Almost similar GDP as well

Canada GDP (2026): $2.51 Trillion USD

California GDP (2025): $4.25 Trillion USD

Greater Tokyo Area (2022): $1.82 Trillion USD

Wide Spread but still all in the low Trillions

Biggest question.

Who wins in a street fight.

I wanna give it to the Canadians on sheer variety but I think California might win that one.

Only moose I ever saw in California palled around with a squirrel and constantly had beef with a Russian couple when visiting Universal Studios.

Look how curved the US-Canadian borders are, and how Ellesmere island is compressed. This clearly isn't Mercator.

The big map is misleading. The vast majority of us live within 100 miles of the US border.

That depends on whom you ask. 🤷 And how eager are you to live in a remote community?

Canada is in desperate need of immigrants but simultaneously suffering some growing pains from fumbled immigration programs and policy it’s the old you won’t make everyone happy shenanigans

More than pretty much anywhere else, yes. It still manages to be heavily selective, though, mostly for highly educated/skilled workers and their families.

But also, yes, the population is heavily in the south. If you showed just the non-remote part, it'd be horizontal Chile.

Canada is always looking for immigrants, weather it likes to or not, it needs them

If you want to own a home, look at property prices and then reconsider. In the urban areas, the housing market can be nuts from what I've seen.

The density makes life very convenient though

I doubt you've been or lived here if you think it's very dense for a large city. Frankly its extremely spread out. Most buildings are quite short or single family homes. Compared to the skyscrapers of Chinese cities, its a lot closer to American suburbs.

*there is other city. Singular.

Supposedly there is a third city, but it's too boring to be worth checking.

The problem is, the best educational institutions, best-paying jobs, and most quantity of open positions are in that area. Without spreading that out, you won't get the people who would rather live elsewhere out. We do have worker shortages here in the countryside, but they're often manual labor which people are less keen on.

ngl I'd be happy in all 3

Ah geez, like . . . way to rub it in, eh

source: https://www.woatlas.com/density/canada/

Can't say I blame them. Minneapolis is cold AF.

þat's nuts

I doubt the fertility rate is much better in the scenic, middle-of-nowhere areas. People just don't want kids, and now there's the option to have sex without them.

COL in Japan in general is about as unhealthy as it is in California.

people are working themselves to death just to scrape by.

if governments want population growth, they have to siphon wealth away from their corporate overlords and nurture the working class.

Tokyo isn't having population decline, its the countryside.

They need to grow it a lot more, it's not even close to The Mark of Gideon levels yet (aside from some trains during peak hours), so they have a lot of work to do! Correction, Worf doesn't consider that work.

There are plenty of people living in Tokyo because it has the highest wages, best educational institutions, and most job opportunities but not because they want to. However, I'd honestly say that's more of a minority.

Greater Tokyo also include places that look like (of course slightly more compact) US suburbs. Sure, the further toward central Tokyo itself you go (particularly inside the Yamanote line), the density increases a lot, but it's also not some hellscape. I moved to the countryside to farm, but I otherwise mostly enjoyed my life in Tokyo. I could have found farmland closer to Tokyo itself, but I wanted to get north before it gets any hotter, so not a problem of Tokyo itself.

Don't get me wrong; I wish there were investment to split things up some more and get the people who want to be out of Tokyo out of it. This would require having those job opportunities and educational institutions split up as well. This isn't going to happen.

The hardest part about raising a family in Tokyo, from those I know who are doing it, is childcare. There are free and subsidized options, but they're hard to qualify for and having waiting lists and lottery systems. That part sucks. It's not impossible for most families, but it does sometimes end with one parent not working for a time. Better childcare leave policies have helped here, but not enough (and some shit companies still try to pressure women to quit instead, but that's another issue).

Up here, we have more availability and my village actively pays people to move here (I was one of them, but those with families get even more benefits) and offers free or heavily-subsidized childcare. Still, while the incentives are nice, they're not bringing those mountains of job opportunities or educational institutions with them on their own.