America we love you. We have always loved you. (well, at least since the war of 1812!) We are your biggest supporters, loyal and faithful on a host of issues from defense, humanitarian missions, and the economy. Both countries believe in democracy, free markets and the rule of law and we have more in common, than you do with most other countries in the world. We have a symbiotic relationship economically. We are by far each others biggest trading partner, 20 % of all USA trade is with Canada, (almost 500 billion annually and more than all 27 European countries combined). We vacation there in numbers greater than all other nations combined. We aspire to send our children to your many outstanding universities. We have been there for you whenever you needed us (well not for Bush's Iraq war, but with full force in Korea, Bosnia and Afghanistan). We welcomed and sheltered in our homes, thousands of your citizens stranded in the 9/11 crisis. We rescued your diplomats in a secret mission during Iranian Revolution. We back almost every one of your United Nations initiatives. You gas up your cars on our oil (Canada is your largest oil supplier). We heat your homes (90% of our vast gas production goes to the USA, and we provide you with 30bkwh more electricity than we import.
No two countries have a stranger relationship. As Pierre Trudeau once said "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." Margaret Atwood described our border as the longest one way mirror.
Songs By Justin Bieber
We are still almost connected by an umbilical cord. You talk to each other on our blackberries and travel on our planes and trains and snowmobiles (Bombardier). Most of you were raised on our Pablum. We soak up and love your vast entertainment offerings: movies and TV in far greater usage than we do of our own media production, though we have contributed our share to your movie-making expertise with Canadians like Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, Norman Jewison, James Cameron, Denys Arcand and David Cronenberg. We make you laugh with our endless supply of comedians ( we are a very funny people) from Michel J. fox, Jim Carey, Martin short, Mike Myers, Leslie Neilson, Samantha Bee, to name just a few of our endless supply of comics. We disproportionately provide you with our finest talents from architecture,-- Frank Gehry, A.J Diamond, to Literature, -- Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood; to music -- Diana Krall, Oscar Peterson, Justin Bieber, Neil young, Alanis Morriset, Glen Gould, Shania twain, Joni Mitchell, Bryan Adams, Celine Dionne, and KD Lang to name just a few. Our intellects frame your critical discussions from Marshall McLu han, Northrop Frye to John Kenneth Galbraith. You watch TV news through the eyes of many of our own camera broadcasters like Morley Safer, CBS, the late Peter Jennings, ABC, Robert McNeil of the McNeil Lehrer Report, PBS, and John Roberts and Ali Velshi of CNN. Yes, although we are bombarded and love your news and entertainment industry we are still tied to it with our own small connections.
The unrelenting influx of American media to our country has caused many of our commentators to lament our Americanization. Michael Bliss, historian summed up his lament when he said "what strikes me is that we are becoming more similar to the American in our culture and in our values". And polls tended to support him. An EKOS Reid poll showed that 58% of Canadian felt we were becoming more American and only 9% felt we were becoming more distinct (National Post, 2002, Jan 18 p. b1). And Jeffrey Simpson in the Star Spangled Canadians wrote: "Canadians whether they like or acknowledge it, are becoming more like Americans.... (Globe and Mail, 2000)
But nothing could be further from the truth. We have evolved in a very different way! We are a very different people.
We love you America, but we do not understand you. How can a continent inhabited by the same gene pool produce such different societies? We share the same origins of native north Americans, French, English and Spanish original colonists, followed by wave upon wave of Poles Italians Finns and every other European immigrants as well as from all corners of Asia, sharing the same general climate (the vast majority of Canadians live south of Minnesota Montana and Washington) we share the same American media outlets and magazines.
We are like brothers sharing the same bedroom, the same parents, but people ask "how can those boys be so different. "
Most Canadians can't understand that the richest country in the world has the highest levels of income inequality among high income countries. Over the past 20-30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations (T. Smeeding Wikipedia) Even Alan Greenspan, June 2005 lamented this situation: "As I've often said... this [increasing income inequality] is not the type of thing which a democratic society-a capitalist democratic society-can really accept without addressing."
