It's an embarrassing example of how insanely big (and thus regionalized) Canada is and how untravelled that most Canadians are that in writing this post I apparently briefly forgot about the existence of Quebec and New Brunswick. lmao.

I haven't been to Quebec for probably 20 years. If it was dramatically cheaper and easier to travel in this country maybe I wouldn't (even briefly) forget that millions of Canadians speak French as their first language.

But interesting point in that it underlines the problems that a Canadian company would have in diversifying across its own nation. A successful Ontarian company would induce significant cost in expanding to Quebec, a remarkably different jurisdiction with important language regulation that needs to be respected, while the same sort of company in Vermont would have less barriers expanding to all its surrounding states.

(Also for completeness sake, one should point out that there are areas of Canada where indigenous languages are significantly spoken (eg. Nunavut) but they are quite small in population)

Almost the same fraction of people speak English at home in Canada as in the US.

It’s more than say, Spain+Germany+France+Italy+Uk

Well I guess the US has this problem too. I lived in a town where a significant portion of the population didn't speak English fluently

Well, even if you put language aside. Each European countries is still wildly différents.

Less and less, that’s true.

But regulation, borders, culture, habits, buying power, taste…

The first startup I worked for was wildly successful in France. We had dream of conquest of all Europe, of course.

Each new country was a headache, nothing to do with langage. ( language was the easy part )

People wanted different stuff. We were able to make it to Italy and the UK, got laughed out of the room in Germany. Never got more than mild traction in Spain and nobody talked to us in Portugal.

Randomly we got Chinese customers. Super hyped.

Then we realized that while doing all that … we had let our primary market down and that someone else was eating our lunch there.

Got bankrupt a year after.

It was poor execution. But I still think that expending from Nebraska to Missouri is easier :)

US has some unifying things, and maybe it isn't on the level of Europe, but there are massively different cultures in the US. States have a lot of power with regards to regulation.

It is true you can do business in other states pretty easily.

I think the downvotes are thinking you are joking about peoples’ english proficiency, while I assume you just mean there is a large Hispanic population in your town.

Ah. Yes correct. The majority of people in my town spoke spanish, and a significant percent did not speak english at all.