Like many Americans, I have a lot of affection for Canada. My stepmother was a Canadian, and she embodied a lot of what makes Americans fond of our northern neighbors. She was polite, intelligent, cultured, and conscientious.
But these days something is not right up there. How do I know this?
All you have to do is look at some simple statistics. Last year, roughly 150,000 Americans chose to leave the United States. Canada has more exact statistics on emigration. It says that 120,640 Canadians left Canada. The numbers aren’t so different. But the United States has eight-and-a-half times as many people. So, if the United States had the same rate of emigration, we would be losing close to 1.3 million people each year. That’s more than live in Boston and Miami combined.
Here’s an even more shocking statistic. In 2016, Canada legalized assisted suicide. Now eight times as many Canadians die from euthanasia as in car accidents. Increasingly, Canadians are anxious to leave either for another country or the undiscovered country.
What has so turned them off from life in their homeland?
There is no official data on this. But certain issues continually pop up in press accounts and interviews with disenchanted Canadians. This is a short list in no particular order.
Taxes: In some Canadian provinces, the maximum marginal income tax rate approaches 55 percent. The rates get up to 54.8 percent in Newfoundland and Labrador, 54 percent in Nova Scotia, and 53.5 percent in British Columbia and Ontario.
Canada also has a value-added tax (VAT). A VAT is similar to a sales tax, though it’s imposed prior to sale. The Canadian federal VAT rate is 5 percent, and then the provinces tack on their own rates. Quebec’s is a further 9.975 percent, Ontario’s is 8 percent, and British Columbia’s is 7 percent.
Canada treats capital gains and inheritance as regular income, though at a reduced rate. Nonetheless, long-term capital gains in Canada are taxed at up to 27.5 percent (versus 20 percent in the United States), and all amounts passed onto one’s heirs are subjected to the same rule if they have increased in value. In practical terms, this means that nearly all Canadians will face substantial taxes upon their estates when they die. A Vancouver policeman’s son who inherits a house that increased in value by $400,000 would have to cough up $107,000 to keep the house. In most U.S. states, there would be no tax.
Wages: It’s hard to obtain reliable figures on per capita income, but these tend to correspond to per capita GDP. And what does that tell us? Nominal GDP per capita in the United States is significantly higher than in Canada. In 2025, this was $90,027 (USD) for the United States compared to $55,728 (USD) for Canada. Income and output in Canada have been relatively stagnant for the last 10 years.
Housing costs: Although Canadian wages are lower and taxes are higher than in the United States, homes are more expensive. In 2024, the average Canadian home or apartment sold for $487,540 (USD) as against $410,700 (USD). Canadian houses are smaller, too: 1,948 square feet versus 2,299 square feet. Simply put, Canadians pay more for less.
The high home prices may be partially a consequence of high rates of immigration. That has driven up demand even as extensive regulations have limited supply.
Health care: American socialists are fond of telling us how wonderful it is that Canada has a national health care system. This is not the view of many Canadians. Like all government-run programs, the system is plagued by shortages, and this has led to absurd wait times for ordinary treatments. Millions of Canadians have no primary-care physician. For this reason, they depend upon emergency care for answers to routine health questions. But, as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently acknowledged, “One in 10 Canadians admitted to [a] hospital during the 2024-2025 fiscal year spent more than 48 hours waiting in the emergency department.”
That was only the start of their waiting, though. As another report noted, “In 2025, Canadians waited an average of 28.6 weeks—just over seven months—for medically necessary specialist treatment[s]. … In total, Canadians were waiting for 1.4 million procedures in 2025.” To cite some specific examples, according to the non-partisan Fraser Institute, the average wait for heart surgery was 8.8 weeks—more than two months. The average wait time for neurosurgery was 39.7 weeks.
Moreover, there’s increasing reason to wonder about the quality of care as one of the leading groups of emigrating Canadians is composed of health care workers. Indeed, roughly one in nine Canadian medical students moves to the United States once he’s graduated.
By 2024, a survey of 14 industrialized countries showed that Canada ranked last in the proportionate number of doctors to the size of its population and next to last in the number of its CT scanners and MRI machines.
Weather: Not all of Canada is frigid. Victoria, British Columbia, has a climate that’s similar to Berkeley, Calif., with cool summers and mild winters. Overall, though, Canada tends to be cold, and undoubtedly some people simply get sick of its harsh winters.
Antisemitism: As some have already noted, Jewish emigration from Canada to Israel has risen by more than 50 percent since 2023. Perhaps that’s not so surprising since, according to Canadian police, last year 71 percent of all religiously motivated Canadian hate crimes targeted Jews. On an average day in Canada, there are between two and three such assaults. Canada’s Muslim population has exploded over the last decade, driven by hundreds of thousands of migrants from parts of the world where Jews are persecuted. This amplified the surge in antisemitism following Oct. 7. Canada’s National Post says that “a Jewish Canadian is 22 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than any other Canadian.”
Loss of personal freedom: Section 2(b) of Canada’s Charter calls for freedom of expression for all citizens. But it qualifies that with the statement that this right exists in the context of “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” What this has meant in practical terms is that many Canadians have faced either civil or criminal prosecution for saying impolitic things.
One example that did attract some media attention involved protests by Canada’s truckers against COVID restrictions. The government remains committed to this campaign of harassment and persecution of ordinary working-class Canadians. Thus, as a Canadian free speech group noted last September:
[T]he Crown is putting the screws on Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, who organized the convoy protests. Barber is facing a prison sentence of 8 years, while Lich is facing 7 years for their involvement in mischief. But they were not convicted of assault, nor did they storm any buildings or incite riots; instead, they encouraged Canadians to continue protesting COVID mandates. The government’s message is loud and clear: if one protests and challenges the state, one will be crushed. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre summed it up best when he said, “Violent offenders get released in hours. The Crown wants 7 years for mischief?”
That was five-and-a-half years after the pandemic began.
Canadians have a long history of departing. Thomas Edison’s parents were from Canada. The 1890 U.S. census reported that there were almost one million people living in the United States who were born in Canada.
Most of those who left did so because Canada was rural and lacking in industry in the 19th century, and they came to the United States for higher wages and better opportunities. A great many of them were relatively unskilled. More recently, many actors and actresses have arrived in the United States for work in our entertainment industry.
However, large-scale emigration involving great numbers of trained professionals has not been seen in Canada before. Let’s hope that our polite and conscientious northern neighbors ruminate upon its causes and try to remedy them.
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