Canada is falling behind.

Canada's housing market isn't just expensive - it's structurally broken. A 28-year-old nurse earning $75,000 in Toronto takes home about $57,000 after deductions. Rent on a one-bedroom apartment costs $32,400 a year. That leaves $2,050 a month for everything else. Saving for a 20% down payment on a $600,000 condo at $500/month would take 20 years - by which point the condo will cost more.

This is fundamentally a supply crisis. Roughly 70-80% of residential land in Toronto and Vancouver is zoned exclusively for single-family homes. You cannot build enough housing when most urban land legally prohibits density. Development charges in the GTA can exceed $100,000-$150,000 per unit. The approval process takes 2-5 years. Meanwhile, the construction workforce is aging - 20-25% of workers will retire within a decade.

The crisis has created the sharpest intergenerational wealth divide in Canadian history. Homeownership rates for 25-34 year-olds have fallen from ~50% a generation ago to ~35-40% today. An estimated 25-30% of first-time purchases now involve parental financial help. Social mobility is declining: whether you can buy a home increasingly depends on whether your parents own one, not on your income.

Canada has the longest wait times of any universal healthcare system in the developed world. Orthopedic surgery: 40-50 weeks. Neurosurgery: 30-35 weeks. An MRI takes 10-12 weeks to get - in Germany, it's 1-2 weeks. The idea that long waits are an inevitable consequence of universal coverage is false. The Netherlands, Germany, France, and Australia all have universal systems with dramatically shorter waits.

The staffing crisis is the root cause. Canada produces only ~3,500 medical graduates per year for a population of 41 million. Australia, with 26 million people, produces ~3,800. Meanwhile, ~400 family medicine residency positions went unfilled in 2024 - a historic record. Family doctors earn $150,000-$200,000 after overhead, while specialists earn $400,000-$600,000+. The incentives are completely misaligned.

An estimated 10,000-15,000 internationally trained physicians in Canada are not practising medicine - many are driving taxis or working retail. The credential recognition system requires a physician from a top UK or Indian medical school to repeat years of supervised training. Meanwhile, patients have died waiting in Canadian emergency departments. This is documented. It is not acceptable.

Canada's cost-of-living problem is fundamentally a competition problem. In sectors with genuine competition - electronics, clothing, furniture - prices have been stable or falling. In sectors dominated by oligopolies - groceries, telecom, banking, airlines - prices far exceed international benchmarks. Loblaw, Sobeys, and Metro control over 60% of the grocery market. Rogers, Bell, and Telus control ~87% of wireless. The Big Five banks earn ~$50-55 billion in combined annual profits.

The grocery concentration is well-documented. Loblaw admitted to a 14-year bread price-fixing conspiracy (2001-2015). Their sister company, Choice Properties REIT, owns the shopping centres, making it difficult for competitors to find retail space. The Competition Bureau found that concentration has reduced price competition, but lacks the enforcement tools to act meaningfully.

Telecom follows a similar pattern. Canadians pay 2-3x what Europeans pay for comparable wireless plans. The Rogers-Shaw merger was expected to create competition through the Freedom Mobile divestiture - prices haven't meaningfully decreased. The CRTC, Canada's telecom regulator, has drawn criticism for revolving-door staffing with industry and consistently producing decisions that maintain the status quo.

The Bank of Canada's Senior Deputy Governor publicly called this a "productivity emergency" in March 2024. When a central bank uses the word "emergency" in public, the situation is dire. Canada experienced a per-capita recession from mid-2022 through late 2024 - six consecutive quarters of declining real GDP per capita, masked by headline GDP growth driven by population increase. The country got bigger. Canadians got poorer.

The root cause is business underinvestment. Canadian firms invest 30-40% less per worker than American firms - less equipment, less technology, less R&D. Why? Protected oligopolies don't need to innovate (banks, telecom, grocers). Regulatory complexity deters resource projects (a mine takes 10-15 years in Canada vs. 2-5 in Australia). And the small domestic market means the best startups leave for the US, where the capital, talent, and customers are.

