Kayle Hatt

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Keep this in mind when someone says the size of the public sector is problematic. Because there are a lot of really important things that we rely on that are part of that public sector.

Given that nearly a third of public sector workers in Canada are in healthcare+social services, the 5.5% difference between the size of the public sector in Canada and the US doesn't seem so big. Altho, the US has a larger military/police sector.

For some context, here is the latest OECD comparison. Canada is on par with many other advanced economies with strong social safety nets. We're only 5-6% higher than the US, despite having a public healthcare system in our #.

@pothen Probably not. OAC only applied to people who wanted to go to university, so it wouldn't reduce the average for others According to international data, 6 secondary years for Canada is an international norm (gr.7-12) but some are > data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.S…

@KayleHatt Is part of the sluggishness between 1996 and present attributable, then, to the elimination of OAC in Ontario?

Worth looking at this in more depth. The HDI has 3 parts: life expectancy, education and economy. It's calculated as geometric mean between those. So where is Canada doing best in the index???

But we could also acknowledge that its an imperfect indicator. Its best at creating groupings/clusters or a general positioning (500 vs. 700 vs. 900) ... rather than a precise indicator for measuring small differences between top countries (939 vs 970).

So the bottom line is ... UN HDI measures life expectancy, education in years and GDP (or GNI). The best way to boost Canada's score would be increasing the years of PSE (and were already working on GDP growth).

@MikePMoffatt @tylermeredith Yes. Plenty of ways that Canada could be better (which is why I've spent my life in public policy and working for the public good).

@KayleHatt @tylermeredith We’ll have to agree to disagree there. There’s plenty to be alarmed about.

Canada used to gain 30+ HDI points a year. Now it is true that this growth has slowed across developed country, we've gone up all of *9* in the past 10 years. A rounding error.

@MikePMoffatt @tylermeredith It is great that Norway and others have improved so much. And yes we could be getting better, faster. But Canada is a great place to live and getting better. We can make it even better (and I want to). But 93.9% means we are an A+ country not something to be alarmed about

@MikePMoffatt @tylermeredith Both things can be true. In 1993, we were 4th with 871/1,000 points on the index. Now we're 16th with 939/1,000. I would rather be 16th with 939 or 30th at 975 than 4th at 871.