I'm a Canadian living in the states. The joke I tell my family is that I go to Canada to hear about US news. The other joke I have goes like this: the problem with Canada is that America thinks Canada is Europe, Europe thinks it's America and Canadians think they're American.
Has anglo-Canada ever been meaningfully distinct from the US ?
It is as tightly bound to the US as Puerto Rico. I can't imagine Canada adopting economic, military or cultural policies that favor US enemies without being strong-armed out of it by the US.
It is a charged question, and I mean it as a hypothetical. But countries form through common language, culture, religion, geography, interests or trauma/war. Anglo-Canada and the US have all the good things in common and no war/trauma keeping them apart.
At times, Anglo-Canadians feel more distinct from French-Canadians than they do most Americans.
Ofc, if you've been a stable nation for century+, then there's no good reason to fix what's not broken.
French-Canadians are not anything like English Canadians, except in the minds of English Canadians who don't know any better. English Canadians like to think we are one great nation, but we are in fact two great nations, deeply divided (more than that if you include indigenous peoples, which you should).
French-speaking Quebecers self-identify as follows:
- Canadians first, and Quebecois second.
- Quebecois first, and Canadian second.
- Quebecois, and not Canadian at all.
The majority of French-speaking Quebecois do not self-identify as being in the first category, and a very significant percentage identify as being in the third category, with a plurality falling into the second category. I think it's safe to say that almost all French Canadians in Quebec identify as culturally Quebecois.
I lived in Quebec during the Cultural Revolution in the 80s, and was there for the first referendum, but I left because it became clear that Montreal was a bad place to be if I wanted to raise English-speaking children. In the end, I didn't feel any great need to pay for the sins of centuries of Quebec Anglophones that weren't my ancestors.
Once you wander outside of Montreal, into the countryside, dislike of Anglophones is common to the point that it feels almost dangerous, and gets even worse the closer you get to Quebec City.
In my experience, tolerance of Anglophones in Montreal has decreased dramatically in recent years. I was in a clothing store on St. Catherine, neer Bishop Street (once the heart of Anglophone Montreal). When two American tourists came in, and asked for help, the young shopkeeper responded: "On ne parle pas Anglais ici" (one does not speak English here).
A friend of mine graduated from a high school in Westmount (home to the Anglophone elite, most pointedly hated by Francophones). He said that of his friends in high school, none had remained in Quebec, because even though all of them spoke fluent French, being Anglophones, they were not able to find jobs.
The first part of your comment was pretty spot on, but the rest I think is biased from living here in a different time, the populated areas around Montreal (Brossard, Laval especially) all have significant English-speaking-only populations. In downtown during lunch time it's pretty much 50/50 whether the fast food/cafe worker will speak French at all.
Not so much the suburbs as the countryside. I live in Ottawa these days, where you don't have to go far across the Quebec border at all before you end up in Pur Laine country.
> the young shopkeeper responded: "On ne parle pas Anglais ici" (one does not speak English here)
A point of translation nuance here: in American English “one does not speak {language} here” carries with it an overt sense of pretense or unpleasantness, whereas in French “on”/one is very commonly used as an alternative to “we” in informal conversation, and does not carry any of the same tone as using “one” does in English. While the translation is correct at a literal level, idiomatically it’d just be “we don’t speak English here”.
“On” really is more casual/conversational than “nous”–I think both the original and your versions would seem stiff or impersonal coming from a shopkeeper in English, whereas the original French would not be confrontational in its word choice alone. Admittedly my reference point is modern conversational language in France and Switzerland, though.
As a native French speaker (maybe you are too), I think GP understood the nuance you mentioned but still proposes a good translation to reflect less pressure.
(Native level two romance languages. Very poor French, but I can obviously read it with two Latin languages and 8 years of schooling)
Oh I agree that the translator understood the nuance and I agree why "we" was proposed. The translation is correct, as is the original one.
I was proposing another alternative that incorporates the cold impersonality of "on" whilst not sounding pompous. The server was being viscous, not pompous.
I don't think my translation is "correct"; it hinges on my reading that the server was rude and nasty. A reading based on living in latin countries but also one based on my English Canadian prejudice that French Canadians all speak English but resent having to (don't fault them for it either)
I find translations fascinating as a subject. While there can be a bad translation, there is never a perfect one.
