Geography, Resources & Environment: Canada and the United States are both very large nations, making up the vast majority of the North American continent. Canada has a slightly larger territory, and the USA has slightly more land. On a physical map, the two countries appear to be on an equal footing, but in reality, much of Canada is unsuitable for normal living conditions due to the very cold climate. This has resulted in the majority of Canada's population living along a long strip of land straddling the US border (See Canada population distribution map). Even so, the large geography of Canada does contain a great many natural resources, including one of the world's largest fresh water supplies, vast amounts of natural gas, oil and hydro power. Although not counted as a renewable fresh water resource, Canada and the USA share the the Great Lakes, which contain nearly 6 quadrillion gallons of water.16 Combined, Canada and the USA would make the largest nation on Earth with the largest amount of fresh water supply.
Demographics: If people are any measure of a nation's power, the largest advantage the USA has over Canada is its much larger population. The USA and Canadian growth rates are fairly comparable, but, on paper at least, the way they are growing is slightly different. Statistically, the USA relies less on immigration than Canada, and thus has a larger internal growth rate. Of course, one must consider the uncounted number of illegal migrants, which some estimate number as much as 20 million, a majority of which come from Latin America17. Due to the fact that Canada does not share borders with less developed nations, illegal immigration is much less of a problem.
The US Census Bureau and Statistics Canada classify ethnic groups differently, and therefore a true comparison between the two is difficult. However, Statistics Canada does record "Visible Minorities" so some inferences can be made. The USA statistic above was calculated by looking at "one race only" results and ignoring all races which could not be assigned to either White, Black, Asian or Native American. Original data can be viewed from this link. The Canadian statistic above was calculated by classifying all Blacks as "Black", all South Asian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Southeast Asian, and Filipinos as "Asian", all Aboriginals as "Native", and all others as "White". We can see according to this estimate that Canada has slightly more Whites, one sixth as many Blacks, over two times as many Asians, and over three times as many Native Americans, proportionally.
Linguistically, an easier comparison can be made, and it should be no surprise that Canada has many more French speakers, and the USA many more Spanish speakers. While Canada is officially a bilingual country, and the USA has no official language, in reality they are both dominated by the English language. Canada has a smaller English majority largely due to the French-speaking province of Quebec; a heavily Catholic province. The USA has a much larger Spanish-speaking population due to its proximity to Latin America, and control of former Spanish colonies.
After looking at all the data, there are noticeable differences between the two countries in terms of: ethnicity, language and religious affiliation. However, in all cases the differences become much smaller when compared regionally. For example, Washington State's ethnic population makeup is as follows: White 81.8%, Asian 5.5%, Black 3.2%, and Native 1.6%.5 By and large, northern states, like their Canadian provincial counterparts, tend to have less Black people and more Native Americans. Canadian national figures for language and religion are skewed by the large Catholic presence in Quebec, but on the whole the areas that surround Quebec are much more Catholic than the rest of the United States, and even more French. For example, USA Today estimates that New York and Vermont have a 38% Catholic population; Massachusetts with 51%, while states like South Carolina, Oklahoma and Utah only have a 6 or 7% Catholic population.18 Likewise, the US Census Bureau reports that 41% of all ethnic French-Canadians in the USA live in the Northeast, nearest to Quebec, though it is difficult to know how many of them speak French at home, as such information is not recorded on the state level. Spanish speaking is a subject the US Census bureau reports, and with that we find that, once again, northern states rank much lower. Washington, North Dakota, Michigan and Maine have the following numbers of Spanish speakers respectfully: 7.3%, 1.4%, 2.9% and 0.9%; Still all higher than the Canadian average, but, excepting Washington, much closer to Canadian norms.
Health: Canada has long boasted a higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality rate and much smaller obese population, despite spending less on health care as % of GDP. The USA also has a slightly higher alcohol consumption rate, which could be accounted for by the lower cost of alcohol; however, tobacco is also cheaper in the USA, but roughly the same amount use it in either country.
One area the USA dwarfs Canada is its much higher availability of expensive procedures such as MRI machines, which tends to have a long waiting list in Canada. While not listed, CT machines and other expensive machineries have comparably large differences between the two countries. The aforementioned exemplifies perhaps one of the largest dissimilarities between Canada and the USA; that being the national health policies. While the USA can vaunt an abundance of advanced technologies, drug research and cutting-edge procedures, Canada's national health policy is clearly more egalitarian. Canada may not provide the absolute best care possible, like the USA, but it does deliver quality health care to all citizens irregardless of income. Benefits and drawbacks can be found in both systems, particularly to very high and very low income earners. Both US and Canadian media tend to provide egregious examples of those shortcomings whenever they arise.
Interestingly, despite the different focus on health care delivery in either country, both obesity and life expectancies do show the same geographic similarities that can be found in many other areas. See: Average Life Expectancy at Birth by State, and Obesity Rates.
Education: Education is a difficult area to compare, as there are few international standards to compare in a fair manner. The two best known to gauge education are: Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). However, only PISA has both the USA and Canada in the list of countries they evaluate. Strangely, TIMSS uses different provinces of Canada, but doesn't evaluate the entire country. Overall, the USA fairs much better using TIMSS over PISA when compared against other countries, and Canada surpasses the USA under every measure using PISA. Comparing state against province, the two states (Minnesota & Massachusetts) achieve much higher scores than all provinces evaluated (British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario & Quebec) in both math and science, but this is not a very good measure for comparing the two countries as a whole, as those two states are generally among the highest achieving. One last bit of interesting data is that despite the higher amount of government subsidized education in Canada, the USA has almost a 5% greater graduation rate. This can be attributed to the much higher amount of private bursaries and scholarships that can be found in the USA compared with Canada.
Crime: There is no denying that the USA has more crime. The only two areas that Canada is more dangerous is in terms of robberies and perception of corruption. The two most striking statistics are the much higher murder rate (2.8 times) and much higher prison population (6.6 times) in the USA. Both Canada and the USA have reduced crime rates over the past 30 years, and the gap between the two is now much smaller than in the past, but even with much harsher sentencing and larger prison population, the USA continues to be a less safe place to live.
Again, geography plays a very important role, and when comparing murder, the easiest statistic to compare directly, we find that Quebec, Ontario, the Atlantic provinces, the New England states, Hawaii, and the Upper Midwest states all have very low murder rates; Western Canada, the Mid-Atlantic and Central states have moderate murder rates; and that the Northern Territories, Alaska, Southern and Western states generally have high murder rates. See: North American Murder Map.
Economy and Government Spending: It is well known that the USA has had the strongest economy in the world since the post WWII era. Comparatively, the USA has more than double the GDP of the second highest ranked country, China, which is just over 5.8 trillion.19 However, the statistic that really shows how well a country is doing comparative to their population is the GDP per capita figure. In this category, both Canada and the USA are listed in the top ten countries of the world, with Canada slightly edging the USA for the first time in the modern era this year. Canada is projected to grow faster over a one-year period, while the USA has a slightly better ten-year growth rate level. In make-up of the economy, the two countries are nearly identical, but Canada can boast a better industrial growth rate. Unemployment and public debt are two other figures that have always proven to be lower in the USA, until this year; like with the historically anomalous GDP per capita figure, these numbers changed for the first time in 50 years after the late 2000s recession. Despite the more sour figures for the USA in 2011, personal disposable income still remains much higher compared to Canadian levels, and the US dollar, the world's reserve currency, still remains higher than the Canadian one on average.
Until recently, market size has always insured that the USA ha