The U.S. still has ten times our population. With a population of just over 35 million, Canada is the world's 38th most populous country. That's a little over two Mumbai's. Perhaps Canada will become more influential in the years to come, but a superpower?
If you were simply referring to education, again, Canada is unlikely to compete with the U.S.'s ivy league in the near future. Our universities have higher standards than U.S. universities on average, but we lack both low-end crapiversities and truly elite institutions that can generate the kind of funding a U.S. ivy league university can. If you can't make it into the ivy league than a Canadian university is a great option, but if you can...
Our government isn't investing significantly more than the U.S. on research on a per capita basis, so the bulk of grant money in North America is still in the U.S.. Also, our tech sector is sluggish and poorly paid as compared to that of the U.S.. Lots of people like the idea of moving from the U.S. to Canada... until they find out they'll be making half as much for the same work!
No, Canada isn't poised to become a superpower anytime soon. The best we can hope for is improvement. We're going to see a lot of articles like this from U.S. authors because they're really not happy with their politics right now, nor should they be. However, the reality is that Canada is still a bit of a backwater. We're North America's Sweden. A nice place to live, but too small to really make a huge impact.
Isn't most of Canada just a snowy wasteland
India has four times the population of the US. Yet the economic output is no where comparable.
More important than masses is quality trained population. Human ingenuity and talent can't be matched through scale.
The new super powers are way more likely to be China and India, as their huge populations go through the generational shift of people moving out of the lower class into the middle class.
Huge populations means nothing in the context of India. Unfortunately our politicians have repeated this tripe enough number of times to make it look like its some kind of inevitable economic dividend which we will reap.
The only known purpose masses of population have in a knowledge driven era like we live in is to compete with machine automation as meat robots, until the machine automation gets cheaper.
Beyond this having a huge population without good education, training and lack of a general progressive culture is a net negative. To sustain these people you get a huge defense bill and a range of social security spending thatlargely taxes productive people in a disproportionate way.
You also have to deal with a huge population scale with weird political and religious beliefs. Its a net negative.
At a rate of growth of 7%, from which India was not far off in the last 10 years, your economy doubles in 10 years. Let's say that it's a bit slower and it takes 12 years. This still means that India will double its economy by 2030. And unless they mess it up really badly their growth should keep going. Following more or less the Chinese model of using their huge scale to draw foreign investment.
This process has been gradually unfolding over the past two decades, as we invite foreign direct investments and do away with many pointless regulations.
This sort of a growth has a upper limit which will be breached sooner or later.
a) not proven scientifically
b) around the point where Mexico or Brazil are (Mexico: $10k GDP per capita, Brazil: $8k, India: $2k)
India just by reaching Brazil's level can still grow its economy 4 times or more. At that point its economy would be something like 80% of the US one, based on sheer population volume.
And this is only one scenario, one where they fall into this "middle income trap".
With all due respect, I think that is a very far fetched assumption. Canada is not one of the premier auto manufacturing nations like US, Germany, Japan, S. Korea. Auto manufacturing is a good indicator of a nation's industrial power imho because it requires a balanced combination of design, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, and marketing.
Also, it annoys me that US is getting so much flack for the seemingly anti-negative immigration policy. Let's not forget US has been accepting more legal AND illegal immigrants than any other nation, since 1970s. I may be wrong and would really welcome any correction on this.
To avoid flame war, I will just stop there.
Respectfully.
According to my extensive wikipedia research, you've missed China off that list, and it produces more than double the USA (2nd largest producer). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_motor_veh...
And then there was a guide that talked about Thomas Alva Edison and how the American populace of those time felt and had a sense of pride in Edison. They couldn't match the Universities and post-Industrial revolution/renaissance intellectual capital of Europe, but they were happy that people were building the same intellectual capital in their private enterprises.
But in the mean time Germany bled away its best to the US. Ivy leagues happened in the US. The rest is known history.
The same compounding forces that can cause run away success, when applied in a negative sense, the compounding way, can cause run away destruction.
Um no, it's the place where late European immigrants landed. Everyone one of my ancestors were here before the Statue of Liberty was even put up.
It's not poised at all in fact. It has no chance of becoming a superpower or replacing the US. That's a very, very far fetched premise (might as well say Sweden).
Canada has 36 million people with a very slow population growth rate. They've added a mere 10 million in three decades. Their GDP hasn't net expanded since 2008 in dollar terms ($1.55t in 2008; $1.53t in 2016). By comparison, since 2008, the US has added annual economic output the size of three Canadas (~$4.5 trillion).
