now, you wouldn’t know about a lot of absolutely bananas criminal-justice and immigration-related stories in this country. But even Toronto Star readers are getting a window into the madness this week, via its sister paper the Hamilton Spectator. Readers learned that one Erik Kalanyos, who is now 29, has been identified as the suspect in the murder of Daniel Musafiri, who was then 29, outside a Hamilton billiards parlour in December 2023.