I know conservatives think Canada is the home of socialism north of the Mexican border so it comes as a bit of a surprise that while we don't have anything to learn from Canada about running the health care sector of the economy we do have something to learn from Canada about how to run a federal government:

A federal government runs a large deficit. Deficits are so large that the ratio of federal debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) approaches 70 percent. A constituency of voters have gotten used to large federal spending programs. Does that sound like the United States? Well, yes. But it also describes Canada in 1993. Yet, just 16 years later, Canada's federal debt had fallen from 67 percent to only 29 percent of GDP. Moreover, in every year between 1997 and 2008, Canada's federal government had a budget surplus.

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