The brain drain is accelerating. A senior software engineer in Toronto earns $150,000-$200,000 CAD. The same role in Seattle or San Francisco pays $250,000-$400,000 USD. After factoring in lower US taxes, the effective gap is even larger. Canada trains these workers at subsidized public universities, then watches them leave. The return on investment is negative. Every year of inaction widens the gap.

Canada's immigration system isn't broken in design - the points-based Express Entry system is well-regarded internationally. What broke was the volume. Between 2021 and 2024, Canada admitted 470,000+ permanent residents per year while the temporary resident population ballooned to 2.5-2.8 million. IMP work permits more than doubled from 332,000 in 2019 to 785,000 in 2023. The system was overwhelmed.

The diploma mill industry became a multi-billion-dollar scandal. Private colleges offered 18-month "diplomas" in generic business - their real product was an immigration document, not an education. International students paid $20,000-$60,000/year, 3-5x domestic tuition. The revenue dependency became so deep that some universities derived 30-50% of total revenue from international students. When the federal government announced study permit caps in 2024, some institutions faced immediate financial crises.

The human cost falls hardest on immigrants themselves. An estimated 50,000-80,000 internationally trained professionals work in jobs unrelated to their qualifications - engineers driving Uber, doctors in retail. The credential recognition system wastes billions in human capital every year. A doctor trained at a top UK medical school must repeat years of supervised training to practise in Canada. This is a scandal hiding in plain sight.

The federal government spends more on debt interest ($54-60 billion) than on the Canada Health Transfer ($52-55 billion), defense ($30-40 billion), or Employment Insurance ($22-25 billion). Every dollar of interest is a dollar unavailable for healthcare, defense, housing, or infrastructure. At current levels, debt servicing costs every Canadian roughly $1,400-$1,600 per year - for nothing.

The spending review is overdue. The federal public service grew 30-40% since 2016 while population grew 12%. Professional services (consulting) spending doubled to ~$20 billion. The ArriveCAN scandal - a $54,000 app that cost $54+ million - was emblematic. If you add 80,000 public servants AND double your consulting budget, the reasonable question is: what measurable improvement in service delivery has occurred?

Canada's fiscal position isn't a crisis yet - debt-to-GDP at 42-44% is manageable by international standards. But multiple expensive obligations are growing simultaneously: OAS/GIS demographics ($75-80B/year and rising), healthcare costs (5-7% annual growth), defense to 2% GDP (+$18-20B/year), and climate infrastructure. The arithmetic doesn't work without spending reform, tax reform, and - most importantly - productivity growth.

Russia has ~40+ military bases in the Arctic. China has declared itself a "near-Arctic state" and operates research vessels in Canadian waters. The Northwest Passage is becoming navigable - Canada claims it as internal waters but lacks the icebreakers, naval vessels, and surveillance infrastructure to enforce sovereignty. Canadian Rangers - 5,000 part-time reservists with snowmobiles - are the primary Arctic presence.

The equipment situation is dire. CF-18 fighters were purchased in the 1980s. The F-35 replacement won't reach full capability until the early 2030s - after a decade of political indecision. The Navy's four submarines are so unreliable that typically only 1-2 are operational at any time. Ammunition stockpiles are reportedly sufficient for only days to weeks of high-intensity combat. Canada has no armed drones, no ground-based air defense, and no offensive cyber capability.

The recruitment crisis is existential. Starting pay for a private is ~$38,000/year - below what Amazon or Costco pays. The enlistment process takes 6-12 months (should be 6-8 weeks). Housing near bases in Victoria, Ottawa, and Halifax is unaffordable on military salaries. Sexual misconduct scandals at the highest levels have damaged recruitment, particularly of women. Allies see Canada as a free rider. They're not wrong.