Why the secret to Canada’s happiness has nothing to do with tax cuts (or Justin Trudeau)

Partisanship, as I’ve said repeatedly (and, yes, probably demonstrated on more than one occasion), is a hell of a drug. That was on full display in a recent attempt by Canada Proud to dunk on the Trudeau government for Canada’s position on a ranking of the world’s happiest countries. After peaking at fifth in 2015, the latest World Happiness Report ranked us 13th. “Not good!” the right-wing meme factory tweeted.

That ranking still puts Canada ahead of places like the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and France. More importantly, the countries ahead of us on the list aren’t exactly the sort of libertarian small-government paradises you’d think the folks at Canada Proud would gravitate towards. Number 1? Finland. Number 2? Denmark. Also in the top 10: Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand.

A severe case of Partisan Blindness Syndrome prevented the meme makers at Canada Proud from appreciating the implications of their dunk or realizing that the ball would come back flying at their faces. Blaming the Trudeau government for a slight decrease in the reported happiness of Canadians is an exercise in spurious correlation, given the fact that their time in power coincides with the Donald Trump era and a global pandemic, never mind the negative existential gravity the United States continues to exert. And if we’re trading in spurious correlation, we could just as easily blame it on the existence of Canada Proud and its constant rage-farming, which began right as Canada’s happiness levels started heading south.

But their dumb dunk actually raises some interesting questions about what actually informs our happiness — and what doesn’t. It’s clearly not low taxes, since Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden are among the most highly taxed countries in the world. It’s not about regulations or “red tape,” since they’re also some of the most effectively regulated economies and countries on Earth. Small government and low taxes might make conservative lobbyists and pundits happy, but that doesn’t appear to hold for the population at large.

So what is driving happiness? In a deliberately cheeky tweet, John Cleese — yes, that John Cleese — suggested it was correlated with one’s proximity to more socialist forms of government. Perhaps. But according to John Helliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report and a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics, it’s really about being connected with other people. Not surprisingly, the countries where the social safety net is most robust — and where governments are most involved in helping people build and maintain their communities — are the ones where people are happiest.

That extends to our own lives and the choices we make in them. “It’s about co-operating with other people in a useful way,” he told CNN. “You do end up feeling better about yourself if you’re actually looking after other people rather than Number 1.”

We’d do well to remember that — and to ask our elected officials to do the same. The relentless pursuit of our own self-interest, and a government that encourages us to do the same, might seem like a path to fulfilment and happiness. But the research and the rankings it produces clearly suggest otherwise. An economy of caring, and a government that helps us build it, might be more important than all the tax cuts in the world — especially when those cuts will make it even harder for the government to support people who need a little help.