British Expatriate Network

I'm very interested in Canadian issues, so I went looking to see what the current unemployment rate is there (7.1% and slowly been rising for 9 months) to see how they compared in the last 4 years to the US. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I came across this nice post. It's a little biased in places, but other than that it's good reading.

Canada's Surprising Prosperity What's Our Secret?
http//www.bowjamesbow.net/2004/10/16-canadas_s.shtml

A good one Mr. B.
Buy the way where is Keith?

Canada is the new Sweden for American right wingers, they just love to hate it.

Tell me something that I didn't already know.

Ooh I have a few.

Canadian health care patients, on average, must wait 17.7 weeks for general hospital treatment!
http//www.fraserinstitute.ca/admin/books/chapterfiles/Text-wytpart1.pdf#

Canadians tend to wait longer than Australians, New Zealanders, Brits, and Americans for operations like hip-surgery. Generally about 6 months for 50% of people compared to 3 weeks for 85% of Americans.
http//content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/3/119

The fraser Institue compared health care systems in the industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found Canada currently spends the most, yet ranks among the lowest on such indicators as access to physicians, quality of medical equipment, and key health outcomes.
http//www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/August2004/27/c4608.html


Hurrah!

Canada (and not Japan as often thought by Americans) is the largest U.S trading partner. In fact the province I am in, Ontario, were it to be a country, would still be America's largest trading partner. It's a relationship worth billions of dollars a day.

The reasons why Canada's economy has not experienced the dips or recessions that the U.S has experienced in recent years are not entirely clear. It used to be quite the opposite. If the U.S started tailspinning Canada usually felt the consequences much more severely, or as a former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau put it, if America sneezes, Canada catches the cold.

But that has not been the case. Canada's economy has performed very well since the last big recession between 1989-1997.

Of course it depends where you are. Vancouver, in British Columbia, on Canada's west coast, (where many British emmigrate to) barely felt that recession at all. Its economy was being kept boyant by the Asian Tiger economies, especially money pouring in from Hong Kong citizens nervous about the handover and adopting Vancouver as their own. Vancouver's economy, based as it is on lumber and Asian investment has never really fully recovered from the bubble bursting in Asia.

At the other side of the country, in Newfoundland and Labrador, unemployed fishermen collect unemployment insurance or welfare all year round, with small exceptions like their pathetic seal hunt. Not all is rosy in the land of plenty, and several maritime provinces depend on equalisation payments from the richer provinces to make it look less like Utica New York.

In fact some economists point out that unemployment is unacceptably high. It has veered between 7 and 9 per cent which is high for a western country these days.

But if you are living in Ontario, (a third of the population) or Quebec (a quarter of the pop.) or the fastest growing province, oil-rich Alberta (where disgruntled British Columbians appear to be fleeing to) life's likely to have been pretty good. Booming in fact.

One of the leading explanations for why Canada hasn't experienced America's nervous jitters and one I personally agree with, is the low Canadian dollar. It's actually climbed in the last few days to above 80c but not so long ago it was dwindling at just 62c U.S.

The Canadian dollar has been low for so long that the Canadian economy has moulded itself around it. It's essentially been a source of cheap exports to the U.S - a first world Mexico. Even when you look at the large numbers of movies shot here in Toronto. Hollywood isn't motivated by the fact that Toronto rolls out the red carpet for them (which it does) but because its cheap and they don't have to deal with the Teamsters Union.
My girlfriend works for a small graphic design company. Its dominant client is a huge international bottled water company. Everyone there knows a Canadian company is being used, because it's cheaper and in fact during the recessionary dip the graphic design company appeared to get more work not less.

Of course this cannot go on for ever. With the Canadian dollar climbing, the country is going to have to compete more on a level playing field. It will be very interesting to see what happens here if the U.S economy becomes a shambles.

One of the main economic links between the U.S and Canada is in the cross-border auto pact. The car industry has been doing very well on the whole (thanks to the success of SUVs and the like).

Another explanation is consumer confidence. Canadians have not stopped shopping. Americans have on several occasions over the last few years, decided to leave their wallets at home. This, apart from anything else, is very psychologically important to the health of an economy.

Of course, a more recent disparity between the two economies has been America's growing deficit and its continued military spending. By contrast Canada, which barely has a military and stayed out of Iraq, although it still has a debt, has embarassingly high budget surpluses, rather than deficits.

But we'll just have to see if this continues.....

Ever noticed some thing missing in Canadian cities?

Oh yeah, there are no areas of abject poverty and racial divide.

Or as Kozol put its

"Anyone who visits in the schools of East St. Louis, even for a short time, comes away profoundly shaken. These are innocent children, after all. They have done nothing wrong. They have committed no crime. They are too young to have offended us in any way at all. One searches for some way to understand why a society as rich and, frequently, as generous as ours would leave these children in their penury and squalor for so long -- and with so little public indignation. Is this just a strange mistake of history? Is it unusual? Is it an American anomaly?"

