GOVERNMENT AT 300 GLANCES.

I once did a speaking tour in Germany, six talks in five days in five cities. The people who organized it said use lots of charts: Germans love charts, which turned out to be true.

The people who put together the OECD’s latest edition of Government at a Glance must be German, or aiming at a German audience, because they’ve packed it with charts, most linked to the underlying database, so if you are reading the PDF version, just one click gets you the detailed numbers. That there are so many charts is a good thing. Modern governments are gargantuan. A single glance won’t do. Three hundred or so glances, as this document provides, is much better.

Things that struck my eye during my own glances, scrolling through the volume:

When, in 2016, people were asked if they had confidence in their national government, only 42 per cent of OECD citizens said yes. In the U. S., the number was just 30 per cent. By contrast, 62 per cent of Canadians said they did. The Swiss had the greatest confidence in their national government, at 80 per cent approval. At the other end of the thermometer, only 13 per cent of Greeks expressed confidence in theirs — though after the last 10 years you wonder how anyone in Greece could still believe in government. Chileans at 20 per cent and Italians at 24 per cent weren’t much better.

In most places, confidence was down since 2007, which is hardly surprising. Declining confidence is consistent with the discontent washing through the world’s democracies. In some places, though, confidence in government was up sharply: rising 22 points in Israel, for instance, 21 in Slovakia and 20 in Germany.

How can governments gain their citizens’ confidence? By providing public services well and without fuss, you might think. On that score, 78 per cent of Canadians express satisfaction with their healthcare system — although in 12 countries, satisfaction is even higher, including 93 per cent in Switzerland. In terms of actual service delivery, however, we were first overall in a couple of categories you really don’t want to be first in. For instance, 53 per cent of us reported not getting “a same- day or next- day appointment with a regular or any other doctor” the last time we needed treatment. The OECD average was 39 per cent.

The U. S. did better than we did: 43 per cent. In the Netherlands, fewer than one in five people had trouble getting fast service.

It’s an indication of just how accepting of slow service we are that when I first read that question I thought it was crazy: who expects same- day or even next- day service from a doctor? Next- month service is the norm many of us are used to. In fact, 30 per cent of Canadians — again the highest in the OECD — reported waiting two months or longer to see a medical specialist, versus only 14 per cent in the OECD as a whole and just three per cent in Germany, four per cent in France and six per cent in the U. S.

Other Canadian shibboleths the OECD data demolish: We know we’re much more taxed than the life- liberty- pursuit- of- happiness Americans, but in fact it depends how you measure taxes. In 2015, general government revenues in Canada were $ 17,584 per person, measured in U. S. dollars, calculated at the exchange rate that would equalize purchasing power across the two countries ( the so- called “PPP” rate). But the same figure in the U. S. was $ 18,791. That’s right: Americans paid US$1,207 more in taxes than we did. Their money went to different things — as it should have: we each have our own government. But if you measure government by how much citizens give to it, American governments are bigger than ours.

Of course, if you measure government by what share of a country’s GDP it appropriates, ours is bigger. In 2015, general government revenues were 39.8 per cent of Canadian GDP, versus just 33.5 per cent of American. People disparage GDP these days. Income isn’t everything, they say, which obviously is true. But if you want to buy things — including a bigger government — income is awfully handy. If we had higher income, we could have lower tax rates AND more government spending, like the Americans.

The Americans also have more government if you look at the other means of financing it, namely debt. In 2015, the ratio of their general government debt to their GDP was fully 105.6 per cent, which we would be tempted to think of as awful — if only ours weren’t 98.4 per cent. And it’s even worse if you add in the unfunded liabilities of public pension plans. If you do, they’re at 125.9 per cent and we’re at 115.9.

Governments that big merit more than a glance.

WE COULD HAVE LOWER TAX RATES — AND MORE GOVERNMENT SPENDING — LIKE THE AMERICANS