Sparsely populated, cold for half the year and a relatively well off population makes Canada a lively hub of Internet activity.

“Canadians spend more time online than users in any of the countries tracked by measurement company comScore, which also said Canada had the highest penetration of internet access. About 68 per cent of the Canadian population is online, comScore estimated in April, compared to 62 per cent in France and the United Kingdom, 60 per cent in Germany, 59 per cent in the United States, 57 per cent in Japan, and 36 per cent in Italy.

Canada was the only country in which users logged an average of more than 2,500 minutes online a month, which is almost 42 hours. Israel was second with an average of around 2,300 minutes, while a few other countries were around the 2,000-minute mark.”

Most Internet couch potatoes!  Hurrah notoriety!  And we like watching youtube videos with reckless abandon!

“In Canada, YouTube per capita consumption of video is No. 1 in the world. It’s just absolutely crazy in terms of how passionate Canadians are about YouTube,” said Chris O’Neill, Canada’s country director for Google.  It’s estimated that about 21 million Canadians visit YouTube each month, compared to 147 million Americans. But considering the U.S. has 10 times Canada’s population, Canadians are way ahead on a per capita basis.”

There is some heartening news though, apparently we reference Wikipedia more than anyone else in the world.  Hopefully as a starting, not an endpoint, to data gathering.

“The average Canadian web surfer reads 16 Wikipedia pages a month, which is the most in the world — one more than German users, two more than Polish users and four more than Americans. Canadian users generate about 217,000 edits a month, which ranks 8th among the most productive countries.”
We should really keep this story quiet, as with the “economic recovery”, I’m sure Steven Harper will try to take credit for it.