While historically Canadians have been the ones quick to cross the border in search of jobs, better shopping, sunshine, and investment property opportunities, we appear to be at a pivotal point where the U.S. begins flooding Alberta with new dollars and immigrants. Forbes Urges Obama & Romney to Seek Economic Guidance from Canada Forbes recently published a scathing 4 page feature on how poorly the U.S. has been performing and how there is much to learn from Canada's strength, policies and values. The comparison highlighted a wide range of factors for this reasoning including: ¢ Canada's Federal debt to GDP at just 34% versus the U.S. at 101.5% ¢ No Canadian banking institutions needing to be bailed out during recent crisis ¢ Only 0.35% of Canadians are delinquent on mortgage loans ¢ S&P rating Canada AAA vs. just AA+ for the U.S. while Moody's paints positive outlook for Canada vs. negative for U.S. ¢ Federal corporate tax rates dropping in Canada to 15% while U.S. tops industrialized nations at 39.26% ¢ Huge job growth in Canada ¢ Canada focuses on promoting values and rewarding excellence among public servants while U.S. government staff record YouTube videos of themselves rapping about how no one is paying attention to the lavish waste at conferences they are partying it up at. A variety of recent reports from Bloomberg also praise Canada's strength too. This includes the Canadian dollar rising to a 10 week high against the U.S. dollar as well as a new report on the world's strongest financial institutions. This report ranked 4 Canadian banks in the top 10, 6 in the top 20 while the U.S. barely got in 3. CIBC, Toronto-Dominion Bank, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Montreal all ranked. The Grass IS Greener in Alberta The only thing greener about the south side of the fence might be the fading ink on the depreciating U.S. dollar. Economists expect the most recent numbers to show the U.S. economy slowing to the slowest pace in over a year, while there seems to be no hope of a sustained real estate rebound any time soon. All steam seems to be leaking out of what was hoped to be a U.S. housing recovery as news of as much as 90% of foreclosure properties are being held off market by banks in an effort to artificially boost the value of their assets and books, while foreclosure filings surge by as much as 47% around the country in the first half of 2012. All together this is expected to dramatically increase the interest of Americans to head north with their capital. There are billions of dollars in real estate funds unable to find good properties in the U.S. and capital needs to be put to work, while Americans still can't find jobs, their president slams efforts of small businesses and individuals still suffer to make ends meet. In contrast Alberta boosts the best commercial real estate returns in the world, plenty of jobs and appreciating home equity. In fact the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation (EEDC) has sent an envoy to the states of Washington and Oregon to recruit workers for AB and will be holding job fairs there next month. It is an attractive proposition for most Americans and the help is certainly appreciated as Alberta's average family income is about 24% higher than Washington's and state's jobless rate was 8.3% in May (likely double that in real terms) while Alberta's was 4.5 per cent.