ABSTRACT

Canada and the USA are both characterized by the UN Development Programme as maintaining very high human development. Addressable weaknesses are nevertheless evident when performance is compared, for example, with OECD member nations. This chapter focuses upon such comparison, noting characteristic political institutions and attendant social inequality in the areas of social welfare, education and health. The histories of both nations over the past half-century suggest that cultural shifts within the USA have displaced the ethos of social responsibility that the country had previously shared with Canada, replacing it with an ideal of self-reliance. That turn may be a factor in the USA’s increasing inequality and general weakness in social welfare programs since the 1980s. Events since 2016 also display a turn towards another ideal of self-reliance: isolationism. The USA’s reduction in global commitments – to open trade, to limits on environmental impact and, especially, to immigration – contrast greatly with Canada’s evolving commitment to a global society and to a cultural ideal of multiple non-assimilated cultures within its borders, including cultures of new immigrant populations. Canada is by many measures a more equal society, but it shares with the USA continued failings in development for indigenous peoples and increased vulnerability for those groups and others.