I grew up in Ontario and did French immersion schooling with two of my siblings. One year our family drove across Quebec to summer with grandparents in Maine. Along the way we stopped at a McDonalds for lunch. My siblings and I excitedly ordered in French: "Puis-je avoir un hamburger?" Our orders were taken no problem. Our New England anglophone parents then went to order: "May I please have a hamburger?" "Désolé; je'n comprends pas l'Anglais," they were told. The kids ended up ordering two "amburger"s for our parents. We've been laughing about it ever since. Good on em for caring about identity I guess? The stereotype of francophone rudeness is still a running joke in our family 30 years later.
Note: there are some wonderful French Canadians out there. Just not that day at that register in that Macdonalds.
What are some more resources you would recommend to learn more about this topic? A documentary or book would be awesome (or youtube channels, blogs, etc)!
As a separatist-sympathizer, I get it.... but instead of obsessing over teaching French to English kids, you'd think they could set up programs to teach their own kids to speak French!
French Canadian is the cruelest sounding language I have ever heard.
Quebec has tried to separate twice in the past 50 years, and comes within a Brexit's margin of actually getting it done (and if it wasn't for Montreal, they'd already be gone).
The seed of that separation was, naturally, caused by a military conflict between what would become Western Canada and what used to be Upper Canada.
Canada isn't actually as stable a country as Ottawa might have you believe.
This might make you feel old, but the referendum was 30 years ago, and Black October was 55 years ago.
The whole Quebec movement is basically dead in the water now.
An entire generation of Canadians didn't exist or don't remember that.
I'd argue the GWOT, the Great Recession, and COVID have had a stronger impact on modern (2020s) Canadian politics and discourse than the Quebec Independence Movement.
>The whole Quebec movement is basically dead in the water now.
Quebec's Separatist party has complete electoral dominance (except for Montreal, but Montreal is the least Quebec part of Quebec) and has the ability to force the government's hand on most things.
If the Eastern Big City Party loses the next election as is projected (and the Bloc correspondingly loses all of its power) they'll be back.
PQ has largely transitioned away from soverignity and largely campaigns on culture war issues like Bill 21 and immigration.
Only voters who are 65+ are split on soverignity. Every other age demographic overwhelmingly supports remaining in Canada [0]
This can be seen with the CAQ, which has poached most of the PQ's leadership and campaigns almost entirely on Bill 21 and immigration [1], not on "Quebec Libre"
Are you completely out of the loop that much? The PQ is first in the polls, and has promised a referendum within a first mandate. It's a whole fucking big deal that they managed to lead in polls right now while promising that.
> PQ has largely transitioned away from soverignity[sic] and largely campaigns on culture war issues like Bill 21 and immigration.
Your initial point was not that people chose the PQ over language concerns, but that the party had transitioned. The party has done no such thing. It's doubling down on separatism if anything. It's crazy.
It isn't as homogenous a society as an outsider would think but I can assure it’s quite stable as a country.
Quebec exiting anytime soon would be annoying for the country but a tragic mistake for quebec especially in seeing how poorly it has workout for the UK which had been an economic engine. Quebec has been sputtering since the 80s after their last referendum vote and since montreal lost its status as a city of import to Toronto. They would go from a poor economic performer to exceptionally poor.
>Quebec has been sputtering since the 80s after their last referendum vote and since montreal lost its status as a city of import to Toronto.
City of import? Speaking as a tourist at least, Montreal is a much more interesting place to visit than Toronto. Toronto might be larger and have a bigger economy with more industry, but for a tourist I can't think of any reason to visit offhand.
>Quebec exiting anytime soon would be annoying for the country but a tragic mistake for quebec especially in seeing how poorly it has workout for the UK which had been an economic engine.
Separatists might not be that worried about economic power. Are all the Brexit voters unhappy with their vote now? A few maybe, but most probably are happy to be out of the EU, and blame their continued economic problems on immigrants, the EU, etc.
Your Toronto/MTL tourism comparison isn't wrong, Toronto is ugly and boring, MTL is beautiful and fun.
People love to talk about Quebec and separatism, they can go if they want, but they owe us $300B, so I doubt they are going any time soon, their "country" would likely fall over on go.
Oh I agree - Montreal is definitely a nicer city from at tourist perspective and frankly from a live-ability most likely. However tourism doesn't really translate to economic power - and most of that is predicated on government decisions and perceived instability from the separation vote. and in the 80s all the banks HQ's relocated to Toronto. Montreal was the most important city in Canada in the 80s for minute ... now it trails behind Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver.
I don't disagree - separatists don't care because they would be trying to grab power at all costs. The rest of the population would be the ones along for the ride.
Also worth reminding Brexit was reverting to a former country state, quebec separatism would be wholly new uncharted waters.
