Thursday, November 03, 2016

The Economist gives Canada some love

This week's Economist has a cover article on Canada entitled "The Last Liberals", and subtitled "Liberty moves north: Canada's example to the world". The title may be a bit of hyperbole, but the article is, in typical Economist form, an excellent and comprehensive summary of the country and its Trudeau-era mindset and policies.
The article outlines Canada's open-minded and open-door policy on immigration, its mix of resource-based and manufacturing economies, its infrastructure spending approach to stimulus, it new-found openness to carbon taxes and climate change action, it's open borders stance on trade, its boring but rock-steady banking system, etc. It doesn't gloss over the challenges the country faces, but the overall impression is a glowing one, and one that many another country might be jealous of.
One particular graphic gives a comparison of Canada with other major countries in a variety of metrics from a variety of sources. For example, Canada places 2nd out of 60 on the Best Country taking of the US News and World Report; 2nd out of 55 in the Most Reputable Counties index of the Reputation Index; 10th out of 163 in Simon Anhalt's Good Country Index; a life expectancy, according to OECD and IMF higher than Germany and the UK, and much higher than the USA, although still below Japan, France and Italy; a Gini equality index better than Japan, Italy and the UK (and again much better than the USA), although still below France and Germany; a "Life Satisfaction" score and an annual GDP increase well above that of other G8 countries; and a paid maternity leave bettered only by Germany and Japan among G8 countries.
All in all, a pretty impressive showing.

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