That's a really good observation Moo.

I don't want to get as long-winded as my last post, but here's a few quick thoughts.

In fairness, the racial divide in the U.S has a unique and different history, involving slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement etc. Canada is more like the UK. Visible minorities have emmigrated in the last 30 years to Canada from the Carribean, Africa and Asia. In the one city in Canada with a large population descended from former slaves, Halifax, the relationship is as tense as any U.S city.

However, even bearing that in mind it's true that Canadian cities do not seem to have the extremes of U.S ones. Again, not all is rosy, there is a huge homelessness problem here in Toronto that per capita equals London's.

But Canadians do seem to be willing to spend more on infrastructire, social benefits, start programmes to help unemployed people find work and despite the many criticisms made towards the Canadian health care system, no-one in this country goes without health care insurance. It is truly appalling to many Canadians that some 30-40 million people in the U.S do not have health care insurance and that the U.S has such a high infant mortality rate.

Canada and this city, which is one of the most multicultural in the world also spend lots and lots of money on integration programmes, ESL classes etc. There is lots of investment in education. This can be frustrated by the fact that many who come here find their qualifications are useless, which can leads to several years schlepping in doughnut shops and going to night school etc.

I think there is also a huge psychological difference too. There is no star system in Canada. People come here to do well, but the vast majority of Canadians really do have a strong egalitarian streak. You hear things like "that Conrad Black, does he think his sh*t smells better than anyone else's?" It can be a bit of a duck pond where no-one likes a showy swan, and pedantry or airs and graces are promptly and gruffly shot down here, but I think it does produce a somewhat harmonious society.

However, the bottom line is still the best social program of all, a job. As long as most people feel they're doing well they don't see much reason to bring old grievances with them or have a chip on their shoulder. If Canada ever fell into a major depression it might be a lot different.

Oh dear...I did get long-winded again didn't I? oops

I can only give my own experience of our health system.

Over the last year I've had a problem with my eyes. Macular Degeneration in my right eye and a blocked blood vessel in my left. On both occasions I saw my opthamologist within 24 hours and a specialist within a week. Fortunately my problem was not serious.

I was diagnosed with Colon Cancer in Dec 93 and by Jan 94 I had my operation. It was successful and since then have had regular Colonoscopy's.

I may be more fortunate than some but personally I have not met anyone that has not been quickly treated when faced with a serious medical problem.

Sure you can find all sorts of horror stories but that goes for any country. At least I feel that everyone in Canada has the same access to medical treatment.

BTW check this site hspm.sph.sc.edu/Courses/ECON/CLASSES/Canada.pdf

Isn't that because everyone is covered instead of 2/3 of the population? I mean, if there are 100 people in one queue, and 60 in another then you'd get done quicker if you were at the end of the 60 queue. Then the relative time gap builds up over time.

The real kicker is that 40 people weren't even allowed in the 60 person queue to begin with so you would be done quicker at their expense.

See, they're so smart theve even perfected time travel. :D

Seriously Keith, glad to see you're almost ten years post your op. My dad just had bowel cancer surgery and it's a amazing how hard it is on the body.

To follow on from what Lee/Moo said, that's why I love Toronto - doesn't seem to be any areas exclusively for very poor minorities. Perhaps because the integration of non-white Europeans was alot more succesful - when I walk around Toronto I'm often very aware I'm the only white European looking guy. And as you say - go to Halifax. Sure there are homeless people (always outside HSBC for some reason) and some scary loonies, but compare Toronto and Buffalo - talk about stark difference. One is a beautiful multicultural city and the other is being systematically burned to the ground. Ontario looks like heaven from Grand Island. Of course, it's all grass-is-greener stuff, and my life here is fantastic. I just want a meat pie probably.

I'd live in Toronto in a heartbeat but my wife doesn't fancy it at all. And to be fair, the cut in salaries would be pretty severe, but it's so darn cheap to live there. I like arseing about in Montreal, and I have a bit of a chubb-on for movies from Quebec right now. I like keeping up-to-date with Canadian politics, and my last job meant that I had to keep very-up-to-date with the Canadian health care system. I guess I'm just perplexed because a) American news devotes zero time to to it's biggest trading partner, b) Canada didn't nose-dive, c) it's alot more like Britain than anywhere else I'm likely to drive to.


Oh, and here's a piece on comparison of fat people in the US and Canada from David Frum in NRO.
http//www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp

That's just plain unamurrican. You have to have ghettoes. Where else will they buy crack, fake drivers licenses and strange foreign food?

I wish your Dad all the best and hope he has as full a recovery as I had.
BTW I had to go back in March 94 ( 6 weeks after op) to have the Ostomy bag removed. That was the worst 6 weeks of my life, but I was well over it by the summer and was fortunate to not have any follow up treatment.

What about the time travel :-? :wink:

Did you know David Frum is Canadian. His mother, Barbara Frum was one of the best Radio/TV personalities in Canada.
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/html...arbara.htm