I have no idea what "a military conflict between what would become Western Canada and what used to be Upper Canada" refers to unless you meant the northwest and Red River rebellions, in which case it really stretches my (anglo) mind how that has more to do with Quebec separatism than any of the other grievances.
Even the "standard Canadian accent" is nearly indistinguishable from the "standard American accent" except for the o's and a few words that have a more British emphasis.
Respectfully, the Canadian accent (really, Canadian English) is noticeable and distinct from US English, in its pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Yes, there is a lot in common with US English, but calling them the same loses an enormous amount of nuance.
On the other hand, the difference between a dialect and a language is an army and a navy, neither of which Canada has much of.
The "standard Canadian accent" is pretty close to the Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota dialects -- sometimes called North-Central American English. Nowhere else in America really talks like that, though, and no one would call it the standard accent. I would say less than 4% of Americans speak with that accent.
Midland American English is what we would call the standard American accent. Most of Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and parts of surrounding states speak in this.
What I was referring to with the standard accent is the TV/phone/public speaking accent. The one everyone adopts when you want to sound as "normal" as possible. Colloquially known as "white people voice" among various racial minorities. Local dialects definitely exist, but they're mostly used locally. Cross-region communication is usually "standard".
From the Canadian perspective too, don’t think an American annexation of our landmass would go smoothly… Russians and Ukrainians are indistinguishable to an outsider and are currently unleashing centuries of built up ethnic turmoil on each other.
Anecdotal: I used to work with very right wing Canadian guys who cursed the name of the last president and called him all manner of names because of the trade war. These were the kind of guys who south of the border would have voted for him and bought the hat.
It’s not as simple as shared heritage == shared values.
The Canadian's had their own counter plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1 It would have been a gigantic failure. The plan was to try and mobilize quickly, seize Buffalo, Detroit and Seattle, and hold on for dear life until the BEF arrived. But the British were clear from the beginning that they were never going to send significant reinforcements to Canada: the ocean was too large, the USN too strong, and the Canadian plains too vast for the British army to be able to effectively defend. At most they might try and send some troops to defend Halifax as a key naval base. So the Canadian plan ensured that their best troops would be lost quickly, that the Americans would be super-pissed off and unified, all for an ending that would never come. So while it might have made sense militarily, it could never have worked politically.
The US war plan for the UK was similarly weird: according to Miller, _War Plan Orange_ War Plan Red was the result of a deal between the US Navy and Army. The Navy wanted War Plan Orange (war with Japan) and so they let the Army write War Plan Red (the UK). Which was why a war between the two mightiest naval powers on the planet in 1925 called for the US Navy to be on the defensive, at most seize the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Halifax to try and deny them as bases to the RN, and then the US Army would invade a separate nation (Crimson aka Canada) that would probably try and be neutral in the war!
Basically, from what I can tell, the US, Canada, and UK were putting their best war planners on the likely threats, and putting their less experienced and good planners on these war plans. Because War Plan Orange was, at least if you squint, how the US defeated Japan. And the Canadian and UK's war planners for mobilizing in World War Two and sending them to France did a bang-up job. It was just these plans that were not thought through and would have been disasters if implemented.
Any war between the U.S. and Canada would play out in strange, unpredictable ways just due to how closely intertwined pretty much every critical capacity of our two nations are.
Both the West and East coasts would immediately have their power grids upended by the loss of Canadian hydro. Fuel supplies (and practically everything else in both countries) would be disrupted as Canadian suppliers turn off the taps and American refineries go dark. Pipelines would, in all likelihood, be sabotaged so that they can't be started up quickly even once controlled. Large parts of Canada would go on a sudden bread and meat diet, since they rely almost entirely on imported fruit and vegetables.
Neither side would likely have the element of surprise, since both sides would be compromised by a large number of people in their command structures who are either from the other nation or sympathetic to it. A significant portion of U.S. forces would likely refuse to follow orders unless there was a damned good reason to invade Canada. Civil unrest in the U.S. itself would be a huge problem for the same reason. U.S. rivals such as China would pounce on the opportunity to take advantage of things while all this is going on. If the U.S. rolls into Canada then nobody is going to give a fig about Taiwan.
Occupation would be another matter entirely. The territory is massive and the enemy indistinguishable from yourself. Canada would present many of the same difficulties with terrain as Afghanistan, but with a populace that can tell which end of a toaster to plug in.
Since when does the US west coast depend on Canadian hydro electric generation? WA state has so much hydro the price goes negative every spring when the snow melts. There’s a half dozen LNG generators state wide for supply stabilization, several wind farms and solar arrays.
And the line loss would be too great to economically ship canadian electricity to California
Being able to import a few percent when you need it and export a few when you don't without having to spin something down is pretty important to having a stable power grid.
