I lied. Actually Canuckiana has lower fed debt than US. Used to be higher though.
GDP of Canada per capita is lower than Ireland, Norway Swiss, Iceland, US, or Luxembourg. Luxembourg is number one. Ireland is no 3 in OECD countries in GDP/capita.. US is # 2.
Total GDP of Canada is lower than Italy, Mexico, UK or France. It is just a bit higher than Spain.
The reason Canada fares so poorly in GDP is because the government has hampered resource development and manufacturing, and stood in the way of foreign capital developing industry. It has also given no tax breaks to traditional sectors of high employment, small business, so that area has fared poorly. In addition large scale developed areas like aerospace that had potential growth were unceremoniously moved to Quebec through patronage. GPD should be about twice what it is with Canada's vast natural resources. The high service sector is actually all government. The civil service in Canada is +65% of GDP. Service is 77% of GDP. Lower agricultural figures (2.6% of GDP) ignores the fact that 25% of all the workers in Ontario work in agriculture, food or food services. Also cigarettes and whiskey are offshoots of agriculture too. Big industry.
Most countries in the Europe in fact have as good an employment situation and as good or better standard of living as Canada. Even the eastern European block. You simply don't need as much money to get by in these poorer countries, but their GDP/capita is still respectable Portugese businessmen in Toronto tell me that they would be better off doing the same trade in Portugal today than in Canada. In Canada all the money goes through the business to the government or the bank and you still carry a mortgage on your home. An equivalent business in Portugal would yield 100% ownership of all rolling stock and land, and more disposable capital. People have pictures of some of these countries as rural backwaters where farmers dig with sticks and people pick berrries to eat breakfast every day. In fact GDP of portugal is only about 1/5 of Canada and population is about 1/3. So their life, is about the same as ours. But I will bet underemployment there is rarer than here.
Another interesting thing to look in a countries as to quality of life is the number of marriages that end in divorce. In Canada it is 45%. Amongst the highest in the world. That has to introduce societal hardship that the figures of GDP do not talk about.
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