A new Canadian index will gauge how people are faring overall, not just how much they're spending. The Canadian Index of Wellbeing hopes to be more accurate than its economic cousin, the gross domestic product (GDP). "GDP tells us how much total income we're producing but tells us nothing about how that income is distributed," says Roy Romanow, the former Saskatchewan premier who chaired the 2002 commission into medicare. The index has been five years in the making and some of its quarterly figures are due to be published in the fall.