The reality is that there is no dividing line between Canada and U.S. when it comes to electricity. Power grids cross the 49th at will. In California, you're on the same interconnection as Vancouver and Calgary.
Conflict would disrupt power in both countries, and much further from the border than you may suspect.
I mean, this is all true for a war today. But the economies were not intertwined as tightly in 1925, which is when these war plans were being drawn up. The US and Canada had had a pretty nasty border dispute (at least from the losing Canadian side) just twenty years earlier, well within the memory of most politicians running Canada. (I suspect that most Americans had forgotten about the Hays-Herbert Treaty of 1903 by 1925, but it would have been far more prominent in Canadian minds.) With the passage of another century I would be honestly shocked if such plans existed today on either side.
Respectfully, I don't think Canadian <> American cultural exchange is anything like the Russian <> Ukrainian cultural exchange; beyond potentially passing the "indistinguishable to an outsider" test.
The modern and even pre-modern history of Ukraine is inseparable from a degree of violence that only existed in north america when directed towards slaves and indigenous population. There are not centuries of built-up ethnic/nationalistic turmoil between the U.S. and Canada, although I'm sure you could find some crazies who've convinced themselves there must be.
It’s because when the US thought it could invade and conquer, they were thoroughly trounced and had their original White House burned down. The strategic calculus never made annexing Canada a viable proposition beyond then, and there are enough cultural differences to prevent a peaceful annexation.
Similarly, Poland once occupied Moscow in the distant past and has managed to persist as a distinct nation, though the Russian calculus sometimes worked out against Poland such as during Russian-Prussian or Soviet-Nazi alliances.
Ukraine and Russia have their own history yet Ukrainians have managed to valiantly persevere as we can witness today. Unfortunately for geographic reasons the strategic calculus there is much tighter than US-Canada or Russia-Poland.
>It’s because when the US thought it could invade and conquer, they were thoroughly trounced and had their original White House burned down
By the British, not by "Canada" (which didn't exist).
To put another way, even had the US not invaded British North America, the UK would still have attacked Washington as part of the overall war. The one did not cause the other.
I think this is a misconception. It is the responsibility of the general staff to have a plan for any eventuality. The existence of such a plan does not imply that the political leadership has seriously considered launching military operations against a friendly neighboring country.
> I can't imagine Canada adopting economic, military or cultural policies that favor US enemies without being strong-armed out of it by the US.
Are you familiar with NATO? Clearly Canada wouldn’t do that - Canada can’t. But the existence of a treaty organization does not change how distinct we are.
As an example, school shootings. They’re far more rare here than population would dictate.
Every once in a while I come across some early mid century book that is handwringing about the increased "Americanization" of Canada so I think at some point perhaps there was more distinction. A lot of the anxieties around the free trade debates in the 1980s were about this.
But in general the relationships in NA work more North/South than East/West and the construction of Canada is fairly contrived. So while Canadians have a lot in common with Americans just across the border, this may be more regional cultural relationships. I would posit that your typical Seattle area Washingtonian has a more common culture with a nearby Vancouverite than they would with someone from Florida, Texas or New York.
I was in Canada last week and I saw a bunch of (real) English and (real) French Canadians. It dawned on me that the French Canadians resemble "redneck" Americans quite a lot more than the English whilst speaking a language that resembles French
The English Canadians (I wasn't in a major urban area, so these are what I call "real" Canadians) were quite different. Very reserved, low key and "proper". Unbearably stuffy.
>But countries form through common language, culture, religion, geography, interests or trauma/war. Anglo-Canada and the US have all the good things in common and no war/trauma keeping them apart.
Canada is indeed an anomaly. I can't think of another circumstance in which two countries that
* share land borders
* are 95% culturally, economically, and politically identical
* do not have longstanding historical grievances against each other
have not unified after two centuries; if anything, this fact implies that annexation is more likely than not to occur, perhaps sometime this century.
Americans on either side of politics think that Canada is full of super-leftists (and there is no shortage). But were Canada a part of the US in 2016, Trump would have won AB, SK, and quite possibly enough of the GTA (the parts that loved Rob Ford, and as "Ford Country" has repeatedly won the province for Doug Ford) to win ON, the province most resembling MI/WI/PA, the three states that Trump unexpectedly won the election with.
My existence as a Québécois helps explain why it hasn't happened. We collectively know that our language and culture are on shaky foundations with the Canadians; we know quick and painful assimilation would await us with the Americans. Canada is a country containing at least two nations, not just one.
