Canada

3. Institutions

Geographic advantages certainly do have positive influences on the economic performance of Canada. Nevertheless, for a highly developed country as Canada, having good institutions explains much more about its well economic performance. A good institution for a country consists of the sound protection of property rights, well organized institutions that stabilize its macroeconomic, etc. Having a good institution helps a country to attract more foreign direct investments, which are very important to an economy's health.

3.1 Protection of Property Rights in Canada

According to the 2010 International Property Rights Index released by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, in association with the Washington D.C.-based Property Rights Alliance, Canada ranked 12th out of 125 countries in the world, tied with Ireland and Germany, and ahead of the United States which ranked 15th. On a ranking from one to ten (the higher score reflecting a greater protection of property rights), the scores ranked from Finland with the highest 8.6, to Bangladesh with the lowest score of only 2.9. Canada scored 8.0 on the index.

The scores are based on measurements of three broad areas: First, the legal and political environment, as relates to judicial independence, rule of law, political stability and degree of corruption; Second, physical property rights, which were measured by protection of property rights, ease of registration of property, and access to loans; Third, intellectual property rights, as relates to protection of intellectual property rights, patent protection, and copyright policy.

3.1.1 Legal Environment & Physical Property Rights

For the past decade, Canada has experienced increasing judicial independence and did pretty well on protecting physical property rights. However, it is worth noticing that property rights are not yet a guaranteed right in Canada. It was pointed out by the Frontier's director of research, Mark Milke, that Canada's showing...