If we held an economic Olympic Games, how would Team Canada do?

At the 1980 Winter Olympics, the U.S. men’s hockey team beat the Soviets. The Americans called it The Miracle on Ice, and it was. It was as improbable as frozen tap water being turned into merlot.

Back then, the world’s hockey powers were the Soviet Union and Canada. (We were always prevented from sending our professionals to the Olympics, but that’s another story.) The United States was barely on the hockey map. The NHL’s top 50 scorers that year included just two “Americans” – Canadian-born and raised Peter McNab, and Mark Howe, the U.S.-born son of Gordie Howe.

If that 1980 team of American amateurs had played the Big Red Machine 10 more times, the Soviets would have won all 10.

Today, the U.S. is a hockey powerhouse. More than a quarter of the NHL’s players are American. It’s a reminder that, over time, things can change, if people work to change them. Nothing is written in stone. Progress is possible; so is decline. Tomorrow won’t necessarily look like today – for hockey teams or nations.

In 1960, South Korea was one of the world’s least-developed countries. The Maddison Project database of long-run economic performance estimates that Canada’s gross domestic product per capita was nine times higher . Lebanon’s GDP per capita was four times higher. Mexico’s was three times higher. The country was poorer than Haiti.

Today, Canada is negotiating to buy South Korean submarines, and trying to entice South Korea’s automakers to set up shop here. From the vantage point of 1960, it’s a lot more improbable than the Americans winning one hockey game at Lake Placid.

In 1960, Korea’s manufacturing sector barely existed. And its automobile industry? There was none .

Canada, in contrast, was one of the world’s industrial leaders. During the Second World War, our factories built more trucks than Germany. We made tanks for the Soviet Union. A giant factory in Toronto’s Liberty Village exported thousands of machine guns to a country that lacked such advanced manufacturing: China.

By the late 1950s, Canada was also one of the few places able to build leading-edge aircraft, from American-designed CF-86s and CF-104s built by Canadair of Montreal to Avro Canada’s homegrown Arrow, a plane that only five other countries would have been capable of developing and manufacturing.

But being on the top of the podium doesn’t mean you’ll always be there. Others are chasing, watching, learning, innovating.

An example of an athletic innovator is Norwegian cross-country skier Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo. His country is one of the dominant powers in that sport, but pre-eminence is not automatic. Other countries have snow. Other countries have skis.

On Sunday, Mr. Klaebo became the first winter Olympian to win nine gold medals . (He could add more later this week.) He did it through ability and training, but also innovation. His novel technique for skiing up hills leaves opponents looking like they’re standing still.

Like the Fosbury Flop – invented by American high jumper Dick Fosbury, and which he used to win gold at the 1968 Olympics – others will emulate Mr. Klaebo’s technique, and improve on it. And some day, other new ideas may surpass it.

Since 1960, Canada has managed to remain among the world’s wealthiest countries, and among the most successful in other respects – democracy, free speech, rule of law, long life expectancy, educational achievement, safe streets. Some countries that were once far behind have caught up, and that’s mostly not a bad thing. Unlike the Olympic podium, human development isn’t a zero-sum sport.

If people who once lived under dictatorships – Eastern Europeans, South Koreans, Taiwanese – now enjoy personal liberties comparable to ours, that hardly makes us worse off.

And that formerly impoverished countries like South Korea can now offer their people Canadian-level living standards does not make us poorer. We’d be far worse off if the rest of the world couldn’t afford to buy our exports.

At the same time, however, our quest for the highest possible standard of living, with good jobs for most Canadians, is predicated on our ability to get a lot of things right in Canadian society and policy, year after year. That includes staying on the leading edge in agriculture, mining and oil and gas, but also manufacturing, services and information technology. We don’t have to be on the podium in every event, but we have to set up our companies and our people to be medal contenders in quite a few.

A century ago, Argentina was Canada’s twin. Their economies were similar, and living standards were the same. But Argentina has spent decades suffering from catastrophically bad governments that made terrible choices, putting it on a path of steady decline.

Argentina has also never won a medal at the Winter Olympics, despite the fact that, like Norway and Canada, the country has snow-covered mountains and excellent skiing.

And if economic and social development were Olympic sports? Team Argentina wouldn’t even be on the ice. They wouldn’t have qualified for the Games since the mid-20th century.

Canada’s economic record is better. But it could be better still.