8 ms·

I have said this over and over again: Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries. The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by

• LegitShady 3y ago
  as a canadian, you're not wrong.
• hnarn 3y ago
  > The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate That’s quite the statement, I assume you have quite the source for it. The price-to-rent ratio isn’t that far off from the US, for example.
  • hnav 3y ago
    but incomes are generally much lower
    • lifeisgood99 3y ago
      That's tech bias. The pay for random office jobs or trade jobs are similar.
  • ysofunny 3y ago
    there's a tiktoker that compares real states prices in Canada and in various parts of Europe it's funny to see dozens of examples of european castles (buildings with tens of rooms and bathrooms, plus huge gardens) whose cost is in the same ballpark as 2 or 3 bedroom houses in random (but well [sub]urbanized) parts of Canada
    • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > dozens of examples of european castles (buildings with tens of rooms and bathrooms, plus huge gardens) whose cost is in the same ballpark as 2 or 3 bedroom houses Castles are a bit of a scam. The old aristocratic families that still own them, e.g. in Germany, tend to have a state subsidy for maintainance. If you didn't have the luck of being born into those families, you get all of the joys of Medieval engineering twinned to modern historic preservation bureuacracy.
    • cycrutchfield 3y ago
      Wait until you see the maintenance and heating costs for those castles, or any old building in general. The sticker price isn’t the whole story.
      • ysofunny 3y ago
        I know that, but the comparisons are still ridiculous the canadian properties are in some cases less than 100 square meters, getting compared with land properties of square kilometer scales! the discrepancies in land value are artificial and are part of the global inequality crisis but on the global scale the inequality is not between individuals, but between cities and states (and countries)
        • cycrutchfield 3y ago
          Huh? Artificial? A plot of land in Manhattan is worth more than a plot of land in the Sahara desert. Not surprising at all.
  • raydev 3y ago
    > The price-to-rent ratio isn’t that far off from the US, for example. I'd love to see the numbers that back this up that also don't include SF, LA, NYC, Miami, or Seattle.
• nimbius 3y ago
  >most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with their lives or try and innovate to build something. to be fair most Canadians were promised this as part of their countries stratospheric growth under neoliberalist policies. that they are not capable of it is no fault of their own. that they want this is at all is not a bane. > Where US got the best talent from India, Canada got the worst, the ones who scam their way here and take the lowest level jobs. dividing immigrants into "good ones" and "bad ones" is pretty vile, but as an american i must acquiesce we've played that game for a long time. before hispanics it was asians, before asians it was europeans (the irish particularly.) turns out blaming immigration is a fools errand to distract from domestic class warfare. the real question for Canada now is not "how do we punish the immigrant" but what do elected leaders in the political class do to affect meaningful restitution and corrective action in the face of what is a national crisis. Either they see clearly and will reform their own cash cow, or they will blindly ride it off a cliff in the hopes that through their own profit they can weather the coming storm.
  • Archelaos 3y ago
    > dividing immigrants into "good ones" and "bad ones" is pretty vile Isn't that the case everywhere where immigration is restricted?
    • throwaway894345 3y ago
      It seems the parent is trying to imply that the grandparent is arguing that some immigrant races are good and others bad (hence his reference to US hispanics, asians, europeans, etc) even though the grandparent is very explicitly arguing that the best immigrants from India and China respectively go to the USA while the mediocre immigrants from those countries go to Canada (I'm not arguing for or against that claim, but I can understand how it is different than what the parent alleges).
  • maxglute 3y ago
    >dividing immigrants into "good ones" and "bad ones" is pretty vile TBF that's the inherent insinuation in points / skill based immigration. The goal of immigration driven growth to is to maximize return potential via brain drain and wealth drain from other countries who foot the bill for talent development, or to extract wealth via foreign elites who accumulated wealth in host countries. When crisis reach critcal levels when it obviously becomes a class warfare issue, the solution is going to be punish the immigrants, before them become PRs or citizens. It's not the immigrants fault for policy failures, but until they get right to vote they are escape goats for bad politics.
