Are people who live in Toronto luckier than people who live in Squamish?

We decided to get to the bottom of the great lottery debate and find out where Canada's luckiest people are located. The results may surprise you. In fact, the Canadian lottery system, for the most part, is very fair. And your odds at winning the lottery are, yes, equal to being struck by lighting - completely random. But don't just take our word for it, click on the photo below to check out the findings for yourself.

SLIDESHOW: AMAZING LOTTERY FACTS

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We all have debt. Whether it's for the long term, such as mortgage, student loans or car loans, or short term, we're a country of people who owe money.

But is debt really that bad? Isn't it part of the natural cycle of economics to owe money and pay it off? Unlike our friends in Greece or Spain, Canadians have been listening to the economic reports and are taking measures.

Canadians aren't putting their heads in the sand when it comes to what is owed, in fact ..."Canadians are focused on reducing their debts amid warnings about rising household debt." In fact, 49 per cent of Canucks have put down a lump payment in 2012 to help reduce their debt says CIBC.

So what else can we do to cut the debt?

When it comes time to give someone a gift, I've always been the type to go for the practical, rather than the merely decorative. A gift can be both, of course, but my thinking is it should, first and foremost, be something truly useful to the recipient.

Perhaps that was never truer than at graduation time. You want a present to be something that with help your graduate on their way, whatever path they've chosen. So here are seven practical gifts to consider that cost $10 or under.

With CEOs making millions and even billions of dollars, it's easy to ponder whether they're among the greatest minds of their generation. They're certainly rewarded as if they were. But if we look at that old measure of intelligence - the IQ ranking - we don't see a lot of business leaders at the top of the heap. In fact, according to a list we've compiled of the world's highest IQs, four are chess Grandmasters, two are actors and only one comes from the business world. That would be Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, though he could be considered a computer programmer first, businessman second.

Nowadays, few people put much stock in IQ tests, with the exception of people who are obsessed with them, like Elias Katsioulis, who has developed a website devoted to celebrating his genius. Most people find fault with IQ tests, regarding them as insufficient to measure something as complex as intelligence. Guinness used to include 'world's highest IQ' in their Book of World Records, but discontinued it in 1990, and the practice of testing for intelligence went out of fashion about the same time. Nonetheless, a World Genius Directory exists for those among us who want to prove their smarts to the rest of the world (the aforementioned Katsioulis is in first place).

Nonetheless, people love lists and allowing for some inaccuracies, we've come to our own conclusions based on reported IQs. Our list consists of people you've already heard of, who score well above 140, the cutoff for genius level intelligence. Click on the photo below to see our choices for smartest living people.

SLIDESHOW: CLICK PHOTO TO LAUNCH A GALLERY OF THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

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Sears is having their Employee pricing event where you can save on appliances and cookware.

Just enter the code 941612188 at the checkout.

One of the greatest rewards for surviving the recession relatively unscathed is now those American retailers we always yearned for during cross-border shopping trips are finally coming to our own backyard.

We ran down a few of the headliners coming our way in a recent article, but there were so many, we couldn't fit them all in one place. It's insane how many American retailers are either coming, or rumoured to be coming, up north, and there are significant economic trends that are the reasons behind the migration.

Check your cupboards and be wary of a new barbecue consumers.

Health Canada has issue a recall for the Traeger Pellet Grills and the Uberhaus propane barbecue.

The Traeger pellet grills are black and barrel-shaped, and have not been tested to see if they are compliant with Canadian Standards for safety.

There are five models included in the recall: Traeger Junior Grill (BBQ055), Traeger Lil'Tex (BBQ070), Traeger Lil'Tex Elite (BBQ07E), Traeger Texas (BBQ075) and Traeger Deluxe (BBQ300).

Over 4000 Traeger barbecues were sold between May 2005 and April 2011 at various retailers across Canada.

Consumers can contact Traeger Canada East at 1-866-415-8159 for a free inspection to insure the safety of the barbecue.

As Canadians we know the big three cities - Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal - aren't the most affordable places to live, with Vancouver taking the top spot as having the highest cost of living of all the Canadian cities. And waterfront homes in urban centres fetch ridiculous amounts - take this recent sale of an $8 million cottage-like home in Toronto's Beach neighbourhood.

So when we want to escape to the cottage, cabin or summer house, where to go?

Regions close to these cities, places like the Okanagan, Muskokas and Laurentians aren't the place to find a budget summer spot for most of us.

Those who want a cottage or cabin may need to rethink the ultimate destination. So where to focus to find the summer home bargain of our dreams?

It's not something most of us want to think about, but identity theft is a byproduct of our technologically advanced age, when the ability to find personal data about you is frankly, dead easy. In the late 90's then-MIT doctoral candidate Latanya Sweeney concluded that three pieces of information easily gleaned from the web - a person's postal code, date of birth and gender - would be enough to correctly identify fully 87 percent of the United States population. She says: "So if I know only those three things about you, I can identify you by name 87 percent of the time. Pretty cool." Scary? Oh yeah. And it's only gotten easier what with the advent of social media, and many (most?) of us divulging far too much about ourselves to all and sundry in our personal networks.

With all that data out there, you need to know the warning signs that your identity might have been stolen. Here are five red flags that should have you sit up and take notice:

SLIDESHOW: FIVE SIGNS YOUR IDENTITY MIGHT HAVE BEEN STOLEN

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You'd think with the warmer weather we've been having, people would become more relaxed on the roads and might even slow down a little. After a road trip this weekend, it seems the opposite is true. The clearer and drier the highways, the more likely people want to feel like they're flying to where they're going to.
But with gas prices on the rise, it would seem in most people's interest to save where they can. And really, the only way to save is to slow down -- and not just on the road. Here are a few tips on how we can all benefit from slowing down in the car and in our lives.

Slow Down and Pay Attention to the Road
Not only is it a known fact that the faster you drive, the faster you're using up your fuel, but it's also likely if you're not paying attention when you drive you're more likely to get into a fender bender or worse. I was reminded of this when a friend of a friend was driving while texting and rear-ended a woman stopped at a stoplight. The victim - who suffered back injuries - has not been able to work since the accident and the driver no doubt feels extreme guilt and pays much larger insurance bills than she used to.
If you get a speeding ticket, it can drive your insurance rate up and if you get a major ticket or infraction, your insurance rate could go up as much as 50 per cent.