Seven reasons to love living in Canada

by Ziks511 Nov 10, 2013 5:06AM PST

http://brighterlife.ca/2013/05/29/seven-reasons-to-love-living-in-canada/

Since there seems to be no way I can escape irritating SE members, there's no reason for me to refrain from stirring the pot, because even posting about German art thefts comes back to bite me.

"A study published yesterday by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that "Canada performs exceptionally well in measures of well-being," according to an online report. On a range of measures — housing, income, health and safety — Canada scored among the world's best-performing countries."

"Health: Our life expectancy at birth is 81, a full year above the OECD average. And 88% of Canadians say they are in good health. Health spending in this country makes up 11.4% of gross domestic product. (The OECD average is 9.5% of gross domestic product.) We ranked third in health and 17th in life expectancy."

http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/bpea/latest-conference/2013-fall-chandra-healthcare-spending

"Healthcare consumes nearly 18 percent of US GDP, making the US the
world's leader in both the level and growth rate of spending on
healthcare."

Canada covers 100% of its people for 100% of care.

The US is still around 70% of the population, not necessarily for 100%. Even Obamacare won't cover 100% of people. I don't know about the 100%. And yet the US spends 50% more of GDP on health care than Canada. And yet most of you seem to despise Canada for some reason.

Oh, and Canadian Health Care costs are raised by our proximity to the US, since many of our supplies and devices and drugs come from the States or from Canadian subsidiaries of US manufacturers. And still we offer better prices than the US.

"Safety: Just 1.3% of Canadians said they were assaulted over the
one-year period leading up to the survey. That's well below the OECD
average of 4%. Our homicide rate is less impressive. It's 1.6%, only
marginally below the average rate of 2.2%. We ranked first on assault
rate and 23rd on homicide rate."
The assault statistic is probably a result of the Zero Tolerance for spousal assault, where every call results in a charge. Or perhaps is simply because the police don't tolerate any species of assault. But that's conjecture on my part, and thus not certain.

"Community: Canadians spend two minutes a day volunteering; that's
about half the OECD average. On the other hand, 64% said they'd helped a
stranger in the last month. (The OECD average is 48%.) And 94% know
someone they could count on if needed. We ranked seventh on support
network."

I'm only reporting the statistics, I don't make them up, but at least I link to them. This isn't opinion, except where noted under Safety.

Rob

Discussion is locked

To a degree Canada is suffering from guilt and regret at the behaviour of its much decorated Parachute Regiment in Somalia 5 or 6 of whom beat a kid to death for no good reason. The response was to disband the Paras which was ludicrous in my unashamedly Left Wing opinion for the act of a half dozen gas-holes who should have been jailed.

Canadian Snipers are very, very good. It's a tradition dating back to the 18th Century. Check out the best snipers of WW1. WW2 is a fight between one Finn who used iron sights only (as did the Canadians in WW1) and all those Russians, and a few Germans. Vasili Zaitsev is well down the list of Soviet Snipers, but had a great publicist.

Canada did very well in Afghanistan, and held the record for the longest shot ever for a time. Both the Canadian and US shooters really seem to be at about the limit of the technology at the moment. What's next?

Rob

Seven reasons to love living in Canada

CNET Forums

Other Forums

Forum Info