There are three major factors and other minor factors. I will address the three major factors. Of the three major factors, British colonial policy is the third factor, but the first two factors are more important.

One: latitude. Canada, overall, is much further north than the lower 48 USA states. While 30% or more of the lower 48 states are “arable” land (land capable of being farmed), in Canada, this percentage is only 5%. The growing season, depending on latitude and plant crop, is from three to five months in Canada, this can increase up to 10 months in the lower 48 USA states.

Two: the Canadian Shield. This rock formation is ancient; it is igneous bedrock and high-grade metamorphic rock that was scraped clean during the last glacial period and is covered with a thin layer of soil. And 48% of the landmass of Canada rests on the Canadian Shield; you cannot grow crops here.

I focus on crops, as during the colonisation by the French in the 17th and 18th centuries, and under British rule after 1763, the primary economic activity was the fur trade, and then agriculture.

Fur traders went into the bush and traded for furs with the Indigenous peoples, and the people who settled and created the towns and the cities were farmers. Also, industrial technology only became widespread and society-changing in the 1820s in the European coloniser home nations.

Three: colonial policies. The British were better managers of the colonies that would become Canada than the French were. The French placed their emphasis on resource extraction, with settlement being secondary; settlers were needed to grow food so that it did not have to be imported from France. The British placed their focus on settlement and then the economy, which was resource extraction and growing crops to feed the British back home.

And settlement allowed the British to decrease the surplus population back home without the elite being forced to just look the other way as the poor starved to death (though they were quite capable of doing so, and did). The British were also more “hands-on” than the French were.

The British were more involved with development of their colonies, with canals, and roads, and later on, railroads. They did retard industrial production in the colonies that became Canada, as British North America was to harvest timber, and grow crops for the British, and buy British finished goods (with the cost of shipping and additional charges pre-factored in). The colonials were NOT supposed to manufacture finished goods themselves.

That began to change in the 1850s as responsible government spread through British North America; government that was responsible to the elected legislature and not only responsible to the Governor appointed by the Colonial Office and his hand-picked members of the local elites who were appointed to posts on the Legislative Council and the Executive Council, which held the real power and could veto the elected Legislative Assembly.

Canada became more developed as the 19th century progressed and into the 20th century and the present. But our population is smaller than the USA, we have a greater focus on society than the USA does (where the individual is paramount over society), because we are a northern nation, and we are not an aggressor nation (e.g., it is NOT Canada that has threatened to invade, conquer, annex, and subjugate the USA, but the USA who has threatened to do so to Canada — and our friends and allies in Greenland and Iceland).

However, we are able to stand our ground and “punch above our weight”, and when we are at peace, we are all in, but should we be at war, we are all in then too.