I love reading sports statistics and box scores (the Suns beat the Lakers last night and Nash had 16 points, 13 assists and was 5 for 11 from the field), but I’ve never been much for economic data. Yesterday on the plane, however, I was scanning the economic indicators in the back of an Economist magazine and one number jumped out at me.

There was a table showing the trade and current account balances for all the countries and regions of the world. As expected, the U.S. current account was in a huge deficit ($542 billion annually or 3.1% of GDP), while China (+$364 or 6.1%), Germany (+$144 or 3.8%) and Saudi Arabia (+$134 or 1.4%) were the leaders on the plus side. But the number that stood out was Canada – a modest trade deficit of $1.3 billion and negative current account of $35 billion or 2.7% of GDP.

What’s with that? We are a trading nation. We have an educated population, stable political system and are endowed with an abundance of energy and resources. We are in the middle of a commodity boom and yet we can't keep our trade and current account balances in positive territory. What happens when the commodity cycle goes through a downturn?

I know there is an explanation for the short-term numbers - our strong economy keeps importing while our biggest export customer, the U.S., is down in the dumps; natural gas sales to the U.S. have slowed; and the auto industry is in the tank – but these numbers are appalling. Canada is doing a poor job of selling anything other than resources. And what export sales we do have are totally dependent on the U.S. We have been a laggard in penetrating the Asian and other developing nations (Go Blackberry go!).

Canada is on a roll right now and we’re feeling good about ourselves (which is long overdue). But when we pull back and look at the numbers, we should hold back on bragging too much. We have some work to do.