upvote
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.

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.

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.

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 1.3 million.

reply
>We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades.

Its actually the opposite: it had been going on for some time, but has reversed for decades, and in recent years Canada has had _increasing gains_ of medical professionals from the US.

>The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reports annually on the number of physicians moving abroad and returning to active practice in Canada (CIHI 1996–2005). In the early to mid-1990s, net losses averaged 400 per year. More recently, the number of physicians leaving Canada has decreased significantly, resulting in net gains of between 30 to 60 per year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=Th...

reply
> 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.

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.

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.

reply
> We left the U.S. over a decade ago

I'm assuming you were educated in Canada, and then you worked in the US (but now you don't)?

reply
> 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.

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.

DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat...

Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming.

>their entire economy

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.

reply
Canada also supplies the US with most of its comedians.
reply
[flagged]
reply
You can look here [0] for "North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) professional workers (TN)"

[0] https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table2...

reply
Do you know what an admission is? A Windsor nurse working in Detroit would count as 300+ admissions over a year.

That does not remotely show what you think it does.

reply
Ah, okay. So the problem is not that bad. It's way overblown!

Meanwhile, the US continues to siphon off every Waterloo and U Toronto STEM grad to the US and American companies.

reply
>So the problem is not that bad. It's way overblown!

You were a magnitude off. And after your stealth edit to be admissions, you still ascribe it all to Canada. Did you know that 56% of TN visa holders are Mexican?

Something like 0.2% of Canada's working-age population holds a TN visa. It's actually kind of hilarious to compare this to your ridiculous take on this.

reply
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.
reply
>I used to have aspirations to move to Canada and I know folks who have tried to hire SREs in Toronto

Bizarre. It's like having an American school me on Canadian healthcare.

Here I'm sitting, in Toronto, having hired for a number of software development teams, currently running my own operations, where every position gets an enormously deep volume of extremely capable candidates.

Shallow talent pool? Good god. Canadian technology salaries are depressed because there is an enormous volume of extremely qualified candidates for every job.

It's not hyperbolic, it's asinine bullshit. Every claim they made is factual nonsense, aside from the truth that working in specific 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.

reply
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.

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).

reply
There were plenty of good reasons to cancel the Arrow: it was very difficult to fly, it burned fuel like crazy, it had poor maneuverability, etc. A friend of mine is considered an expert on its history and is convinced it was the right call, despite going into his research as a huge fan of the plane.
reply
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)”.
reply
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.
reply
The nightmare was supposed to be “over in 3 years” 9 years ago.

The foreseeable future is MAGA candidates with a coin flip odds of winning indefinitely.

reply
A lot of people are still in denial about Jan 6th. They really tried to overthrow the election like actually in physical effect. Not hypothetically. They were trying to not certify the election and it came down to a hairs width. They're going to try to again.
reply
This is Trump's second term and MAGA views won't disappear 3 years from now. Even if they assume that there will be a peaceful and lawful transition of power, I can see why they may be planning on the assumption that the "instability" (from their point of view) will continue into the future.
reply
I disagree. You literally have one single human being in charge of 3 main branches of government, and multiple smaller agencies. Noone will manage US like Trump does.
reply
Trump doesn't "manage" anything. Trump is "managed". The question is who all pull the strings.
reply
It's all project 2025 and the heritage foundation running the government.
reply
There's a "people won't get tired of our good cop/bad cop bullshit because there's money to be made" attitude in the US that doesn't even reflect our own point of view.

They're retooling because it doesn't matter who the next president is.

reply
You're missing some of the history here. Canada's initial free trade integration with the US in the late 80s was controversial at the time, with opponents specifically predicting a slow erosion of sovereignty until one day Canada is forced to subordinate itself to the US. What Trump showed is that that concern was correct, although the erosion was fortunately not yet complete enough to force Canada's hand. The Canadian people don't want to be continually dependent on the goodwill of future US Presidents; they want "Canada should the US" to sound like "Taiwan should join the US" or "France should join the US", an obviously impossible idea that even the most vehement partisans would have to explain away rather than trying to make it happen.
reply
As an addendum to this post, this debate between Turner and Mulroney over (what would become) NAFTA captures some of the feeling of the time [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jlvb9czZFXw

[2] https://www.c-span.org/program/international-telecasts/canad...

reply
It's not just trump anymore. The entire cabinet is project 2025 people, most GOP has turned or was replaced with MAGA. Project 2025 wasn't just about RAGE, it was a sycophant hiring system as people could send in their resumes and get into unelected positions.

