You can take defense spending out but you can't take out the distribution of Canada's population. According to [1] and [2], the top 30 municipalities of Canada

You can take defense spending out but you can't take out the distribution of Canada's population. According to [1] and [2], the top 30 municipalities of Canada make up 16 million people (across ~20,000 sq km) out of Canada's total population of 36 million while the top 30 cities in the US have a population of only about 40 million (out of 310+ million in the country) on roughly ~22,000 sq km. The scale and density of the United States is completely different to Canada, where a much larger percent of the population is within the same area as ~14% of the US population as measured by the biggest cities (the smallest autonomous entity that is still practical to analyze wrt spending relative to Canadian municipalities). We're talking 2-5x cost increases on infrastructure, services, and logistics for at least half the population compared to urban areas [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_100_largest_municipalities_in_Canada_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_100_largest_munici...