The Ingredients of National Happiness

Regina Leader Post

August 21

A British psychologist's study of no fewer than 178 countries concluded that Canadians, collectively, are the 10th happiest of those national groups studied. Based on things like personal wealth, quality of health care and education, we placed well ahead of the U.S. (23rd place) and Britain (41).

Why are Canadians not even happier? Search news databases for the phrase "sense of national purpose" and you'll be surprised at how many Canadian intellectuals are fretting that we have good economic conditions, but a rather glum mood. Looking ahead, some of these observers note the alarming tendency of Canadians to sort themselves (by ethnicity, region, occupation or politics) and worry, in the words of the Dominion Institute's Rudyard Griffiths, that by 2020 Canada will "exist in name only." That is, it will be a political and economic arrangement, but not a nation. Over and over, serious Canadians wonder if we can find a galvanizing national project that catches our collective enthusiasm.

There are many examples from the past: the creation of this unlikely country in the 1850s and 1860s, the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Trans-Canada Highway, medicare, the Charter of Rights and even the fight against the deficit in the 1990s.

If we want projects, there is no shortage of potential ones: lasting reconciliation between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people or a turn toward environmentalism, for example.

Yes, Canadians are doing well. We know it and others know it, too. But we are starting to awaken to the startling notion that money can't buy national happiness.