Sorry; I meant to say "except Quebec" in the "95% identical" line, but it somehow got omitted.
When annexation happens I do not expect the US to be interested in Quebec because of language. I suppose that means that sovereignists ought to be in favor of US annexation.
That’s a giant if. How can you be so sure the US would have no interest in Québec? We’re not just a bunch of loser people. We have incredible talent in multiple high-investment fields, we’re the bedrock of hydro power on the continent, and we have the cool city all the Yankees want to see to pretend they went somewhere exotic.
The Americans know as much as me that quick and painful assimilation is possible. Why wouldn’t they wish to impose it on my nation?
Puerto Rico is still 100% Spanish-speaking, 125 years after annexation by the US.
It's possible that the US would annex Quebec and similarly keep it as a territory, but more likely is the US not bothering with it at all; why bring within itself an ethnic conflict that has bedeviled Canada for 250 years?
Your negative bias towards my people is showing; most raw raw Canadian federalists insist the mixture of both nations benefited the country, not made it more difficult to manage.
I'm an American, so have no brief for either side. I'm happy to believe that Quebec + TROC = greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe that would be true for the US; maybe that means Quebec as territory would be the best solution to satisfy both parties.
But even setting aside the unlikelihood of Quebecois used to having so much say in governing Canada accepting no longer having voting delegates in the national legislature, surely any such benefit for the US would be a lot less, relatively speaking. And, again, why would we bring in yet another ethnic conflict into our country?
Americans on either side of politics think that Canada is full of super-leftists (and there is no shortage). But were Canada a part of the US in 2016, Trump would have won AB, SK, and quite possibly enough of the GTA (the parts that loved Rob Ford, and as "Ford Country" has repeatedly won the province for Doug Ford as mentioned) to win ON, the province most resembling MI/WI/PA, the three states that Trump unexpectedly won the election with.
Once, and once during Covid
I mean Trudeau got reelected during Covid too because he temporarily relaxed restrictions, just to crank them back into high gear after winning again.
Also, Doug ford is no conservative, he’s just liberal lite. A pathetic spineless being
As a Canadian who is in the process of immigrating to the US, I feel that most Canadians think they are more similar to European than American. I'm basing this from having interacted with many Canadians during grad school in the US whom it would greatly trouble them if someone thought they were American. Perhaps it is a generational thing because I think my parents would probably say American if forced to choose but would say they are Canadians. Perhaps it is an international student perspective. I think most Canadians who think they are American just immigrate.
Usually emigrate focuses on the country of departure. All the forms I'm filling out have to do with immigration and not emigration because the process of leaving a country is not usually the legal hurdle.
In my experience, many (Anglo) Canadians behave like the coastal Americans who think of themselves as rather not American despite behaving very, very American.
I always find it funny how well coastal Americans diagnose the maladies that plague America while at the same time thinking they only infect inland Americans.
Case in point: America is a racist country. But the racial quotas in Ivy League Universities are perfectly fair. There is nothing wrong with punishing Chinese immigrants for the sins of English colonists from the two centuries ago.
> America is a racist country. But the racial quotas in Ivy League Universities are perfectly fair
One I realised I fell into was universally condemning everyone from places I hadn’t been as ignorant. I think what stalls the self awareness is that you think you’re just joking. But you’re not. You’re socially reäffirming a stereotype.
I'd say you two are pretty much like most Americans. ie - You readily identify the problems endemic to all the other Americans.
I do it too. It's the way we're socialized here in the US via everything from the media and music to political speeches.
What would be really interesting to know is if either of you are non-American? I have a sense that this proclivity might not be simply an American thing. I've wondered more and more if it's just human?
> readily identify the problems endemic to all the other Americans
I’d call out honest self reflection in small groups as uniquely and proudly American. We don’t have small group face-saving as a strong cultural streak. Almost in inverse, we champion it as a sign of trust and intimacy.
> interesting to know is if either of you are non-American
Immigrant American. We tend to be so convinced of our blue-blooded Americanness that we unblushingly use phrases like “blue-blooded American.”
More seriously, America is a superpower. Look at the contemporaries of any great superpower—Rome, the Han Dynasty, the Abbasid, the Ottoman, the British and the USSR—and the dominant narrative—paranoia, almost—is one of decline. Because that’s what’s left. There isn’t a competitor to aspire to. There isn’t pressure to improve. It’s partly why I think a bipolar world is for the best, even if it’s quite deadly—America and China competing is good. Russia diddlyfucking
America without guns and racial violence, BLM, Trump. Although they did have the convoy protests, it didn't escalate into an attack on the Parliament like in the US.
