But in the midst of this deep, dark Doomsday, there is a beacon of Hope (a place where President Obama’s approval rating stands at eighty-two percent), a knight in bright shining armor (not the least because it’s wrapped in a blanket of snow two-thirds of the year), a place where a party not-so-subtly named Liberal held power for a total of 69 years of the 20th century (more than any other political party in the developed world).
This place is called Canada. And they must be doing something right.
I came across this article posted on a friend’s Facebook page, and immediately began daydreaming of Tim Horton’s coffee, and of sipping a Molson Canadian lager, eating poutine and watching CFL football games at Don Cherry’s Sports Grill on Rideau Street at the base of Parliament Hill in downtown Ottawa… like I did last summer. You see, I am a Canadiophile. I love the country, love the people, and think (with a few exceptions) that their governmental system gets it in a way that America's doesn’t. We could learn a lot from our northern neighbors.
Some of my favorite bits from the article:
Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th.
Okay, they’ve got good banks. So what? Ha, they’d better! They’ve got that friggin’ expensive national pension and GOVERNMENT health care system to pay for!
Canada has been remarkably responsible over the past decade or so. It has had 12 years of budget surpluses, and can now spend money to fuel a recovery from a strong position. The government has restructured the national pension system, placing it on a firm fiscal footing, unlike our own insolvent Social Security. Its health-care system is cheaper than America's by far (accounting for 9.7 percent of GDP, versus 15.2 percent here), and yet does better on all major indexes. Life expectancy in Canada is 81 years, versus 78 in the United States…
Whatever. We know how to work harder in our shorter years! And our greatest resource is our vast pool of the most talented workforce on Earth! And the world is just BUSTING our doors down to get in on the economic action!
We issue a small number of work visas and green cards, turning away from our shores thousands of talented students who want to stay and work here. Canada, by contrast, has no limit on the number of skilled migrants who can move to the country … Companies are noticing. In 2007 Microsoft, frustrated by its inability to hire foreign graduate students in the United States, decided to open a research center in Vancouver. The company's announcement noted that it would staff the center with "highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S." So the brightest Chinese and Indian software engineers are attracted to the United States, trained by American universities, then thrown out of the country and picked up by Canada—where most of them will work, innovate and pay taxes for the rest of their lives.
Yeah, well, Canada only has one-tenth the population of the United States! They have a much easier time, seeing as they don’t have as many people.
Well, it is true. Canada has a population of 33 million, to our 300(ish) million. So naturally, our government will have far more people to deal with than the Canadian government. But from my rudimentary understanding of economics, a country with more people should produce more goods to operate a larger economy to sustain a larger population. In other words, the gross domestic product of a country of 300 million people can sustain 300 million people just as that of 33 million people can sustain 33 million people. A slightly more accurate way to measure these production values would be to look at the approximate monetary value in goods and services that each individual citizen produces, or GDP per capita. According to this measure, the United States produces approximately $48,000 per capita; in Canada, it’s $40,000. That means that for every dollar the U.S. produces, Canada produces 83 cents.
Those lazy Canadians! Why can’t they work hard like us Americans?!
Oh, we work hard all right. And what does it get us? A few very rich individuals that we’re all told we can be like when we grow up. And a broken, expensive health care system. And taxpayer-funded bank bailouts. And a pension plan (aka Social Security) that’s on the verge of going belly-up. And did somebody say the economy sucks right now, and we’re about to pour a last-ditch-effort trillion dollars into it? Sure hope it works.
So in other words, we are basically doing less with more.
I hate using such a cliché illustration like this, but it fits: it’s like running a marathon. We’re racing along, downing energy drinks and shooting steroids (ironic, huh?) telling ourselves we’re the best, and now we’re so used to running on those things that they no longer make us run fast anymore. And we’re starting to lose. And countries like Canada who have been keeping it steady- occasionally running hard, but just enough to keep pace- are now pulling ahead.
I’m not saying we need to become South Canada or anything. But we sure can learn from them. While I was in Ottawa, I picked up two books in a little hole-in-the-wall bookstore downtown. The first one that I’ve been reading is called The Polite Revolution: Perfecting The Canadian Dream. It’s mainly about what’s wrong with Canada and how to fix it, and believe me, there is a lot that’s wrong with the Canadian system that needs fixing. But the second book, called At Home In The World: Canada’s Global Vision For The 21st Century, is the one I’m really looking forward to reading. As much as I love America, (and could probably never truly fit in as a Canadian!) there’s a lot that’s wrong with this country. A lot. And if fixing it means taking notes from our neighbor to the north, then so be it.
But if it all goes to hell, let’s hold out hope that Canada doesn’t decide to erect a wall along their southern border...
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