Getting accurate, reliable answers to these kinds of questions is the name of the game if you want to be a smart consumer. Being informed is especially important if you're shopping for a big-ticket item like a house or a car, or when there is a risk to your financial security or safety.

Until now it has not been easy to get answers to all of these questions in one place. Now you can go to the Canadian Consumer Information Gateway, at http://ConsumerInformation.ca.

The site contains clear, concise consumer information from nearly 300 departments and agencies of federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada. It is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's the Canadian consumers' ally on the Web, helping you to protect yourself and become a more confident and more effective consumer.

The site is easy to navigate as it has both a powerful search engine and a menu of familiar topics to help you. You'll also find useful help files to answer your navigation questions on-line. If after your search you still need more information, the site lists e-mail addresses and phone numbers for a host of partners' and province-specific, consumer-focused organizations.

About The Author News Canada provides a wide selection of current, ready-to-use copyright free news stories and ideas for Television, Print, Radio, and the Web. News Canada is a niche service in public relations, offering access to print, radio, television, and now the Internet media, with ready-to-use, editorial "fill" items. Monitoring and analysis are two more of our primary services. The service supplies access to the national media for marketers in the private, the public, and the not-for-profit sectors. Your corporate and product news, consumer tips and information are packaged in a variety of ready-to-use formats and are made available to every Canadian media organization including weekly and daily newspapers, cable and commercial television stations, radio stations, as well as the Web sites Canadians visit most often. Visit News Canada and learn more about the NC services.