In its annual Index of Economic Freedom, the joint effort by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, Canada ranks 6th among the 179 countries of the world, ahead of the United States (9th), the United Kingdom (16th), Japan (20th) and Germany (23rd). Considering ten components of economic freedom (among them: Business Freedom, Fiscal Freedom and Government Spending), the report ranks countries on the degree to which “individuals are free to work, produce, consume and invest in any way they please, with that freedom both protected by the state and unconstrained by the state.”

The latest report from the Canadian Labour Force Survey illustrates the degree to which Canadians have benefited from the rebound from the global recession by exercising their freedom to work, with employment increasing by 215,000 from July, 2010 and 675,000 since the bottom of the recession in July, 2009. In a workforce of 17 million, this represents an improvement of 4 percent at a time when employment in the United States has remained flat over that same period. Unemployment in Canada is 7.2%, a full two percentage points lower than in the United States.

Click here to read the entire article.

Photo: The Toronto Stock Exchange