[version_five]

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

[wilburm]

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.