Canadian Economy

Canada is second only to Russia in being the largest in the world. It is also the 8th largest economy in the world. With this it is one of the worlds wealthiest country, therefor of course making it one of the developed economies.

Canada has a variety of natural resources and the main ones are: gold, nickel, uranium, diamonds and lead. However different regions specialize in different kinds of resources as shown below:

British Columbia- Forestry
Alberta - Oil Industry
Newfoundland - Oil Industry
Labrador- Oil Industry
Northern Ontario- mining
Atlantic Provinces- fishing

However, these resources are becoming less and less important to the Canadian economy, as only 4% of all Canadians are employed under these fields. These fields also only provide 6% of the GDP for Canada, although several of Canada's largest companies are based around natural resources e.g. EnCana, Cameco, Goldcorp etc...

The sectors in the Canadian economy that are the largest employers are the:

Retail employers(12% of all Canadians) which is like Super-Markets and chain stores
Business services(just under 12%), which is financial services, real estate and communications
Education and Health(?) these two sectors are Canada's largest employers, however they are currently under the scheme/scope of the government, this sector is growing quite rapidly as well and can pose problems to the government because it would mean more spending funds into schools and educational services.

Canada is a mixed economy. This means that the government makes all the decisions as if to add new hospitals, schools or change the price of tax, but the citizens of the country can effect decisions and adapt to the change fairly well. Mixed economies such as Canada are very effective because they combine the benefits of a planned/capitalist and unplanned economy.

Canada has many resources to choose from, the country being so big. Yet the two biggest industries are ones that have risen in price quite quickly and are of major importance in the world right now. Logging and Oil. Logging would be more Labour Intensive because it requires so much human labour to operate machinery and actually cut down the trees+ drivers etc. Oil would again still be closer towards the side of Labor intensive, because although it does operate through a lot of machinery, it is still required to have people on the job operating everything in the rigs etc.

Canada is a country that depends on primary industries/resources. We know this because two of Canada's major industries are Oil and Forestry which are both primary industries that don't require that much advanced technology. Although it has a few advanced technologies like AeroSpace Technologies they are not used much, so Canada is more or less like a semi-technological country.

Canada, being a very wealthy country, you would think that it has no weaknesses. However, Canada has very imbalanced regions with money equalization. For an example, the four Atlantic provinces in Canada used to be booming with trade and had a growing economy. Now since the fishing industry recently collapsed therefor making the Atlantic provinces a whole lot poorer.

Canada and Australia have a lot to do with one another from the same language, to having too much room for our small population. We both are mixed economies and are both very developed countries with booming economy. But Australia has a lot higher inflation rate due to the actions of previous treasurer Peter Costello. Our major resources are both of great importance in the world today. Australia has Mining and Agriculture as its main industries, whilst Canada has Logging and Oil. The ores that Australia mine are of utmost importance to a lot of countries to power things up and create new things. And food and crops are always in great demand with the growing population of the world, and the oil market currently is in chaos with prices sky rocketing everywhere which means great money for producers such as Canada. Also, Canada and Australia both depend on primary industries such as logging etc. to get all their money, they dont need that much ultra high-tech things. Overall Canada and Australia are very alike.



















Bibliography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Canada
http://www.canadianeconomy.gc.ca/English/economy/overview.html
http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/