After shunning Cinco de Mayo in a brave political gesture at the White House, maybe "real" Americans will boycott ice hockey games next, since Canada won't fall in line either.
Of course we will be on our hands and knees begging them for natural gas this winter, so maybe we should go easy....
MOVEABLE FEAST
By Thane Peterson
Where the U.S. and Canada Part Ways
Just about everywhere, as a new book about the increasingly divergent opinions of Americans and Canadians makes clear
Canadians have long been a favorite target for American taunts. But lately, things have gotten so bad that being Canadian is almost as negative in the minds of many U.S. conservatives as being French. That became clear after a news report by ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman angered the Bush Administration by quoting a U.S. soldier in Iraq suggesting that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign. Someone -- apparently in the Administration -- leaked the information to cyber-journalist Matt Drudge that Kofman is not only openly and proudly gay but also -- horror of horrors -- Canadian, according to The Washington Post.
The White House quickly disavowed any knowledge of the leak. But personally, I just feel like rejoicing that Canada is our northern neighbor. At least the continent has one sane nation.
BIGGER GOVERNMENT. The fact that Canadians seem outrageously liberal to many Americans these days shows just how out of step the U.S. is with public opinion in other advanced democracies around the world. Like it or not, it also has major implications for U.S. global leadership. How can America rally its closest allies when their fundamental notions of tolerance and decency are so vastly different from its own?
That question obviously has occurred to Secretary of State Colin Powell, an accommodating internationalist by the Bush Administration's standards. I suspect that's why he's working so hard to moderate the White House's harsh positions on everything from war to global warming.
Yes, Canada has always gone its own way to some degree. It spends about 45% of gross domestic product on government programs, vs. 35% for the U.S. It has national health care, doesn't have a death penalty, and in most cases considers abortion a private issue between a woman and her doctor. And Canada, unlike the U.S., has strict gun-control legislation.
GROWING GULF. Given that history, it's hardly surprising that the Canadian government is now likely to sanction gay marriages and decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. There's also nothing exceptional about the Canadian government's reluctance to join the Bush Administration in the quagmire of occupying Iraq. After all, most of the civilized world opposed the invasion without U.N. backing, and the way things are going lately, it looks like the world was right to be skeptical.
What surprises me is how deep the chasm between the U.S. and Canada is becoming. I've just read the new book Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, which has soared to near the top of the Canadian bestseller lists this summer. Toronto-based pollster/author Michael Adams' thesis is that Canada's social and political attitudes have been sharply diverging from the America's for at least a decade. Put it this way: If Al Gore had been running for President in Canada, he would have won by a landslide, Adams says.
Adams' book isn't a great read. It's repetitive and padded with a fair number of superfluous charts and appendixes. The author also hasn't been able to find a U.S. publisher, so the only way I could find to buy a copy was online from Amazon.ca, the Canadian version of Amazon.com (thanks to the weak Canadian dollar, it cost only about $29 U.S., even with expedited three-day shipping). Whatever this book's shortcoming, though, Americans would be well-advised to read it and think hard about its implications.
A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. In 1992, 1996, and 2000, Adams' Toronto-based polling firm, Environics, did interviews with a representative group of 1,500 to 2,500 Americans and Canadians. The polls have about a 2% margin of error, Adams says. The aim was to track more than 100 social issues in each country, such as views on violence, adaptability to change, acceptance of traditional patriarchal authority, and anxiety over technological change and religiosity. Coupling his poll results with demographic data and other polls, Adams paints a statistical portrait of each nation.
It's quite clear that Canada has changed dramatically since I lived in Toronto in the early 1980s. More than a third of Canada's 30 million people now live in three cities, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Canada -- in addition to being more urban -- also is more multicultural than the U.S. by many measures. Only about 11% of Americans are foreign-born, vs. 18% of Canadians. And many of the U.S.'s foreign born come from one nation -- Mexico -- while Canada's come from all over the world.
Here are some of the more striking findings:
• Environics asked Canadians and Americans whether they agreed with the statement, "The father of the family must be master in his own home." The number of Americans strongly or somewhat agreeing with the statement rose from 42% in 1992 to 49% in 2000. Among Canadians, those agreeing fell from 26% to 18% during the same period.
• Only 11% of Canadians agreed with the statement, "Nonwhites should not be allowed to immigrate to this country" in 1992, rising to 13% in 2000. Among Americans, those who agreed rose from 16% to 25% during the same period.
• In 1992, only 14% of the respondents in both the U.S. and Canada agreed with the sentiment that when one is tense and feeling stressed, a little bit of violence can offer relief and "is no big deal." By 2000, the figure remained at 14% in Canada but had jumped to 31% in the U.S.
• In 1992, 30% of Americans surveyed and 26% of Canadians agreed that men are naturally superior to women. By 2000, the figure had dipped slightly to 24% in Canada while rising to 38% in the U.S.
• In 2000, 71% of Canadians agreed that a couple sharing a home constitute a family regardless of whether they're married, up from 66% in 1992. Among Americans, the figure was 54% in 2000, up from 49% eight years earlier.
I suspect that Adams overplays the differences a bit. For instance, when I asked an old friend, veteran public relations consultant Tom Reid of Oakville, Ontario, about the book, Reid guffawed at Adams' contention that Christian fundamentalism is far less strong in Canada than the U.S. Says Reid: "A quick investigative trip to Camrose, Alberta, and environs will convince any observer that Canadians are no slouches in the deep and enduring Christian fundamentalist sweepstakes."
NOT ANTI-AMERICAN. Reid also contends that Canada's treatment of its aboriginal population has been just as shameful historically as America's treatment of blacks and Native Americans, and he disputes Adams' contention that Canada has no U.S.-style urban ghettos.
It would be a mistake to equate Canada's diverging social and political attitudes with anti-Americanism. "There's anti-Bushism, not anti-Americanism," says David Crane, a columnist with The Toronto Star, which has a longstanding a reputation for being critical of U.S. policies. Many Canadians, Crane says, resent the Administration's arrogant attitude, which he characterizes as, "We're the big guys, and we'll do what we want."
Whatever the nuances, I suspect many Americans would be shocked to learn how Canadians -- and much of the rest of the world -- view them these days.
Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online. Follow his weekly Moveable Feast column, only on BusinessWeek Online
Edited by Douglas Harbrecht |