America has the highest child poverty rates in the modern world, with 21.9% of the American children living in poverty, after taxes and benefits, compared with fewer than 4% in Finland and other European countries. In Canada we lament our shameful 12 % child poverty rate, (especially when the government passed legislation promising to eliminate child poverty by 2000!) United States is at the bottom of the list along with Mexico. One million of your children are homeless, more than at any time since the great depression. (Teaching Education, Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2004)
The gap in poverty rates in the US, between men & women is wider than anywhere else in the Western world. The poverty rates are highest for families headed by single women. It is well known that "In countries where mothers do well, children do well,"
In the recent healthcare debate, Canadians shook our heads in dismay at the misrepresentation of our universal healthcare system. All the media threatened Americans with the dangers of Canadian style healthcare. Fox news and others, scoured the country for a Canadian willing to berate our system while the vast majority of polls in Canada have consistently reported that the two things Canadians are most proud of, are our health system and our policy of multiculturalism. When we held a national search for our greatest Canadian, Tommy Douglas the father or our universal health care hands down as our greatest Canadian (grandfather of Keifer Sutherland of 24 Fame), outscoring our national founder, Sir John A Macdonald. Americans spent 1 ½ times more on health care per capita than Canada and still 30 million Americans received none of it.
We don't understand how the richest country in the world is still the only modern economy without universal health care and we are saddened that even today the majority of Americans are not in favour of Obamacare and it is being threatened in courts across the country and berated by the Tea party advocates.
It is not surprising then, that we have a higher longevity rate (Canada is 81 years, to your 78 years) and a lower infant mortality rate. We can see why the richest country in the world has the second worst infant mortality rate among industrialized countries. American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month, as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, The United States, is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations along with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births. Our life expectancy is higher and our infant mortality rate is significantly lower than yours. Thanks to our healthcare system!
We also do not understand how such an advanced and cultured nation has more people in prison, per capita, than any other country in the world, more than China, more than Iran, more than many oppressive dictatorships. You have more than 1 in 100 adults now confined in an American jails or prison. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population. Canada has no death penalty.
While Canadians too, are proud gun owners, you have by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations. Gun related deaths of 14 per 100,000 in the USA compared with 5 per 100,000 in CANADA. You have three times as many murders per capita and 5 times as many gun murders.
We do not understand why when you have the most outstanding University system in the world with graduate schools that are the envy of all nations, and a nation bursting with creativity, inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs, where more is spent on education per capita than any other country, but yet your students perform so poorly in international comparisons. In the recent PISA results conducted by OECD of 65 nations, Canada ranked third as a country overall, behind Korea and Finland (three Asian cites led the pack) while the United States ranked 23 or 24th in most subjects. We in Canada, significantly, had the narrowest gap in achievement between student from low income homes and high income homes of any of the 65 countries studied, and we continue to have the highest rates of university attendance of college age students of any country in the world. We also attract into our teaching force candidates from the top third of university grads while the USA and UK for example, attract teachers from the lowest third of graduates.
We differ markedly in our sexual attitudes as well. American soldiers have fought along openly gay Canadian soldiers since the start of the afghan war. Canada was one of the first nations to permit openly gay soldiers fight for their country. Twice as many couples are co-habiting in Canada than in America and gay marriage was legalized in 1995.; Canada has also legalized gay marriage since 1995.
Just a few other examples in attitudes and values; your car is far more important to your style and image than for Canadians; you work longer hours and take fewer holidays. Dougklas Adams research(Fire and Ice) continues to reveal theses stark differences, which continue to widen in our political attitudes, differences in church attendance, in consumption, differences in our attitudes to authority, spirituality, even the look and feel of our cities.
We also face many problems and there are many skeletons in our closet: Our shameful treatment of Native Canadians and our history of intolerance (One Jew is Too Many, 1944!) reveal regrettable incidents in our history. We too, incarcerated Japanese in World War II, for example, as well as Ukrainians in WWI. We are not proud of our environmental record. Our 12 % child poverty rate is a prevailing embarrassment to all Canadians.
But we have evolved as a very liberal nation. In the recent American election, polls in Canada showed that 83% of Canadians, if given the vote, would have voted for Obama and even among conservative voters 58 % would have voted for him, prompting Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" to say the closest example of Canadian conservative voters in American politics would be the gays for Ralph Nader party!
Several authors remind us of our most famous founding phrases. The American Revolution in the Declaration of Independence proclaimed a defining goal and attribute of the American way as, "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness", while Canada followed with the words that form the heart of our confederation in the Constitution Act of 1867, "peace order and good government". What markedly different national cultures and identities evolve out such a few words. Could it be so simple?
Jerry Diakiw I am on the Faculty of Education, York University in Toronto. I am a retired School Superintendent with the York Region Board of Education. I have written widely on the school's role in promoting, debating and discussing Canadian culture and identity.
Dr Jerry Diakiw
York University
Faculty of Education
905 887 8261 email jdiakiw@edu,yorku.ca
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