Canada Becoming a MFG Powerhouse?

[M.D. Holloway]

here is an article from an associate. Canada does have much going for it, too bad its so frigg'n cold!


Great White North

By Mark Gottlieb, Manufacturing.net
Manufacturing.Net - January 2, 2007

When you hear or read the term “North American Free Trade Agreement,” which country comes immediately to mind?

If you're like most people, you will think first of Mexico.

But there is, of course, another big player on the continent, one whose significance as a manufacturing locale is profound and has been growing steadily for even longer than NAFTA has been around.

What was that name again?

Oh, right – Canada.

Seldom has so large a land mass been so often overlooked – not to mention dismissed, disparaged and denigrated. In the global ranking of national geographic areas, Canada is second in size only to Russia, dwarfing the continental U.S., China, India, Brazil and Australia. But because Canada’s population is so small – little more than 32 million people, or about the same as the combined populations of Shanghai and New York City – she is to many a blank spot on the map and a cipher to even her closest neighbor.

The popular image of Canada is usually limited to moose, Mounties and the infamous poutine, a dish of white cheese curds over lard-fried spuds, the whole being drenched in dark brown gravy. (Poutine is an acquired taste everywhere on earth except Quebec, where it is considered part of the provincial birthright.)

But according to the World Bank, Canada was the world’s ninth-largest economy in 2005. While Canadian Gross Domestic Product ranked far behind that of the U.S., Japan, Germany, China, the United Kingdom and France, it was closing fast on those of Italy and Spain, both of which are far more populous. And it was already well ahead of Mexico’s, as well as those of India, Brazil, Korea, Russia and Australia.

Turkey? Indonesia? Sweden? Argentina? Malaysia? Not even close.

Preliminary figures for 2006 show Canada moving up a notch to eighth place globally in GDP. And while Canada is also the world’s eighth-largest producer of petroleum and natural gas – with reserves in oil shale and oil sands so great as to be almost incalculable – it may surprise you to learn that roughly half of all Canadian exports are manufactured goods. Everything from Bauer hockey skates to Bombardier aircraft and Research in Motion BlackBerry handheld communication devices comes to us from the Great White North.

Automobiles constitute by far the country’s largest manufacturing export. Canada is the world’s third-largest exporter of automotive products, shipping more than $100 billion in vehicles and parts every year. Today, the country is home to manufacturing and assembly facilities of General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, Toyota, Honda and Suzuki.

Indeed, a milestone was passed in 2004, when for the first time the largest car-producing region in the world was not the state of Michigan. The new Motown could be found across the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit, in the Canadian province of Ontario.

It would seem, then, that Canada is fighting far above its weight class. So how to explain the remarkable performance of the Quiet Giant?

In the automotive sector at least, four reasons stand out.

First: productivity. When measured in terms of hours per vehicle assembled, Canadian car and light-truck plants beat U.S. facilities by more than 7 percent.

Second: quality. Canadian plants are routinely rated at the top in terms of quality production. In fact, GM’s facility in Oshawa, Ontario, has three times been ranked by J.D. Power and Associates’ annual initial-quality studies as the best in the entire western hemisphere. And in 2003, a Canadian Toyota plant became the first venue outside Japan to be allowed to produce the luxury Lexus vehicle.

Third: smarts. Carmakers in Canada have access to a highly educated workforce and a robust system of knowledge transfer with Canadian universities.

Fourth: publicly funded national health insurance. In the U.S. – where employer-supplied health insurance is the norm – General Motors incurs nearly $6 billion annually in medical and health-care costs for its employees and retirees, adding some $1,500 to the price of every vehicle it produces. Not so in Canada, where the national health insurance system is paid for through universal taxation and covers everyone. As a result, the average real cost of health care to employers in Canada works out to about one-eighth that incurred in the United States.

Give it a moment’s thought and you may begin to see a pattern there. Could it be that Canada’s first three advantages might all be related in some way to the fourth? Could it be that a healthy workforce – employees whose medical needs, both curative and preventive, are attended to with a minimum of fuss, stress and paperwork – is a more productive, more conscientious and more intelligent workforce? And could it be that such a workforce does a better job than its counterparts in countries like, say, the United States?

If there are lessons to be learned from Canada’s success as a manufacturing nation, the most important of them may well derive not from the factory floor but from the doctor’s waiting room. And that is something to consider seriously the next time the subject of universal health insurance comes up for debate in that other country in North America – the one found on Canada’s southern border.

[ed martin]

Maybe global warming will resolve the frigging cold part.

[gaijindabe]

"If there are lessons to be learned from Canada’s success as a manufacturing nation, the most important of them may well derive not from the factory floor but from the doctor’s waiting room. And that is something to consider seriously the next time the subject of universal health insurance comes up for debate in that other country in North America – the one found on Canada’s southern border."

Nothing like the real point of the article being the summation of an article you think is about something else entirely... Got to love the modern press - angendas within agendas and nothing is as it seems..



The Canadian economy does have a lot of pluses and if that is what we are going to talk about it, I will add my #1:

Immigration is based on the ability to speak English (or French) and the doors are open widest for those with the most education and ability to invest in the economy. Pretty much the opposite of what we have going on down here...

[jorian]

Shhhhh!

[dagriff]

Originally posted by jorian
Shhhhh!

Don't worry, no one has caught on yet.

