A diagnosis, assembled the slow way: every complaint traced down through its recorded causes until the chart bottoms out.
Chart in preparationSomething is wrong with Canada, and everyone can point at a piece of it — the housing, the waits, the disorder, the emigration. This project is an attempt to chart the whole patient: a causal graph in which every link is a claim, every claim carries its source, and the diagnosis is whatever the chart converges on rather than whatever was assumed going in.
The patient has arrived at the hospital. The chart is still being written.
Every node in the chart is one of three things:
The headline complaint — "everything costs too much" — which is a true symptom but hardly a diagnosis.Recorded causes — 5
Cost of Living is caused by Food-Price Inflation and 4 other recorded causes. Food-Price Inflation is caused in turn by Interprovincial Trade Barriers (and 1 other):
the provincial/federal slaughter split starves competitive processing capacity, leaving 3 plants / 2 firms at 85% of cattle slaughter; the resulting concentration marks up beef (plant counts verified; the price attribution is argued)
Interprovincial Trade Barriers is caused by Canada’s Federalism Design (and 1 other) — we’ve found a root cause:
the constitutional division of powers (s.92(13), property and civil rights) places occupational regulation with the provinces, enabling 13 separate regimes; the resulting friction is measured at ~21% implicit tariff between provinces, >40% in tightly-licensed service sectors (IMF 2019 — see Sources)
The constitutional division of powers that places occupational and professional regulation with the provinces.
13 of 81 nodes trace down to here — 16% of everything on file.
N.B. — The chart does not yet prescribe any policy for any problem it identifies. Prescription is out of reach until the diagnosis is comprehensive.
No root was nominated. This is the count of how many nodes drain into each one — the diagnosis is whichever roots the descents keep arriving at, and it will move as the graph is sourced and extended.
§ 12(1) — Root identities are obscured until the chart is released, per the Health Information Privacy Act. Counts and shares are disclosed; names are not.
Convergence per root · nodes draining into each
The last row is the one you cannot act on: global forces Canada merely also experiences, counted together. It is here for scale — to show how much of the chart is not explained from outside. This situation is our problem, and we have to be honest about it to fix it.
Corrections, sources, and objections are welcome.
contact@canadiandisease.ca
The working chart is restricted to medical staff.