Now the interesting question to me is why is that a country with a tenth of population can have car, truck and military plane manufacturing yet Canada can’t, even with virtually all resources for inputs, including energy can’t.
Canada has many issues. First and foremost, their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat.<p>They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms.<p>The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between.<p>I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN admissions to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly <i>1.3 million</i>.
> The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care.<p>You write this declaratively as if it describes a typical or representative case. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Canada, this isn’t representative of what I see.<p>The direction of migration of medical doctors likewise shows signs of reversal. I’m a physician and my wife is a surgeon. We left the U.S. over a decade ago and are constantly receiving inquiries from US physicians about immigration.
> I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN visas to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.<p>This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders.<p>DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. <a href="https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/population-estimates/fy24-nonimmigrant-pop-est" rel="nofollow">https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat...</a><p>Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming.<p>>their entire economy<p>Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.
>their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat<p>This is just laughable ignorant nonsense. There is no candy coating it, you clearly have zero idea what you're yipping about.<p>>And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.<p>LOL. No. Again, are you getting your facts from some far-right bullshit chamber?<p>Don't just repeat nonsense.
I used to have aspirations to move to Canada and I know folks who have tried to hire SREs in Toronto. While that post may sound hyperbolic, it is for all intents and purposes accurate. You can’t build an SRE team in Toronto because the talent pool is too shallow. It really is that bad. The story repeats over and over. The degree to which the US captured the Western countries through its dollar system is actually quite astounding and should terrify people.
>I used to have aspirations to move to Canada and I know folks who have tried to hire SREs in Toronto<p>Bizarre. It's like having an American school me on Canadian healthcare.<p>Here I'm sitting, <i>in Toronto</i>, having hired for a number of software development teams, currently running my own operations, where every position gets an <i>enormously</i> deep volume of extremely capable candidates.<p>Shallow talent pool? Good god. Canadian technology salaries are depressed because there is an enormous volume of extremely qualified candidates for every job.<p>It's not hyperbolic, it's asinine bullshit. Every claim they made is factual nonsense, aside from the truth that working in <i>specific</i> areas of the US (silicon valley, NYC) can yield you a huge salary premium, though that is really kind of a thing of the past and this is like looking at old runes.
You can look here [0] for "North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) professional workers (TN)"<p>[0] <a href="https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table25" rel="nofollow">https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table2...</a>
These are extremely expensive programs that the Swedes have historically been willing to pay to maintain as much neutrality as possible in their defence procurement system. A Saab Gripen has almost the same flyway cost as an F-35 because of manufacturing scale differences (maintenance is far cheaper, though) and the Gripen is far less capable (it is one of the best western fighters if a full blown war happens and your bases are all destroyed, though). Sweden had unique defence requirements due to this that wasn't being met by others.<p>Sweden was forced to take their defence seriously due to their geography and political will. Canada has had an easy ride and when the going got expensive, we cancelled our domestic programs (most famously the arrow, but also a lot of other stuff).
Sweden does not have a car industry. The fighter jets are a different matter, very strong technical moat and need to prove the system in combat. You can't just start a fighter jet business.
Sweden had a native car industry they decommissioned themselves, in short, they basically gave up, but they’re not alone Australia, New Zealand did the same and so did Canada, but they’re starting to realize that they were a little bit hasty in giving up….<p>Then last, but not least the UK basically threw the towel in too on a wide assortment of industries, but they’re now discovering that that was a big mistake.
It does with Volvo, although I couldn't say how big it is relative to global industry. Within Europe it's a large player
Volvo still produces cars in Sweden. Koenigsegg still build their cars in Ängelholm.
Why are you discounting Volvo?
>> Sweden does not have a car industry.<p>Apart from Volvo, Koenigsegg and Polestar and Scania. Apart from that, you’re right.
[dead]
Canada has historically relied on a relatively stable trading relationship with the U.S. That relationship is a shambles. It remains to be seen how Canada retools itself; I imagine that we will see a blend of on-shoring and new trading sources. So it’s less of an issue of “can’t” and more “hasn’t (yet)”.
Frankly to me the fact Canada is "retooling itself" knowing well that this nightmare should be over in less than 3 years, and most likely next President will be a Democrat, but yet they keep retooling, means their strong (reliable?) assumption is that Trump Administration won't leave the office at all, similar to how Putin stayed in power in what arguingly is a Democratic Country.
Not that it invalidate your point, but Sweden has 1/4 the population of Canada, not 1/10.
There are trade offs in all things. Trying to do everything yourself does also have a cost. It is not neccesarily better.
Because Canada has been poorly managed for a long time by all political parties that have been voted in.
Resources curse
We have a larger partner speaking the same language and with a largely synonymous culture and a heavily integrated economy as our neighbour. The moment a Canadian company sees success -- in optics, autos, science, medicine, weaponry, etc. -- it is absorbed by a larger US company and suddenly is no longer Canadian, and in many cases any Canadian operations will usually get choked out.<p>There are few examples where this isn't the outcome.<p>This has happened across Canada for well over a century, across every sphere. And in the process the Canadian input is retconned out of existence and Americans ponder why Canada "doesn't make anything". They post ignorant nonsense about how Canada is resource extraction in a trench coat or similar nonsense.<p>Sweden had nothing like this, and they punch way above their weight class because of this. Though that has been changing, for instance with a Chinese company buying Volvo, etc.<p>The only protection against this is...protectionism, whether explicit controls or implicitly by ownership or funding structures. Canada became a leader in nuclear tech by the nuclear industry basically being government owned. It became a transportation powerhouse by a government owned railway. And so on.<p>Change is afoot. Carney has made significant efforts to stop just sending hundreds of billions to the US and most military procurement will focus on Canadian products and innovation. Which leads to lots of gnashing and screaming by propaganda rags like the US-owned PostMedia (yup, even a lot of our media gets absorbed by the US, at least where it isn't explicitly barred from doing so).