“The importance we place on this information demonstrates how our country values its families, its children and its future prospects,” it says. Many western countries regularly calculate the cost of raising children, the report notes. The right-wing Fraser Institute released a report in 2013 claiming that it was possible to raise a child in Canada for between $3,000 and $4,500 a year. “Creating state-of-the-art estimates of the cost of raising children is within reach,” Duncan said. “Statistics Canada already collects data on what families spend and on the costs of goods and services, so it’s a matter of building on these foundations to create valid and reliable estimates.”

Source: thestar March 07, 2017 11:03 UTC