• guidedlight 3y ago
  Everything you write is also true if you replace Canada with Australia.
  • robocat 3y ago
    New Zealander here: much the same. New Zealanders definitely hate entrepreneurship - one political party wanted to introduce a wealth tax if you had more than $1 million equity. Median house price in Auckland is just over $1 million! Auckland has about 30% of the population, and house affordability (price compared to income) is similar as bad as Sydney or San Francisco. I have done okay for myself founding a software business and I notice the tall poppy syndrome from friends. Plus the relentless attack on my hard earned savings by a grifter government. And shit support for businesses to start-up or function (government incentives are mostly negative, and the positive incentives are incredibly badly run). Fortunately we are building more houses in New Zealand (low single digit percentage growth) but unfortunately immigration is exceeding supply. We need the immigrants because we aren't breeding enough New Zealanders. My experience of our government healthcare system is mostly positive. I don't understand it: we should want people to save for their retirement but all the incentives to save are negative. The main taxation incentive is to gear up and borrow money for property. Then that blows up of course. Even our right leaning government seems to want to consider a capital-gains-tax. The existing taxes screw any reason to invest in the stock market. I'm whinging: I think it is a good place to live but I feel a comfortable retirement is becoming an unacheivable dream.
    • quink 3y ago
      Guardian, December 2023: > The wealth tax contemplated by New Zealand Labour would have required couples to pay an annual levy of 1.5% on any assets they held over a $10m threshold. The estimated $3.8bn in revenue would have funded income-tax cuts for the vast majority of Kiwis. Labour’s potential coalition partners, the Greens and the indigenous-led Te Pāti Māori, ran on similar platforms. > Plus the relentless attack on my hard earned savings by a grifter government. $150,000 a year if you own $20 million, $0 if they somehow attacked you all the way to a pitiful $10 million, and in return tax cuts for those doing worse than you, and they did not get elected. I’m not seeing the problem.
• speg 3y ago
  As a Canadian who has ideas of building an off grid cabin in the woods, what would be a more meaningful life? The stereotypical poor American working menial jobs into their senior years without affordable healthcare doesn’t sound much better…
  • randomdata 3y ago
    Also as a Canadian currently living in an urban area, I want to move to the woods so I have the room to build things and innovate regularly. I don't have enough land for a workshop here. Outside of maybe software that you can pack onto a personal computer, you're not going to be able to do much innovating without much space.
  • yieldcrv 3y ago
    its a discussion about the economy, not the quality of life and the accuracy of the aspirations
  • napierzaza 3y ago
    [dead]
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Despite what you have “heard” the heath care system is quite nice
  • canadiantim 3y ago
    I’d like to strongly disagree with you. Parts of the health care system are quite nice, but other parts have completely collapsed causing multi year delays for basic healthcare services or even finding a family doctor, which is not quite so nice.
    • m3kw9 3y ago
      What is your experience in finding a doc?
  • raydev 3y ago
    How quickly can you book an appointment with your family doctor? How did you acquire your family doctor?
    • m3kw9 3y ago
      Most times you can do walk ins same day, but finding a family doctor depends on location so my experience can be different
  • evilfred 3y ago
    1 million British Columbians who can't find a family doctor, and thousands who have to wait 6+ months for cancer treatment , disagree with you
  • adamomada 3y ago
    Which one? Canadians I find are pretty ignorant about the health care in Canada and think it’s the same thing across the board, while it’s actually the individual provinces that each have their own setup (with pros and cons) It’s easy to spot when people speak of healthcare in general without being specific.
• 98codes 3y ago
  > most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods As opposed to most Americans, at least those that have been in the industry for a decade or more, who would rather be as far from tech as possible, in whatever direction. See also: https://imgur.com/vbFNbON https://imgur.com/vbFNbON
• penguin_booze 3y ago
  > Now all of this is coming home to roost This could be true of any country that's accepting immigrants. Inviting countries must be selecive of whom the let in, what they bring with them, and whether and how well the inbound population assimilate, thus retaining the essence of its extant values. When a country has no control of its immigration (whether by choice or otherwise), or is lax about it, all kinds of birds come home to roost. Some birds lay eggs; others just poop.
