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'Worst in the world': Here are all the rankings in which
Canada is now last
Most unaffordable housing, highest cellphone bills, and worst rate of acute care beds, to name a few
Author of the article:Tristin Hopper
Publishing date:Aug 11, 2022 • 21 hours ago • 5 minute read •
The National Post
If you spend any time on social media, it’s likely that you’ve seen this graphic compiled by columnist Stephen Lautens that assembles 11 international indices which feature Canada near the top spot. “Canada is broken? I don’t think so. Neither does the world,” reads a caption.
Naturally, it only tells a partial picture. While Canada may dominate abstract indices such as “quality of life” and “peace,” there are plenty of far more empirical indicators in which we measurably rank as among the worst in the developed world.
There’s plenty to like about Canada, but below is a not-at-all comprehensive list of all the ways in which we are indeed very broken.
We have the most unaffordable housing in the OECD
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is essentially a club of the world’s 38 most developed countries. And when these 38 are ranked against each other for housing unaffordability, Canada emerges as the clear champion. OECD analysts rank affordability by comparing average home prices to average incomes, and according to their latest quarterly rankings Canada was No. 1 for salaries that were most out of whack with the cost of a home.
We have the world’s most expensive wireless costs
Every year, the Finnish telecom analyst Rewheel ranks the world’s most expensive countries for wireless services. And last year, Canada once again dominated. Across several metrics, Canada was found to be the most expensive place in the world for mobile data. Analysts found that it would cost the average Canadian the equivalent of at least 100 Euros to obtain a cell phone plan with at least 100 gigabytes of mobile data. Across much of the EU, that kind of cell phone plan could be had for less than 40 Euros.
We have the lowest rate of acute care beds among peer countries
Canada’s health system was particularly walloped by COVID-19 due to the simple fact that most of our hospitals are at the breaking point even in good times. Multiple times during the pandemic, provinces were forced into shutdown by rates of COVID that had barely been noticed in better-prepared countries. A ranking by the Canadian Institute for Health Information provides one clue as to why. When ranked against peer countries, Canada’s rate of per-capita acute care beds was in last place, albeit tied with Sweden. Canada has two acute care beds for every 1,000 people, against 3.1 in France and six in Germany.
Two of the planet’s “bubbliest” real estate markets are in Canada
For at least 15 years now, Canada has been a regular contender on rankings of overheated housing markets. And the latest UBS index of world cities with “bubbly” real estate markets is no exception. In their 2021 index, Toronto was second only to Frankfurt in terms of bubble risk, while Vancouver ranked sixth. Aside from Germany, Canada was the only country that saw two of its cities in the top ten.
We racked up COVID debt faster than anyone else
The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in the most feverish global accumulation of debt in the history of human civilization. So it’s rather remarkable that amidst this international monsoon of debt, Canada still managed to out-debt everyone else. Last year, analysts at Bloomberg tracked each country’s rate of public and private debt accumulated during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Canada came in with an overall debt burden equivalent to 352 per cent of GDP. While a handful of countries (Japan, France and Hong Kong) came out of the pandemic with higher overall debt burdens, Canada outranked all of them when it came to how quickly that debt had been accumulated.
Containers on rail cars waiting to be shipped east by rail at the Port of Vancouver Tuesday, June 21, 2022.
PHOTO BY (PHOTO BY JASON PAYNE/ PNG)
The Port of Vancouver is (almost) the most inefficient in the world
Last year — just as the global supply chain crisis got going — the World Bank decided to rank the performance of the world’s 370 major ports. Authors weighed factors such as how long the ports kept ships waiting, and how long crews took to unload a vessel. And when everything was added together, the Port of Vancouver ranked 368 out of 370. The only places with worse scores were the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. And it’s not like our other ports are much better. If Vancouver is too gummed up, you can always sail north to Prince Rupert, which ranks 339 out of 370.