It depends on what one is referring to by "racial violence". The US has a long history of race riots, which have led to numerous deaths. While race riots have also happened in Canadian history, they have been far less frequent, and resulted in significantly less deaths. And the disparity remains even if you take into account the difference in size of the population.
If you physically segregate your underclass, they do tend not to "riot" in what I'm assuming you would consider a "race riot". Most deaths from "racial violence" aren't from "rioting" anyway, so focusing on that point is pretty silly, in my opinion.
According to the 2021 Canadian census, Vancouver is now a majority-minority city, 54% non-white. [0]
Also, keep in mind that in both Canada and the US, a plurality of the underclass are of European descent: in 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 37.2 million Americans were living below the poverty line, of whom 42.7% were non-Hispanic White, 28.0% Hispanic, 22.8% African American, 1.6% Native American, 4.8% Other. [1] (I don't have equivalent figures for Canada at hand, but I expect they will tell a broadly similar story, with European-descended people being the plurality of the Canadian poor.)
I said underclass was physically segregated. The US systematically discriminated against black people to form an underclass that shared a racial identity. Neither ethnic nor cultural Chinese in Vancouver are an underclass and have nothing to gain by executing a "race riot". The First Nations people you have so poorly treated are too small a fraction of the population and too dispersed for you to see a "race riot" on par with Los Angeles or Detroit, but the protests are there.
I was aware of the abuses agains indigenous Canadians, but it doesn't compare to the US. Maybe not without but certainly less.
"Higher numbers of hate crimes targeting a race or an ethnicity (+12% to 1,950 incidents) and a sexual orientation (+12% to 491 incidents) accounted for most of the increase in 2022. In 2022, hate crimes targeting a religion were down 15% from 2021 yet remained above the annual numbers recorded from 2018 to 2020."
These numbers can also go up if police do their job better and people trust them more and feel it worthwhile to report. Both are law-enforcement-provided, versus crime victim statistical surveys which are more accurate for the number of crimes committed (not just reported); though having their own drawbacks, of course.
A few years back Joni Mitchell was asked to participate in a project to create a tribute to her in downtown Saskatoon, and she suggested that it have a First Nations component.
It escalated pretty quickly. She got so frustrated that she comparted the flyover provinces to the Deep South in the US. The situation took five years to resolve.
Also with healthcare, a social safety net, people that care about each other and friendly , warm people. I was in the US for 5 months, then visited Canada for the first time after one hour I felt more at home there
And the convoy protests were funded by interests in the US. So it was a US political protest on Canadian soil.
I know you're joking, and fair enough, but I cannot let this comment stand ... joke or not. Canadians do not remotely ever think they are Americans, at all. Not even subconsciously.
I have a great respect for the US. Realistically, feel the US is family, and like family, I love and care for it. Yet at the same time, sometimes I shake my head, wonder what my sibling is doing, baffled... often concerned out of care for them, sometimes out of self interest. Yet I still care, and want the best for them.. even if pissed off, angry, or upset with that sibling.
There is so much shared history, coupled with so much bafflement.
I guess the best way to put it, is the relationship Canada has with the US is exceptionally nuanced, and this holds true for many Canadians.
As an immigrant to Canada, I don't think Canadians think of themselves as Americans, but they are way too much affected by what is happening in the US.
I bet if you rated all countries in the world by how much common people know and spend time looking at the internal politics of neighboring countries, Canada would be easily top 5. On the other hand, most countries outside North/South America have thousands of years of shared history, unlike the 3-4 hundred ones by (non-native) Americans.
In my opinion, Canadian should stop with this obsession and engage more with local politics.
> but they are way too much affected by what is happening in the US
Same with Mexico, but Mexicans are nowhere near as addicted to American news (Spanish language or English language).
TBH, most people consume news as entertainment, and outside of Postmedia Network media, Canadian reporting is fairly bland and boring.
Also, having spent some of my youth in rural and urban BC, in most cases purely Canadian television media didn't even really exist - everyone would be watching either a reskin of an American channel (Family Channel aka Disney) or an American channel (CNN, PBS, Fox).
Sure you had CBC but it was filled with ads and never talked about local issues anyhow.
That said, Western Canada is for all intents and purposes the exact same as Washington/Montana/Alaska - almost everyone in BC, AB, and the territories has at least 1 close relative who's an American or immigrated to America, and the only difference was that signs were occasionally in French, BC Ferries had a tiny portrait of Queen Elizabeth tucked in a random corridor next to a portrait of Harper or Trudeau, and Costco served poutine and charged 2x for milk and goods compared to the one in Bellingham
At least it's relatively culturally neutral in Cambridge, UK. Putting up a Confederate flag in Cambridge, MA feels like it would be risking property damage the next time the Progressive student mob gets a bee in their bonnet.
