Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

With travel bans and tightening borders to its south, Canada has become renowned for welcoming refugees.

Now that tens of thousands have come, there's much talk about so-called asylum shopping.

With an election coming up, the government is reconsidering just how open to be.

And how many hours have you put in recently just so that you're seen to be at work?

Whatever the number, it's too many.

We discuss presenteism and why it's no good for you or your employer.

But first... The European Commission warned yesterday that it might launch legal action against Italy,

which has violated rules about its huge public debt and its plans to run too large a deficit, both this year and next.

EU member states will now decide whether what's called an excessive deficit procedure

should be launched against Italy.

In theory, the country could face billions of euros in fines.

In Italy, the right-wing populist Matteo Salvini,

one leader in a coalition government,

has responded angrily to the commission. He told a crowd of supporters that Italy does not want

to ask Europe for Spanish, German and French money, but rather for dignity and the right to work.

The reason why Italy's finances have been in the spotlight is because they have a very

large public debt burden, second only to Greece in Europe of about 130% of GDP.

Rachana Shanborg is the economist's Europe economics correspondent. She's been reporting from Italy this week.

And Europe's fiscal rules require that that debt burden comes down at a prescribed pace.

However, in 2018, it actually went up for the first time in four years.

And this is what the Commission isn't very happy about.

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