Safe Deposits

That's just it, Canadians can be assured that their bank deposits, their bank accounts are fairly safe, given the $100,000 federal insurance policy (Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation) that ensures just that.

Canada stands head and shoulders above other nations' accountability to their depositors in that arena. Now credit, that's another thing entirely. Since the banks are finding it difficult to find their own credit, they're not so willing to extend it to small business and private individuals seeking mortgages and car loans.

Perhaps now isn't the best of all possible times to seek out large purchases? At least for the very near present and a tad into the future? Forgo, for the present time, being too aggressive about purchases. Cut back here and there. Personal care services, for example; outsourcing cleaning, gardening, pet care.

Businesses, of course, require those credit loans to ensure they are able to remain in business. Problem is there's a global freeze in interbank lending. The healthy banks, those with liquidity, don't entirely trust those which have not been quite so laudably careful. And they're sitting tight on what they have.

On the other hand, the World Economic Forum has issued a report identifying Canadian banks as demonstrably sound, representing the soundest banking system in the world, at the present time. Canada's banks scored 6.8 of a 7.0 total, well above those participating in a survey encompassing 134 countries.

Canadian banks were slightly ahead of Sweden's Luxembourg's, Australia's, Denmark's and the Netherlands, all of which came close, at 6.7. Unfortunately, our largest trading partner, and just coincidentally, the largest, and still most robustly competitive economy in the world, ranked 40th with respect to the soundness of its banking system.

So there will be pain before there is once again, gain. The depth and level of the pain will depend on many variables, not all of which can yet be identified and quantified.

Canada's unemployment figure remains comfortably low; amazingly, it's now slightly lower than that of the U.S. which has had a relatively stable figure of just over 3 - 5% for a very long time.

Canada has created, and continues to create, new employment opportunities; admittedly more service and part-time jobs than factory and full-time, but they represent employment.

And although small companies in the exporting business are still struggling with the strong Canadian dollar, we're seeing the dollar devaluing, which might have helped them if it were not for the fact that Americans are in no position to import much, of late.

On the good news side, 5% of business owners anticipate stronger performance in the next year, while 23% are expecting "somewhat stronger" performance. That's pretty optimistic. Particularly as 26% of business owners plan to add full-time staff within the year, balancing that 17% that anticipates staffing cuts.

In better times the results of these surveys would look brighter, but they're not exactly disastrous, either. The passage of a year will get most businesses through tough times. The government is taking steps to relax the tentative freeze on credit to assist small business owners, and that's a positive.

And the World Economic Forum has ranked Canada 10th in global competitiveness out of those 134 countries included, up from its previous year's rating of 13. Yet still behind the United States which, despite its current travails still ranks first in the world. Canada's pluses are cited in the most generous descriptives:

"Canada benefits from top-notch transport and telephony infrastructure; highly efficient markets, particularly labour and financial markets, and well-functioning and transparent institutions. In addition, the educational system gets excellent marks for quality, which has prepared the country's workforce to adopt the latest technologies for productivity enhancements."

And although the fly in the ointment continues to be our relatively high government debt, which successive governments have slowly been paying down out of year-end surpluses, we're in fine fettle, relatively speaking.