It's a shame that harmless political ideologies, like the belief that some people should be enslaved as chattel based on the colour of their skin aren't awarded the respect they deserve.
Next thing you know, people will start getting their knickers in a twist over someone flying a Daesh flag.
As my history teacher explained to me, back in the day, a small offshoot of Confederates had it with the war. They were weary. They were exhausted. And so, as many American hippies and conscientious objectors have done in the past, they decided to flee to Canada.
At this time however, they were worried about passing through Yankee territory, and also about their own troops shooting them for desertion. So, cleverly they modified their flag, and their uniforms, in subtle yet not quite discernible ways.
When approached, they would hold up their hands and describe at great length that the flag was much like the Ship of Theseus, each thread had been carefully replaced, and that their philosophical belief was that it therefore was not a Confederate flag. It may seem and look as such, but it as most certainly not! "What!", they would decry at such statements, "Are you ignorant louts! Have you no philosophical roots?", and so soldiers would feel great shame, and let them pass.
Thus after much hardship they managed to cross the border, settle down in a small town. I'm sure the flag you saw was probably only isolated to that one rural town though, but even so it just looked like a Confederate flag. It was instead copied from that other, unique flag.
This is false. It makes no sense. It can't be found anywhere. It reads like a bad Monty Python sketch. I can't tell if you're joking or if your history teacher was.
> they would hold up their hands and describe at great length that the flag was much like the Ship of Theseus
Okay that got a good chuckle out of me lol. Quality shitpost, could have sprinkled some lost cause/daughters of the Confederacy gaslighting in there too
I think the Canadian living in the US that you responded to was close to the mark. Most Americans have little contact with Canadians and many think of Canada abstractly, but not very accurately, as a European-like country located above the US. Beyond this abstract idea, most Americans don't have any reason to think about Canada on a regular basis.
Also, Canadians may not think of themselves as Americans, but young Anglo-Canadians are products of American culture. I roomed in college with one for a year and nothing was distinctly non-American about him besides the accent.
It's paradoxical. Like the famous I Am Canadian ad campaign being the product of a famous Canadian brewer...that was subsequently acquired by an American conglomerate.
Like how Tim Horton's, the quintessential Canadian institution, was bought by Burger King and remains "Canadian" if only for tax reasons.
> that was subsequently acquired by an American conglomerate.
Many countries and cultures are struggling with the excessive power of American capital, it bring with it Us-style management and 'way of doing things'.
This is 1000% correct. Canada is definitely not defined by "being American", or as Peter Zeihan would say: "passive-aggressively not-American".
Of course, when you're a small nation right next to the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it's easy to have your media sphere be overwhelmed by the glut coming from south of the border. This is especially true as institutions like the CBC and NFB have come into increasing irrelevance while the internet replaces them. But this should not be misinterpreted as the country missing an identity or viewing itself as the same as the USA - that's simply not the case.
On a casual viewing, the similarity of external culture looks the same: we have the same shops, the same ugly modern strip malls, etc. We mostly look at talk somewhat the same, certainly in urban centers. But when you dive into the heart of our cultures, we had very different histories, and that's reflected in some big societal discrepancies. The USA is a bit of an outlier in a number of ways, and in many ways Canada resembles Scandinavian countries more than the USA.
Canadian culture is a vague and vacuous hole with the strongest defining feature being their insistence that they're not Americans. Someone from the UK or Mexico is so uniquely different that these's never been any confusion, but Canadians are constantly coping over this. Reminds me of how Texas is always threatening to leave the country.
> Canadians do not remotely ever think they are Americans, at all.
Nah. Canadians regularly see themselves as Americans with respect to political processes and laws. Presumably because of said American media consumption and believing what it portrays also applies to Canada.
Some examples of Canadians thinking they're Americans include the Convoy on the Canadian right larping as right wing Americans, and the "assault weapons ban" on the Canadian left larping as American Democrats.
Both of which aimed to solve for problems faced by Americans in America by doing something in Canada, when the same problems don't apply to Canada.
Well to be fair, most of that LARPing is being done by our PM who likes to piggyback on the cache of big American news stories. That's seen by many of us as being ridiculous.
How about our Prime Minister LARPing as a Democrat and spending a ton of money on a school lunch program that as far as I can tell (being an avid consumer of news across the country’s political spectrum) no one has ever suggested was an issue north of the border? At a time when we are already ludicrously overspending, no less.
