Canada, once admired for its robust economic health and high living standards, now faces a worrying decline. The nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth trails its peers in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), while Canadian workers clock more hours for less output.
Business investment is shrivelling while government expenditure is ballooning, creating an unhealthy fiscal cocktail. The health-care system in Canada is also lagging behind its European counterparts.
The legal system has grown expensive and slow; the justice system is also experiencing a chronic under-staffing crisis. Young Canadians, feeling dissatisfied, have reported low happiness scores compared to their international counterparts (in 58th place, just before Ecuador).
This palpable downturn begs two urgent questions: what underlies this fall in living standards? And what can be done to stop, and perhaps even reverse, this unsettling trend?