• ysofunny 3y ago
  at least now that the king of england has cancer they can somehow negotiate their way out of having to reprint all their money? that should be more cost effective than exiting the commonwealth? ahahah
  • vizzier 3y ago
    Why would they need to reprint money, old monarch's faces are still perfectly valid currency.
    • ysofunny 3y ago
      hmmm, so if the current king wants to see their face on money they gotta pay for it themselves? I guess this isn't that important given that governments want to push a cashless economy now
• mgbmtl 3y ago
  I'm surprised that you didn't mention the role of petrol in Alberta and hydro power in Quebec. They play a key role to sustaining the economy and social services. It's not just that though. People are definitely less risk-taking, workaholics, despite having a social safety net, or maybe because of it. It's just maybe less in our culture to "go big or go home". Having a cabin in the woods and free time to live your life is nice. Maybe because I live in Quebec, and language is definitely a barrier (requires immigrants to be trilingual), but I haven't met many shady people from China or India, on the contrary. My ancestors came here by accident from different countries, taking a random boat in a port, worked hard and made it. I hope we can give that opportunity to others too.
• JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Canada is the most overrated of all the developed countries You're also a politically stable energy and resource exporter bang next to a global economic superpower and security guarantor. Oh, and access to two oceans and soon a third. Canada has plenty of problems. But it's also tremendously blessed.
  • acchow 3y ago
    Likely the reason it doesn't need to accomplish much more to be a good place to live
  • gspetr 3y ago
    What's funny is that if we substitute Canada with Russia in your comment, every word of it still holds true. I suppose "stable" and "stagnant" are two sides of the same coin.
    • edgyquant 3y ago
      Yeah, Russia is Chinas Canada
      • _Parfait_ 3y ago
        What an insane take
        • throwawaymaths 3y ago
          The US does not make a cultural claim to any part of Canada, except possibly jokingly Alberta, which might actually be "Alberta jokingly makes a threat to secede to the US" (the US does not really want alberta and its disgustingly sulfurous oil). China is constantly threatening to invade the Russian far east and retake haishenwai
        • edgyquant 3y ago
          It’s a joke
    • 3y ago
• thisisnico 3y ago
  As a Canadian, living in Southern Ontario, I couldn't agree more with your assessment. Somehow we are ranking #1 on so many charts for quality of life etc. I'm starting to believe these sites and reviews of Canada are paid for. We were an incredible country before Trudeau took office. His aggressive immigration policy, no economic policy or plan, and creation of infighting on social issues, not tackling any of the core issues we face as a country, until absolutely forced to do so (in this case unlikely re-election). We need to stop fighting over social issues and start being productive towards a stronger, healthier, and happier Canada. Social issues can't fixed if people can't afford shelter and food.
  • napierzaza 3y ago
    [dead]
  • onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    Look at sites that don't take QoL based on neoliberal metrics?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• diego_moita 3y ago
  As an immigrant into Canada: even if that description were true, it still would make it a lot better than the majority of other countries in the world. Luckily, Canada is a lot better than your description.
  • ashconnor 3y ago
    The comment is complete hyperbole and isn't even correct. Real estate is bigger in the US than Canada. Every developed country is running into immigration and housing issues. Canada isn't alone and isn't even the worst case.
    • tharmas 3y ago
      Yes, but there's Canada's climate. If you try to live in a tent outdoors in Canada you will likely die.
      • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        You can do it Vancouver. Seattle and Vancouver’s homelessness problem are remarkably similar, only differing in how Canada handles it better than the Americans do.
        • tharmas 3y ago
          And that's essentially the only place you can. So all the homeless make a trek to Vancouver?
