Liberalizing trade through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and similar regional treaties raises hopes for increased prosperity for the Western hemisphere. A united North American marketplace would have a combined purchasing power of more than $6 trillion, making it the world's largest trade bloc.

This book is a provocative challenge to current approaches to defining and measuring poverty. It argues that prevailing estimates greatly exaggerate the number of poor; that Statistics Canada's low-income cut-off, the standard tool used in virtually all studies measuring poverty, is badly flawed and that social assistance, in almost all cases, is perfectly adequate in covering all basic needs.

The author develops an alternative approach to defining and measuring poverty - one based on the cost of necessities. He argues persuasively that this basic needs approach gives us a more relevant and useful distinction between the poor and non poor and permits legitimate intertemporal and international comparisons.

Immigration: Scourge or Salvation - Will immigration lead to declining living standards? huge drains on the public purse? overcrowding and racial unrest? Or will immigration be the salvation of the country's social security system? Will it inject new vigour and life into the economy? Are the social tensions created by immigration highly exaggerated?

The contributions in this book indicate that extreme positions on either side of the debate are unsupportable. On balance, immigration has made modest positive contributions to the economy, while social tensions created by immigration have also been relatively modest. However, the trend towards accepting more refugees and other immigrants selected for their non-economic attributes suggests that future economic benefits will be smaller than in the past. Moreover, problems with integrating new Canadians will be greater given that they are less proficient in the official languages than earlier generations of immigrants and also possess more limited job skills.