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Create AccountIn Quebec, they call it referendum fever. And of all those who fell into its grip last week, perhaps no one was more surprised than René Lepage, director of the community health clinic in the lower St. Lawrence River town of Matane.
The meeting of hospital administrators last week in Toronto was overshadowed by a very personal issue: the participants' salaries.
Canadian consumers obtain consumer credit whenever they purchase goods or services on account, or whenever they borrow funds to finance purchases already made. The most common type of consumer credit arrangements involve cash loans, usually to finance retail purchases on instalments.
A credit card is a card authorizing the holder to make purchases on credit. Credit cards are issued by financial institutions and non-financial businesses (eg, department stores, gasoline companies).
The Canadian dollar, also known as the loonie, for the loon on the $1 coin, is the currency of Canada. Its international currency code is CAD and its symbol $, or C$, to distinguish it from other dollar currencies. As money, it is the measure of value in which all prices in Canada are expressed and the medium of exchange for goods and services. It is divided into 100 cents (¢) and available in material form as coins circulated by the Royal Canadian Mint and banknotes circulated by the Bank of Canada.
Hudson's Bay Company found it necessary to devise a unit of value that would accommodate Aboriginal people's bartering to European bookkeeping methods
The gold standard is a monetary system in which the value of the currency unit (the Canadian dollar, for example) is defined in relation to the value of gold.
A Mortgageis a legal paper in which borrowers agree to surrender their property to a lender if they do not pay back the money they owe, with INTEREST.
A bailout consists of providing financial help to a business or to the wider economy during times of trouble.
SOME COUNTERFEIT MONEY is easy to spot. A veteran RCMP officer recalls once seeing a particularly lame bill photocopied in black and white, then coloured in with crayons.
From 1858 to 1907 most issues of Canadian coins were struck at the Royal Mint in London, England, with additional issues from the Heaton Mint of Birmingham.
Coins are issued by governments for use as money. A quantity of coins issued at one time, or a series of coins issued under one authority, is called a coinage. Tokens are issued as a substitute for coinage, usually by private individuals or organizations such as merchants and banks. Canada’s complex political history has meant that Canadian numismatists have an astonishing variety of coins, coinages and tokens to collect and study.
The early years saw the Mint efficiently producing gold Sovereigns, Canadian coins and millions of ounces of refined gold. The Mint even produced gun parts for Britain during World War I.
Equity is the monetary value of a business or property, beyond any liens or related debts. The term generally refers to “shareholders’ equity.” Shareholders’ equity is an ideal figure that stands for the amount of money that shareholders would get if the company liquidated its assets and paid its debts. In informal usage, the term equities has evolved to mean publicly traded stocks.
In economics, capital traditionally refers to the wealth owned or employed by an individual or a business. This wealth can exist in the form of money or property. Definitions of capital are constantly evolving, however. For example, in some contexts it is synonymous with equity. Social capital can refer to positive outcomes of interactions between people or to the effective functioning of groups. Human capital refers to people’s experience, skills and education, viewed as an economic resource.
Capitalism is an economic system in which private owners control a country’s trade and business sector for their personal profit. It contrasts with communism, in which property effectively belongs to the state (see also Marxism). Canada has a “mixed” economy, positioned between these extremes. The three levels of government decide how to allocate much of the country’s wealth through taxing and spending.
This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on July 5, 1999. Partner content is not updated.
There was a time when it was one of those textbook facts drummed into the heads of schoolchildren, never to slip the mind: Canada and the United States share the longest undefended border in the world.The bank rate is the minimum interest rate charged by the Bank of Canada in its role as lender of last resort on short-term loans to the chartered banks and other members of the Canadian Payments Association that maintain deposits with the Bank, as well as to investment dealers.
A bond is a tool that businesses, governments and other organizations use to borrow money. More specifically, it is a loan agreement through which the bond issuer (the borrower) agrees to pay the lender a specified amount by a certain date. Bond agreements generally also include interest payments. While the borrower usually pays the lender interest on the loan, bonds sometimes have negative interest, meaning the lender pays interest to hold the bond. Bonds and debt financing are important tools for funding large infrastructure projects and wars. (See Canada Savings Bonds; Victory Loans.)
Financial services, as the name implies, are finance-related services that businesses provide to clients. In a Canadian context, the best example relates to the country’s large banks. The World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s large banks as the safest on the planet following the 2008 financial crisis.
