The highest-ranked Canadian city is Ottawa because bureaucrats have higher incomes on average than private-sector workers. Still, our nation’s capital was only 53rd best on the continent.
San Jose, California, the home of Silicon Valley, has the best-paid population with a median income of nearly $74,000 a year (in Canadian dollars). New York City is eighth at $56,700. And Chicago is 22nd
at $50,700.
Our top performer, Ottawa, clocks in at just $45,500, more than a third lower than San Jose. Ottawa is smack dab in the middle of Ohio rust-belt cities Cincinnati and Cleveland.
Canada’s runner-up is Edmonton (54th), another government town full of well-paid civil servants. Oil hub Calgary, which is third in Canada, is just 72nd on the continent. Very middling.
Government pays extremely well in both countries. Washington, D.C. is third overall with a median annual income of just over $64,000.
Surprisingly, perhaps, Toronto (127), Vancouver (131) and Montreal (134) had incomes just over half that of the chart toppers.
Curiously, as Fraser points out, the largest Canadian cities have among the worst-paid populations in our country. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver together represent about a third of Canada’s population,
yet are all in the bottom 10% continent-wide.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the largest cities also tend to be the richest centres.
These calculations recall work done three years ago by University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, which showed that only Alberta among the provinces had per-capita Gross Domestic Product equivalent
to the upper third of American states. Even Ontario and Quebec had per-capita GDPs closer to Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky.
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These dismal numbers are not solely the result of eight years of Trudeau government economic policy. But since coming to power in 2015, the Liberals have made things much, much worse with their higher
taxes (particularly carbon taxes), their massive increase (+40%) in the size of the federal civil service, their lack of attention to our falling innovation, productivity and investment numbers, our declining standard
of living and, now, our soaring housing prices and general inflation.
Incompetent and negligent are not too strong to describe the Trudeau government’s handling of the Canadian economy.
Take, for instance, its self-defeating immigration and housing policies.
