Age Structure in Canada

0-14 years: 17.9% (male 3,016,032/female 2,869,244)
15-64 years: 68.9% (male 11,357,425/female 11,244,356)
65 years and over: 13.2% (male 1,842,496/female 2,475,488)

*2005 estimates

Working in Canada

About 17.37 million people make up Canada's Labour Force (2004 estimate). The unemployment rate in 2004 was about 7%.

Canada and Gross Domestic Product

GDP: purchasing power parity - $1.023 trillion
GDP per capita: purchasing power parity - $31,500
GDP - real growth rate: 2.4%

*All estimates from 2004.

Gross World Product

In 2004, it was estimated that the gross world product (GWP), measured in purchasing power parity, was $55.5 trillion.

English Vocabulary

It is estimated that there are over 500,000 words in the English language (another 500,000 scientific phrases and other words to make a total of somewhere between 1 and 2 million). Another reference suggested 215,000 different entries, with numerous word forms resulting in higher numbers.

Linguist David Crystal hypothesizes that an average 16 year old has a vocabulary of 14,000 words and a university graduate has a vocabulary of 25,000 words.

If 250,000 is used as a low estimate of the words in the English language, an educated person's vocabulary would only be 1/10 of the total.

Consequently, if you don't know how to express yourself, is it possible that you haven't tried hard enough to find the right words?

Young Drinking

In a survey of Canadian teens in 1998-99, the average age they took their first alcoholic drink was about 12.

Drinkin' and Drivin'

In 2000, road crashes involving a driver who had been drinking killed 864 people, representing almost 30 per cent of all road fatalities. This is down by one-third from 1995, when 1,296 motor vehicle deaths involved a drinking driver. Of the drinking-driving road fatalities, almost half (422) were drivers whose blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was over 0.08.

Alcohol Consumption

About 2.4 billion litres of alcoholic beverages were sold in Canada in 1996/97, down 0.7% from the previous year. In per capita terms, this worked out to 83.4 litres of beer, 10.6 litres of wine and 5.4 litres of spirits for every Canadian aged 15 and older (Statistics Canada, 1998). Beer continues to be the drink of choice accounting for approximately 80% of all alcohol consumed.

Alcohol Spending

In 2002, Canadians spend $14.5 billion on alcohol.
(51% was on beer.)

Smoking and Mortality

More than 45,000 people will die this year in Canada due to smoking. Of those, more than 300 non-smokers will die of lung cancer and at least 700 non-smokers will die of coronary heart disease caused by exposure to second-hand smoke. Smoking is the cause of one-fifth of all deaths from cancer, heart disease and stroke in Canada.

Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related.

Tobacco is the second major cause of death in the world. It is currently responsible for the death of one in ten adults worldwide (about 5 million deaths each year). If current smoking patterns continue, it will cause some 10 million deaths each year by 2020. Half the people that smoke today (about 650 million people) will eventually be killed by tobacco.

Smoking kills 50% of all people who smoke. Do you smoke? You have a one in two chance of dying from smoking; flip a coin.

Smoking and Money

A World Health Organization report in the mid-1990s says the tobacco industry worldwide makes $168 billion, more than the economies of 180 of the world's 205 countries.

In Canada, between 63 and 79 per cent of the price of a package of cigarettes is tax. In New York, by comparison, the tax on cigarettes is 38 per cent.

In Canada, the societal costs attributable to smoking for 1993 were approximately $11 billion, of which $3 billion was spent on direct health care costs such as hospitalization and physician time. The remaining $8 billion was due to lost productivity. In comparison, it is estimated that in 1993/94, revenue from taxes on cigarettes totalled $2.6 billion.

Second-hand smoke is also costly to businesses. The Conference Board of Canada (1997) found that the average cost associated with employing a smoker was $2,565 each year. This amount was a result of $230 for increased absenteeism, $2,175 for decreased productivity, $75 for increased life insurance premiums and $85 for cleaning and maintaining a smoking area.

Smoking in Canada

In Canada, 5 million people (representing roughly 17% of the population age 15 years and older) are current smokers (smoke daily). On average, this group smokes 15.9 cigarettes per day each. That translates to 29,017,500,000 cigarettes per year.

Total land area in square kilometres

Country	Description	Amount
1.	Russia	16,995,800 sq km
2.	Antarctica	14 million sq km (280,000 sq km ice-free, 13.72 million sq km ice-covered) (est.)
3.	China	9,326,410 sq km
4.	United States	9,158,960 sq km
5.	Canada	9,093,507 sq km
6.	Brazil	8,456,510 sq km
7.	Australia	7,617,930 sq km
8.	India	2,973,190 sq km
9.	Argentina	2,736,690 sq km
10.	Kazakhstan	2,669,800 sq km

WWII

It is very difficult to determine the precise death toll, but the general consensus on the total number of deaths (estimate) during World War II is about 50,000,000.

Mother's Day

Americans will send about 150 million mother's day cards (third largest occasion).

Mother's Day is when there is the most long-distance phone traffic.

It is also the busiest day of the year for restaurant dining.

Actual versus Visible

There are actually about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy (our galaxy).

Stars in the sky

It is possible to see a few thousand stars in the sky with an unaided eye on a dark clear night away from light pollution.

Neighbourhood

The Sun's nearest known stellar neighbor is a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri. It is at a distance of 4.3 light years (the distance light travels in a year) away. That is 272, 298.8 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Speed of Light

The speed of light is 299, 792, 458 metres/second. The distance between the Sun and the Earth is 149, 730, 000, 000 metres. The time it takes light to travel from the Sun to Earth is 499.4 seconds, or 8.3 minutes.

The sun could stop shining and you would have plenty of time to enjoy a coffee, respond to an email, and/or tell someone exactly what they mean to you.

Worlds in the Sun

Over one million Earths would fit inside the Sun.

(Since the volume of the Sun is 1.43603^18 km cubed and the volume of the Earth is 1.08087^12 km cubed, 1328578.6 'Earths' would equal the volume of the Sun.)

The Ultimate Statistic

You will die.

(It must be logically admitted that the aforementioned statement is still probabilistic; yet it has borne true for everything that has ever lived (i.e., probability is continually approaching one)