A week or so before the start of the federal election campaign, an item was carried in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper that has built an immense circulation on a diet of celebrities, scoundrels and adorable animals.
Occasionally it throws in a bit of news for fun. This item said: “Canada named world’s most well-respected country.” It cited a study by an international research organization that polled 48,000 people on a range of measures including technology, social and economic policies and international perception. Canada came first, for the fourth time in five years.
It didn’t get much attention here, perhaps because it didn’t fit the narrative of a country in crisis, with a desperate need for a change in leadership and direction. Just this week a second report of similar ilk was released – this time by the banking group, Credit Suisse – indicating Canada “has a disproportionate number of millionaires,” and that much of Canada’s middle class is so well off it qualifies among the world’s richest 10%. Anyone who owns a home anywhere in the country almost certainly falls in that group.
We seem to be doing pretty well by these measures, but you wouldn’t now it from the Vesuvian eruption of opprobrium that has rained down on the government of Stephen Harper through the course of the election, and the months before...
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