Toronto Pearson is the world’s most-delayed airport
Flight delays are another category in which basically the entire world is feeling the pinch. And yet, Canada still managed to outdo all of them. Last month, CNN used data from the website FlightAware to figure out which airports were seeing the highest rates of flight delays. In the number one spot was Toronto Pearson, with 52 per cent of all flights out of the airport experiencing some kind of delay. And it was a commanding lead; the second-place finisher, Frankfurt, only managed to see 45.4 per cent of its flights delayed. Toronto was also a contender in flight cancellations; with 6.9 per cent of its scheduled flights never getting off the ground, it ranked fourth worst in the world.
We’re one of the world’s worst economies for foreign investment
A 2020 study out of the University of Calgary tracked foreign investment flows into a cross-section of developed countries between 2015 and 2019. Virtually every country on the list saw a surge in foreign cash during that period; Ireland topped out the ranking thanks to its foreign investment climbing by more than 115 per cent. Only four countries actually saw a reduction in foreign investment: Mexico, Brazil, Australia and Canada. A report by the Business Council of Canada noticed the same trend. “Canada is the second-worst in the OECD on openness to foreign direct investment,” it concluded.
We drive the most fuel-inefficient vehicles in the world
In 2019, the International Energy Agency examined the fuel economy of the world’s private car fleets. On almost every measure, Canada led the pack in driving unnecessarily huge, gas-guzzling vehicles. Per kilometre driven, the average Canadian burned more fuel and emitted more carbon dioxide than anyone else. Canadian cars were also the largest and (second only to the U.S.) the heaviest. While it would be convenient to blame this on Canada being a sparse, cold country with lots of heavy industry, our ranking was well beyond plenty of other countries where that was similarly the case.
I have to challenge that last sentence as I doubt there is any country, other than Russia, that can compare in size, sparseness, and coldness. Nevertheless, we do love our SUVs and half-tons.
On a list of the world’s happiest countries, Canada falls to a new low
France reached its highest ranking to date, at 20th, while Canada slipped to its lowest ranking ever, at 15th, just behind Germany at 14th and followed closely by the United States and the United Kingdom at 16th and 17th.
By Rebel News |
August 15, 2022
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Please go to RebelNews for this video.
This episode originally aired on August 10, 2022.
This popped up on my Twitter feed today:
Well, normally Canada does pretty well on lists like this — pseudo scientific lists that are really just PR agencies, promoting some globalist/socialist scheme.
But I had never heard of the World Happiness Report. And frankly, I’m even more skeptical of it than the UN’s Human Development Index. How do you measure happiness?
But there are some ways; I guess one way to start is simply by asking people. And to try to show some attempt at standardization; you know, in science, one of the tests of an experiment is: is it replicable? If you do the test again will it yield the same results? That’s an attempt to bring rigor to social sciences. It’s a bit of art.
But with that disclaimer, look at this.
Turns out, this World Happiness Report is a UN project too — but it also has private companies and private donors, and a lot of participation from Canada as a matter of fact. Canadian universities, a Canadian government grant, of course.
So how is Canada doing? Let me tell you:
France reached its highest ranking to date, at 20th, while Canada slipped to its lowest ranking ever, at 15th, just behind Germany at 14th and followed closely by the United States and the United Kingdom at 16th and 17th.
Ten years ago, Canada was ranked fifth. Fifth! How could that be! Under the evil Stephen Harper!
From fifth place to fifteenth! You’d think that would be on the news. Oh, it would be if Harper were presiding over our unhappiness. No surprise the news is buried with Trudeau.
Don’t get me wrong. We’re still better than many third world countries. At least until Trudeau goes full Castro and censors the internet and seizes your bank account, shuts down farms and farmers, and brings in mandatory digital ID surveillance. That really is a Cuban level of misery.
Look at Canada — 35 days of anxiety — more than any other! And look at sorrow — Only the UK and New Zealand were worse.
That’s not a virus. That’s the lockdown. That’s fear mongering. That’s Trudeau and Theresa Tam — and the media party, and the rest of the establishment.
Trudeau made us sad, and anxious. He made us depressed; he demoralized us. He made us miserable.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from a study his government funded.
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