Watching From Canada, I Gotta Ask Americans: Are You Okay?
Boring-but-effective government keeps life stable (and egg prices low) in Canada.
dimaberlinphotos | Canva Editor's Note: This is a part of YourTango's Opinion section where individual authors can provide varying perspectives for wide-ranging political, social, and personal commentary on issues.
As a Canadian nurse, I care about people’s well-being: Canadian people, American people, and even people who drive Teslas.
As a Canadian speaking to American readers, I’m concerned about you and gotta ask: Are you guys okay?
Seriously. What is going on down there? Your egg prices. Eight dollars a dozen? Good lord. Up here in Canada, egg prices have remained stable, thanks to our boring but effective government systems that protect us from bird flu and market instability. I’m not just saying this to gloat. I want to explain how our systems are different because maybe you could have this too.
Talking about government systems is a snore, though, so I’m going to explain this using a sports analogy. We like hockey up here, but you guys are more into football, right? Fine, we’ll use football.
Imagine that the economy is a football game.
Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock
The U.S. model operates with minimal government intervention, so your egg producers are like teams in a league where every team makes its own rules. There’s no limit on how many teams can play in the league and they can all play as many games as they want.
The games are the product, and the teams like to make money, so there is usually a steady supply of games for fans (consumers) to choose from. This keeps ticket (egg) prices low most of the time. The teams are trusted to call their fouls and everyone hopes that competition will keep things fair.
It’s a jostling free-for-all and the teams love it because no pesky rules are stopping them from making lots of money. The problem is, there’s nothing protecting fans from volatile ticket prices if something goes wrong — such as a bird flu epidemic that suddenly wipes out millions of players.
Canada’s playbook prioritizes stability.
In Canada, our egg, dairy, and poultry industries operate under a system called supply management. Only a set number of teams can play in the league and each team can play only a set number of games (quotas limit how many eggs our farmers are allowed to produce). Everyone knows how many games there will be and how many tickets will be available for sale.
The rules keep some checks on the competition. Teams may not always play as many games as they’d like, but they always know how many games there will be, so they can predict how much money they are going to make. And because the number of games stays stable, so do ticket prices.
Is our system perfect? No. Prices tend to be a bit higher at baseline. Some would say that because there’s less competition, there is also less innovation and product variety. The trade-off for consumers is obvious, though, when you look at Canadian egg prices right now.
Stable prices keep the fans happy.
This week, I purchased eggs for about $3 USD per dozen on my delivery app, and I probably could have gotten them a bit cheaper in the store. By contrast, U.S. shoppers are paying between $6 and $8 USD per dozen, with sporadic price tags around $9 and higher. American egg prices rose 53% from January 2024 to January 2025 and are predicted to increase another 41% percent in 2025, according to the USDA. Yikes!
Most of this is due to reduced egg production caused by the bird flu virus, which has led to the culling of millions of chickens in the U.S. Canada has been protected somewhat by the fact that our farms are smaller, so when one producer is hit with bird flu, fewer birds need to be culled. But supply management also helps the Canadian system reduce bird flu outbreaks.
“Because of supply management, farmers talk to each other,” Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab and a professor at Dalhousie University, explains in an interview. “We share information, so outbreaks don’t necessarily get out of control … it’s a huge advantage.”
You can see how stronger government oversight in Canada acts like a strong defensive line, protecting us from any number of pricing threats. U.S. consumers have a much weaker defense, leaving you vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, price fluctuations…and unscrupulous corporate behavior.
Some U.S. egg producers have seen their shares in the stock market surge by up to 50% over the last 12 months due to high egg prices, and there are already rumors of corporate price fixing. An investigation by the U.S. Justice Department has been opened due to accusations that large producers have been conspiring to keep prices high by deliberately holding off on resupplying the market, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Football is not the only way Canada and America are different.
Americans are cowboys. You like your freedom and your small government, we all know that. But when Americans talk about freedom, what is it you mean exactly?
A free market? Free for who? Egg prices aside, can we talk about what’s in your food? In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) generally allows substances to be added to foods unless they are proven harmful. The EU and Canada take a more cautious, consumer-protective approach. That’s why questionable food additives like olestra and potassium bromate are still allowed in the U.S. even though they are banned in Canada.
Keeping harmful additives out of our food is not the only way bigger government benefits the lives of Canadians. We survived COVID without losing our homes or our jobs because government relief payments protected the income of people whose jobs were affected and kept small businesses from going under. Strong banking regulations prevent Canadian banks from engaging in the kind of irresponsible sub-prime mortgage profiteering that almost crashed the U.S. economy in 2008.
I could go on. Social determinants of health are the social and economic conditions — like income, education, housing, and access to healthcare — that influence a person’s well-being and life expectancy. Whether you know it or not, your health and the health of your loved ones is affected by the hands-off approach of your government. In Canada, social determinants of health are improved by policies and programs like universal health care and social safety nets that reduce poverty. Because of this, we have better health outcomes than Americans in many ways:
- Less obesity — in part because of better access to preventative health care and stricter food labeling laws
- Lower infant mortality rate — because of publicly funded prenatal and postnatal care
- Longer life expectancy — because of better access to healthcare and less poverty
From my True Northern vantage point (strong and free, thank you very much), the largely unchecked “free market” you celebrate so much seems great for corporate freedom, but I do not see how it benefits average Americans. Perhaps you can understand why there’s not much going on in the U.S. right now that appeals to Canadians. If anything, your…em, current situation…serves to make us appreciate our system all the more.
And FYI, none of the benefits we enjoy as Canadians take away our freedoms. The Freedom Index ranks 210 countries around the world annually based on political rights, civil liberties, economic freedom, and press freedom.
In 2024, Canada ranked as the 5th most free country in the world. The U.S. ranked 59th. So, my question to you cowboys is…
Is the free market really all it’s cracked up to be?
Bill Perry / Shutterstock
I don’t normally write about economics. Or sports. I write about human wellness. The reason I’m writing about egg prices and football now is because I wonder if American readers would be willing to take a moment and consider how well your current system of government is working for you.
I’ll admit I have a vested interest in this because I’d like to go back to ignoring U.S. politics and worrying way less daily about the decidedly unneighborly statements coming out of your White House lately. In case you haven’t noticed, Canadians are feeling a bit salty about that these days.
I’d love to mind my own business, but I believe in being a good neighbor. And if your neighbor’s house is on fire, you help put it out — because it’s the right thing to do, and to keep the fire from spreading to your own house if it gets out of control.
For those Americans who think they want smaller government or don’t think about the government at all — what if there’s something better out there? Something you could also have if you demanded it from your politicians and made the effort to vote for it.
It’s true, you guys have way more flavors of cola on the shelf at your local big box store than we do. I’ve seen it, it’s pretty cool. But you know what’s even cooler? Having a government that has your back.
I think you guys deserve better. I’m rooting for you, as are many Canadians. If you’d ever like to come up for a neighborly visit, leave your guns and your red hats at home and come talk to us. We’ll even make you an omelet.
Andrea Romeo is a nurse and writer with over 20 years of experience helping people live healthier lives. She is a regular contributor to Medium publications Wise and Well and Aha!