Last April I was at a Fleet Management conference in Florida, one of the lectures was by a so called Expert in the oil industry. His list of countries that "Have Oil" & "Do Not Have Oil" did not have Canada on either.....

[scottmandue]

I'm not going to have to speak french am I?

Otherwise I welcome my northern brothers.

[BeyGon]

I am glad to see Canada is improving, but Southern California, with all it's different people is still way ahead of Canada in GDP. If we were a seperate nation, it would drop Candada one more place.
It's easy to get free medical in Southern California and you don't have to pay anything into the system to get it.

[Jim727]

Originally posted by BeyGon
It's easy to get free medical in Southern California and you don't have to pay anything into the system to get it.

Right. All you have to do is sneak into the country illegally.

[scottmandue]

Originally posted by dagriff
Don't worry, no one has caught on yet.

Last April I was at a Fleet Management conference in Florida, one of the lectures was by a so called Expert in the oil industry. His list of countries that "Have Oil" & "Do Not Have Oil" did not have Canada on either.....

WTF Canada has oil? When did that happen? Next I suppose you expect me to believe that Mexico has oil too... HA HA HA HO HO HEE HEE HA HA HA! Oh that's a good one!

I can't hear you la la la la la la

[scottmandue]

Originally posted by Jim727
Right. All you have to do is sneak into the country illegally.

and wait in line four or five hours....

[Flatbutt1]

I'm all for a stronger Canada and much better relations between our two nations.

In truth though , please tell me about the health care. I have a friend in Toronto who says that he sometimes has to wait weeks in order to see a doctor for non-emergency care. True or no?

[coldstart]

Originally posted by flatbutt
I'm all for a stronger Canada and much better relations between our two nations.

In truth though , please tell me about the health care. I have a friend in Toronto who says that he sometimes has to wait weeks in order to see a doctor for non-emergency care. True or no?

It can be weeks for non-emergency care such as MRIs or knee surgery but the wait times have been reduced. The health care system isn't perfect (not charging people for services means that everyone gets 12 medical opinions and takes all their kin to the emergency room with colds or flus) but it is very good. If you are willing to pay, in Toronto, you can go to Buffalo and (hold yourself for this one) pay for a MRI or other procedure yourself. The Ontario government will even reimburse you for some procedures conducted in Buffalo.

[dagriff]

Originally posted by flatbutt
I'm all for a stronger Canada and much better relations between our two nations.

In truth though , please tell me about the health care. I have a friend in Toronto who says that he sometimes has to wait weeks in order to see a doctor for non-emergency care. True or no?

Very true, and would be true of any system. There will always be a wait for non-emergency treatment.
Health care is the absolute epitome of the "Hole in Which to Chuck Money".
All even the best system can do is weigh cost against usage. There will always be someone demanding their particular treatment is a priority, but a health system is not going to have even one more piece of expensive diagnostic equipment than they have to, if it means being short a defibrillator or two!

I would also have to say that after spending many years under the U.K. system, that since coming to Canada I am amazed at the number of "tests" I have been sent for. The majority I think are just CYA for the Dr. I'm sure most were a huge waste of time & $.
But hey, I'm not a Dr....

[TheMentat]

Originally posted by flatbutt
I'm all for a stronger Canada and much better relations between our two nations.

In truth though , please tell me about the health care. I have a friend in Toronto who says that he sometimes has to wait weeks in order to see a doctor for non-emergency care. True or no?

If it's non-emergency care, then what's the rush?

Seriously though, if there were no wait times, that would be an indication of gross mis-management of resources.

Think of it like an airline... having empty seats means poor capital utilization. The occasional overbooking, while inconveniencing some, is generally a good sign from a shareholder's point of view - and every tax-paying Canadian citizen is a shareholder in this business.

To take the analogy a bit further, I'd even argue that part of the "problems" with Canada's healthcare system stems from the high labor costs. But overall there's not much wrong with the concept of public healthcare.

[Black968]

The free trade agreement killed manufacturing in Canada. The only reason that we are rated so high in GDP is because of our resources (Oil, Wood, Gold, Nickle etc). If the US market goes south, our GDP will suffer more than most. Look at our lumber industry, it is already showing the effects of a slow US economy.

As for our health care, it is OK. It has been on the slide in Ontario for the last 10 years since the Mike Harris 'Common Sense' revolution was started (Man I hated that guy).

Cheers

[artplumber]

Originally posted by BeyGon
...
It's easy to get free medical in Southern California and you don't have to pay anything into the system to get it.

Actually it's easy to get anywhere in the US. You don't have to carry any insurance or demonstrate an ability to pay, the gubmint says you have to get all the treatments (can't be sent away from the ER). Many contractors/self employed are w/o insurance (even if they can afford it).

[Cdnone1]

The BC and Ontario governments are headed for a total collapse of their healthcare systems without massive tax increases or cutting of services in the next decade. The CBC and Globe and Mail has done some great expose on it.
Also the recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada finding no Constitutional reason to frobid private healthcare providers has started the fasts growing industry in Ontario, Private MRI and Cat Scan pay as you go facilaties.

Steve

[BeyGon]

" If the US market goes south, our GDP will suffer more than most. Look at our lumber industry, it is already showing the effects of a slow US economy."

There are a lot of people around the world that would like to see the US get hurt bad, but most don't understand what it would do to them if we can't spend. China is another one that needs us, what did you buy at Christmas that had "made in China" on it?