    • xcrunner529 3y ago
      Isn’t allowing everyone and essentially recruiting immigrants a major cause of the housing crisis and expenses in Toronto?
      • ashconnor 3y ago
        Sure and immigration should be stemmed, short-term, until housing reforms can be implemented. They've already announced measures to reduce student visas which were uncapped previously. https://www.ft.com/content/085cda38-9060-4da1-8532-1a3af9cd7e58 https://www.ft.com/content/085cda38-9060-4da1-8532-1a3af9cd7... Still. This isn't going to solve the issue. They need to build far more than they currently are doing. They need to strip local government of its veto over housing. They need to definancialize real estate.
• maxglute 3y ago
  Canada is Australia, an relatively affluent bureaucracy that sells rocks and houses. We have too many people to be Norway, where less people, a few high tier sectors and plundering the land for other markets can sustain developed QoL. But we could do ok on that model if we keep population down and build up a few strategic sectors. Except or interests are more subsumed by US foreign policy so we can't sell all the rocks we want. See the foreign NGO meddling that repeately killed Canada fossil expansion plans. Meanwhile US gets first dibs on global English talent, and Canadian English talent. And ultimately Canadian giants get cut down to size - Nortel, Bombardier due to sheninangans. But being US neighbour/sphere is better starting condition than most, but it's still hard map to play on.
• cbsmith 3y ago
  > The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. Canada has generally had a more conservative financial industry, which is a large part of why they were able to escape the 2008 mortgage crisis, and that, in turn, has lead to a stronger real estate market. Additionally, the recent post COVID-19 influx of immigrants has driven up demand for housing like crazy. There's not a lot of question that the real estate market is hot. But... ...I'd point out that considering it's population, Canada has had an impressive number of innovative companies just in the tech sector over the years. Alias & Softimage in 3D rendering. Shopify in e-commerce. Research in Motion in mobile phones. Ecobee in the smart homes/IOT space. Certicom in cryptography. Going farther back, Corel was a software giant. There's relative newcomers to with Hopper, Imagia, etc. I don't think it's fair to say there's no innovation, risk taking, or entrepreneurship. > All of this is propped up by rampant levels of immigration from China and India. Where US got the best talent from India, Canada got the worst, the ones who scam their way here and take the lowest level jobs. I'm not sure where you get that from. Canada's immigration policies have historically been more oriented towards merit/highly skilled immigrants than the US. > Now all of this is coming home to roost. The next decade will be Canada's worst and if they do not learn that risk taking and entrepreneurship is the only way out of the mess they find themselves in, they will become a third world country in another decade. I'm not sure what is fueling your perspective, but there is a lot of concern about Canada's economic policy coming out of COVID-19, in particular, the big deficits and explosive immigration are putting a strain on the economy. However, there's a very credible possibility that these will prove to be effective "investments" that pay off in the long run. Ironically, given your criticisms, Canada is taking on a lot of risk!
  • faeriechangling 3y ago
    I think the conservatism of Canada is overstated and in fact Canada is one of the most leveraged countries in the world.
    • cbsmith 3y ago
      The "conservatism" is of the banks, not the country. The Canadian government is quite leveraged. But as leveraged as Canada is, Canada is well below the average for debt-to-GDP ratio of the G7 (admittedly skewed by Japan's monster debt, but still well below US debt). https://www.visualcapitalist.com/government-debt-by-country-advanced-economies/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/government-debt-by-country-...
• calf 3y ago
  Canada is the way it is because it is next to the U.S. The Canadian brain drain was never entirely the fault of Canada; the gravitational pull of U.S. neoliberal capitalism (what you uncritically and a-historically call 'risk taking') is a nontrivial factor. Canadian protectionism would not go over well with its world power neighbour, which seeks to exploit intellectual and social capital.
