The low productivity of Canadian companies threatens our living standards | Hacker News Reader

The low productivity of Canadian companies threatens our living standards

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2 pointsilrwbwrkhv4 comments

as someone born in Canada, grew up there, no longer living there

this is cultural!

Canadian culture is defined purely and only as contrasting itself to the US

it isn't just business competitiveness, its anything...healthcare, public safety, the environment...ask any Canadian about their thoughts on these (or any) topics and the answer provided will be a contrast to the same issue in the US

this has resulted in a unwarranted pride and willingness to turn Canadian society inwards on itself, supposedly to protect itself from ugly Americans

the Globe And Mail nailed it with an article titled something like "Canada: Smug For No Good Reason"

Canadians are discovering the pitfalls of basing a national culture on nothing more than being appalled by the US...all that is left over is a maniacal obsession with total mediocrity

tl;dr: Canada is in decline, but at least we aren't them Trump loving Americans, eh!?!?!

Bang on. Though our productivity gap is also the result of Canada being a resource state run by a few oligopolies. There's no incentive for any of them to up productivity. And somehow the population is convinced that government spending is the solution to everything, so instead of innovation, we have synthetic government "innovation" programs that just allow companies to leech.

The result is Canada is it's own little fiefdom run by companies that would be absolutely uncompetitive elsewhere, with a population that compares itself, like you say, to a caricature of the US in what, the 70s, and uses that as the basis for being smug in our shitty position

It has bothered me for a long time that we spend so much money on roads/transportation infrastructure and digging up rocks from the ground. I wish there would be more investment in developing expertise in knowledge-based industries.

How much of “Canadian business” is Canadian owned? Particularly little reason to compete as a subsidiary…. There is little tech or pharma in Canada which is where innovation comes from. Selling stuff dug out of or farmed from the ground is stagnant. Anything new in Canada is small enough to be bought or acquihired almost by definition.

Check how little innovation comes from the US apart from a handful of cities: San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, Boston, Seattle. A few others are trying to kindle activity but they’re quite small compared to the major centres. There are innovative companies scattered about, but not the region as a whole. In Canada’s case, Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal not only have the innovation they have a significant fraction of the population.

Edit: how much loss of productivity comes from the effect of “cultural laws” that restrict what can be done where and by whom? This affects hiring and it probably also affects the availability of capital to invest.

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