The only chance is if the cult spell breaks with trump, as cults rarely survive that. But it at some point it will be too late, their takeover and ability to fuck with elections means you can't vote them out anymore.

reply
Not that it invalidate your point, but Sweden has 1/4 the population of Canada, not 1/10.
reply
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.
reply
What do you mean Sweden does not have a car industry?

Volvo and Polestar have their HQ in Sweden and huge manufacturing plants. They also develop platforms for some other Gealy brands including Link&co and IIRC also Zeeker.

And then there is the Koenigsegg...

reply
It does with Volvo, although I couldn't say how big it is relative to global industry. Within Europe it's a large player
reply
Volvo is complicated. Basically a lot of these smaller companies and countries realized there was no way they could make the economics work with the cost of electronics and software-related R&D being what they are. So they sold to larger players. But design and final assembly still happens in Gothenburg for high-end models that are typically destined for the EU market. The US now manufactures the SUVs.
reply
Volvo was bought by Ford in 1999 and then sold by Ford to Geely in 2010. It had nothing to do with software related r&d, it was mostly down to Ford needing money after the financial crisis.

Volvo have factories in Sweden, Belgium, USA, and China. The new EX60 is manufactured in Sweden. The US factory makes the EX90, XC60, Polestar 3, and until recently the S60 sedan.

reply
Scania is Swedish, too.
reply
deleted
reply
A Chinese company owns Volvo since 2010 or so.
reply
Volvo Cars is still headquartered in Sweden, and employ 22.4k people in Sweden out of 40k globally[1].

Given that the market for Volvo is global, it seems to me that Volvo Cars is still overwhelmingly Swedish, while at the same time being overwhelmingly controlled by Geely.

[1]; https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/1000-personer-far-lam...

reply
The car part of Volvo is owned by Geely, Volvo AB makes trucks, buses, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo

reply
Volvo still produces cars in Sweden. Koenigsegg still build their cars in Ängelholm.
reply
The Top Gear enthusiast in me loves that you included Koenigsegg in this conversation.

But including a company that hand-builds a handful of hypercars annually in a conversation about the auto industry in Sweden is not the flex you think it is.

reply
But by that metric Canada also has a car industry? Canada builds 1.5M cars annually.
reply
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….

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.

reply
New Zealand had car assembly which isn't a car industry.

Although my friend was working at an injection moulding company in Christchurch that did some parts for Holden (GM) in Australia.

reply
Looking at Ford, GM, and Stellantis, one can say the US doesn't really have an auto industry either. Certainly not a car industry.
reply
Why are you discounting Volvo?
reply
>> Sweden does not have a car industry.

Apart from Volvo, Koenigsegg and Polestar and Scania. Apart from that, you’re right.

reply
If Saab wanted to they could spin up a car factory as well. But they are more interested in selling these airplanes the article is about.
reply
BTW, SAAB did produce cars from 1949. General Motors bought 51% of SAAB Automobile in 1990, and it was defunct in 2016.
reply
[dead]
reply
As a Great Power, Sweden had a great need for engineers to build forts, canals and other important infrastructure for the Kingdom.

These engineers came in handy when the Industrial Revolution started.

Thus Sweden has a long history of manufacturing industry.

reply
There are trade offs in all things. Trying to do everything yourself does also have a cost. It is not neccesarily better.
reply
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.

There are few examples where this isn't the outcome.

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.

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.

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.

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).

reply
> Sweden had nothing like this

Not entirely true. AstraZeneca and ABB are examples that remain partly Swedish but many companies were merged into big multinationals and eventually marginalised.

reply
FWIW, Ozempic, which seems popular, came from a Danish Pharma. There's very large pharma in Sweden, related to the UK.
reply
Resources curse
reply
Because Canada has been poorly managed for a long time by all political parties that have been voted in.
reply