Unless you're projecting Canada will have a one million dollar GDP per capita equivalent in the future - ~20 years out - while the US somehow completely languishes (despite there being no evidence to support such an outcome). That's what it will take for Canada to become a superpower. It's impossible.
Everything you say now about Canada, could have once been told about the US.
Superpowers are very powerful, but they are to an extent fragile. Affluence is good, but it also softens your bones and makes you believe you are the best because you are in some way special.
No doubt the US is still a very great country, with great culture and great people and there has hardly been country in Human history that has been this awesome. But its wrong to say this will last forever.
Things get reversed very quickly. Look at the middle east, look at the USSR. It takes a lot of effort to keep a super power intact. Things go down rather too quickly if you are not careful.
I don't think you understand the scale at which the US has to absolutely continuously fail over the next century to lose its lead.
But there is no such thing called as a permanent super power, nor there ever will be.
Everything that you wrote about US, could have been written about any super power in History. The Romans, The Mongols, The Greeks they all were super powers with similar traits. And yet none of them are a super power today.
You underestimate how decadence works. There are a lot of Chinese and Indians who no longer want to come to US. And it takes a very few companies to change the economic momentum of the world. If past is any indication, you could even alter the very direction of the human race with a few inventions/enterprises, and you can do it quickly.
Right now the only contender is China. They have money and they have been throwing it around in Africa like nobody's business. They are also flexing in the SCS to impress their neighbors in PH, VN, MY, JP, etc.
Germany will only ever be a regional power, but not global. They don't have the reach.
However, there is no chance Canada can be a global power on all scales, as what US is now. They don't have big enough of population, not that important as a market, much of its land is not inhabitable or farmable, and it surely cannot catch up with US as regards to the military power.
Mind you that Canada have its own conservative power, it is just a different cycle, and it surely gets a lot of inspiration from Trump's takeover. So, let's be a little realistic and don't let your emotion triumphs over your rationale.
For example, If southern Ontario were a state then it would be the 6th most populous state [2] [3] (between Illinois and Pennsylvania in population) and also more dense than Illinois.
I feel like Americans don't really appreciate how most Canadian cities are so close to the border.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City%E2%80%93Windsor_Co...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Anyway, Americans will say "How can Canada become an education superpower when California has the same population?" to which I say, that's a disingenuous comparison. How can Boston become an education superpower if China has 500x the population? To which Americans will say "MIT and Harvard", To which I will say "Waterloo, Toronto, and McGill."
Obviously I'm being slightly facetious, I'm just trying to illustrate how population != educational excellence.
California is a very typical example of how immigrants and why immigrants are so important. Pretty much bulk of California's riches come from start ups and companies founded by Immigrants.
Also California is an exception that so much good talent shows up every single year, year after year. Its not that hard for a state to match the economy of other powerful nations if the best students, from the best universities of every single country on earth show up with aim of doing good work. Progress happens so rapidly and at such scale because of disproportionate concentration of best of human race in a small place.
If the same goes to some other place in an another country, same results will happen there. And this can happen pretty quickly. Start ups are not that hard to do these days.
California has way higher talent density of awesome people in a small place for a state.
OOTH, being an immigrant in an unbuilt country where winter will kill you in 6 month if you do not get to work 24/7 building a shelter is different that being an immigrant in a fully developed country and collect welfare (which a lot of current "refugee" are doing).
Education together with freedom and tolerance always gives the best return for the money you invest. These days its a given that most Indian students who originally opted to go for US to do their MS degrees are now flocking to Canada. Also a whole range of working professionals are going to Canada to work, start companies and contribute to the economy of Canada.
Your economy and overall national ecosystem always benefits when you get highly trained, hard working people with a strong work ethic as immigrants. Not only do these people contribute to the economy disproportionately in return for a good life, they also impart similar values to their kids.
At the same time its sad to see US take such a protectionist and anti-immigrant stance, totally forgetting the important role immigrants have played in the rich and success journey so far.
More dangerous than all these awesome immigrants not coming to your country is they going else where. There is no infinite supply of great talent in the world, and given how priorities align not everybody can be trained to be good enough among your existing citizen-pool. The only real way of having a disproportionate set of awesome people in your country, is to create an environment where you can attract them from outside. Without these awesome people no country can last a long time in front of a competition.