• preommr 3y ago
  > The whole country is a gigantic house of cards propped up by real estate, with horrible service quality, terrible healthcare, no jobs, ZERO innovation, risk taking and entrepreneurship. This is so true it hurts. And while there's some numbers that outsiders can look at and gasp[0] at how absurd it's become, there's a whole lot that isn't being tracked or documented. Official immigration numbers are ~0.5mn for 2023, but (and I've seen it elsewhere, but I can't find it right now) if you use a common sense definition that includes all inflow (e.g. asylum seekers, tfw, foreign students, etc) then it's 1mn+. It's insane for a country of <40mn, with highly socialized services. The quality of life in Canada is horrid in a way that's not comparable to anywhere else other than maybe australia. Everything is silly expensive, with low salaries, and it's not like in europe where you can travel 3 hours to go somwehere with cheaper services. It's crazy. Or what about crime, the right wing, tough on crime party leader yesterday said that if someone has 3 convictions for car theft that it should mean 3 years. It's no wonder that I know some crazy personal stories about people getting their cars stolen and the police doing nothing. Anyways, I don't want to rant even more, all I can hope is that for younger people in Canada to realize that the best thing they can do is hop to the US or something. [0] https://www.financialsamurai.com/what-if-the-u-s-housing-market-turned-into-the-canadian-housing-market/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/what-if-the-u-s-housing-mar...
• tasuki 3y ago
  I worked with an Indian migrant to Canada. He was very good at his job, a great team player, and overall an amazing guy. Your description is unfair.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • fieryskiff17 3y ago
    [dead]
• ranger_danger 3y ago
  > terrible healthcare that's funny because they sure love to rub their free healthcare in Americans' faces often
• onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  > Where US got the best talent from India, Canada got the worst, the ones who scam their way here and take the lowest level jobs. Source? I haven't heard this claim before.
  • vexna 3y ago
    Canada currently has an issue with handing out way too many student visas to students going to strip mall diploma mills. I believe the federal government has just enforced a cap for the next 2 years.
• boringg 3y ago
  It's annoying that the top comment isn't related to the article but just a self-hating Canadian ranting about the current woes of the country. It's also classic Canadian behavior.
• EasyMark 3y ago
  I would posit that the US is headed down a similar road with christofascism in the red states. They seem to be in a race to the bottom when it comes to freedom and prosperity. Texas once moderated that but no more, I'm due to move out of this in a couple of months and probably in a nick of time. So Canada might not be alone.
  • faeriechangling 3y ago
    Those christofascist states have been seeing immigration inflows, are recently leading economically, and generally aren’t as screwed up reproductively where families are treated as expendable resources to be exploited for labour until they burn out like in blue states and Canada. The left has done many nice things to ensure human rights and hedonism (not saying that negatively) but in the process all the values and traditions they deemed unimportant in the name of progress are catching up with them and I only seeing this intensify over time unless blue states and Canada have a serious come to Jesus moment. The current reality of blue states is they can ONLY exist in a world where places even more regressive than the red states exist and supply them with a constant supply of population to burn through and oddly nobody on the left seems to be all that concerned with this even though it will collapse blue state values and economics in less than a century as global population plateaus. The American red states don’t strike me as a paragon of morality but they do strike me as one of the most relatively sustainable and affluent and “normal” cultures in the developed world, and affluent goes a long way. If you’re expecting Canada to be a refuge from a conservative wave you’re likely to be disappointed because it and the blue states have much of the same systemic problems and it will be pressured to reform in much the same way.
• __loam 3y ago
  > Having lived and travelled extensively, most Canadians want a house somewhere in the woods instead of doing something meaningful with their lives or try and innovate to build something. Do you ever think about what you're writing and think "I'm an ass hole"?
  • dajt 3y ago
    Well, we are on HN. We have to make allowances.
• dang 3y ago
  Ok, but please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Edit: looks like we had to ask you exactly this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518, about exactly the same topic. Can you please not do this on HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
  • ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
    Ok sorry.
• lawrenceyan 3y ago
  Nah, have you seen what comes out of Waterloo and University of Toronto? Canada will be fine.