Quick Facts About Canada

Published on 2022-09-14; updated on 2023-06-06

Canada Is a Large Country

Canada is the world's second-largest country after Russia.
Canada has coastlines on three oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans.
Canada's regions are quite different from a physical landscape perspective; some are ocean-bound, some are drier, some are colder, some are milder.
Canada uses six primary time zones. From east to west they are Newfoundland Time Zone, Atlantic Time Zone, Eastern Time, Central Time Zone, Mountain Time Zone, and the Pacific Time Zone.

Since 2004, the United Nations has regularly ranked Canada in the top 10 countries in the world in its Quality of Life Index.
Praised for their overall stability, multiculturalism, clean environments, and world-class healthcare, and education systems, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto are ranked fourth, sixth and seventh, respectively, in the 2018 Economist Intelligence Unit ranking of the world’s most livable cities.
Canada placed seventh in the United Nations’ 2018 World Happiness Report, after Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
According to the Global Peace Index (2018) Canada is ranked in the top 10 most peaceful countries in the world, keeping company with the likes of Iceland, Denmark, and New Zealand.

Canada is also ranked #1 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for higher education achievement—more than half of its citizens between the ages of 25 and 64 have a post-secondary education.
The Times 2018–2019 World University Rankings placed nine Canadian universities in the top 200 (and four of these in the top 100).
Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s 2018 Academic Ranking of World Universities placed four Canadian institutions in its top 100, and 18 in the top 500.
In the 2015 PISA results testing Grade 10 students from 65 countries around the globe, Canada ranked 9th on the Reading Scale, 7th in Science, and 10th in Maths ahead of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and France. High-quality French and English language teaching are also reasons students choose Canada.
Each year, more than 40,000 international students choose to study in public and private K-12 schools in Canada.

Canada is officially bilingual (English and French). Across the country, more than 200 languages are spoken.
English is the native language for 56% of the population and French is the native language for 20% (2016 Census, Statistics Canada). Chinese dialects are the third most common native language in Canada, followed by Punjabi, Arabic, and Tagalog.
Canada is the most tolerant place in the world because of our geography and history. For two decades now, Canada has been importing just under 1% of its population annually. In Canada, each party claims to be more pro-immigrant than the rest. Canada gets very few illegal migrants seeping through its various borders. It’s easier to be tolerant when you don’t get millions of people desperate to get in, as the U.S. and Europe do.

The BlackBerry, flat-screen technology, SMART boards, voice compression applications for cell phones and computers, and IMAX film are among the many revolutionary technologies invented and developed by men and women who studied in Canada.

The OECD has recently predicted that Canada will lead G-7 growth in the next 50 years.
In the top 15 most competitive economies in the world (Source: Conference Board);
2nd of the G-7 countries in ability to attract long-term business investment due to sound economic infrastructure (Source: Global Infrastructure Investment Index);
1st among G8 countries for “soundest banking system" (Source: World Economic Forum);
In the top 10 of best places to do business in the world (Source: Forbes).