When I was younger (decades ago...) Canada felt more 'exotic' than it does today. That may just be me getting older and less awed by new things, but I'm struck every time I visit by how much like America Canada is. Maybe that's why I like it so much. America but with universal health care :).
Disclaimer: I only ever go to BC (and I have lived in the PNW most of my life), so this might be a very biased hot take. I bet Quebec is a little bit different, as well as the other provinces & territories.
There are between 4-7 major subcountries in Canada (for reference, the US has 11 of them) depending on how you count them.
Those are the West (everything west of Upper Canada), Upper Canada (triangle formed by Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal), Lower Canada (Quebec), and the Maritimes.
If you're going more granular, you have Newfoundland, which is very different from the rest of the Maritime provinces (they have their own dialect of English), the North (sparsely populated but the kind of Canadian that lives there is different), and to a point Vancouver and Vancouver Island.
Of those, the West is functionally the Midwest (Vancouver and Island are not meaningfully distinct from Seattle/Portland/Bay cities in terms of politics) where each province is flavored towards the State to its immediate south, Upper Canada is culturally NYC-DC North (and for that reason is as hostile to the rest of the country as NYC/DC are to the US in general), Lower Canada is French (obviously), and the Maritimes are the Rust Belt.
The reason for Upper Canada's insularity (and to a point, Lower Canada's) is its age and geography: as the US found out in 1812 it's very difficult to reinforce across the Great Lakes. As for the West, there might as well be no border at all, so commerce and culture move freely (it also helps that, because plentiful natural resources and space causes a freedom-focused outlook on human rights, most people who live in the West will naturally have that in common with their southern counterparts).
The north-south cultural group is correct, but I'd disagree with some of the specifics you mentioned.
The cultural division between BC and the 'west' (AB, SK, MB) is pretty strong.
Southern Ontario is a lot closer to upstate ny / the midwest than NYC, I'd say.
The Maritimes is much more like New England than the rust belt. Newfoundland isn't even part of the Maritime provinces - it's part of the Atlantic provinces.
> you're going more granular, you have Newfoundland, which is very different from the rest of the Maritime provinces (they have their own dialect of English)
Just a heads up, Newfoundland isn't a part of the Maritimes at all, and those from Newfoundland will certainly remind you of that if you lump them in :)
Canada is being "Americanized", and the media and entertainment landscape is at the forefront of that.
I will say though, weighing in on a neighbouring nation while only having visited one of its provinces strikes me as a little bit conceited. A visit to BC is not going to give you much of a perspective of the diversity of this country.
Also: our health care is amongst the worst of the western nations at this stage. Subsequent governments have carved it away to be a shell of its former self.
That's a little harsh, I admitted as much in my post. I figured that my disclaimer would clarify that what I really think is "The PNW is very similar no matter which side of the 49th parallel you find yourself on."
I withhold any opinion on your health care; I've heard negatives, sure, but I've got no skin in the game. Philosophically I like it better than what we're doing in the US, even if the results have been lackluster so far.
Canadian here, and I think that especially on philosophical grounds, the Canadian system is terrible.
The state has a monopoly on the purchasing of healthcare services, it is illegal in most provinces to buy any healthcare for your family. The official marketing is that services are given out in priority order. In practice, it's rationed according to a lottery, your connections, whether you can afford to live near medical center, your ability to advocate for yourself, ability to show up an hour before a facility opens and wait in line for 5 hours, push through constant gaslighting by doctors whose goal is to dissuade you from receiving care (they'd rather you just give up and go home, here take this antibiotic and get out of my face), willingness to embellish symptoms to get higher priority placement, etc.
When the system utterly fails you, you have zero recourse. You just accept that you won't get to see a specialist for 6 months (if you're lucky, often a year). There is no escape hatch. Only if you're lucky enough to afford paying out of pocket and be able to get out of the country to get medical attention.
Millions of Canadians have no access to a family doctor (25-60% of British Columbians, for example). With increasing frequency, Emergency Rooms themselves are closing their doors (can't operate a whole 24/7 rotation).
On a philosophical level, I think it plainly evil that, even after I've paid such high taxes to fund everyone else's treatment, and then after the government refuses to provide me with adequate healthcare, after already paying for services not received, they then make it illegal to use whatever money I have left to provide basic healthcare to myself and my family.
> The state has a monopoly on the purchasing of healthcare services, it is illegal in most provinces to buy any healthcare for your family.
Why is it illegal to purchase healthcare privately? When I lived in the UK, I skipped the NHS and used my private insurance all the time to avoid all the issues you listed. Why not make it available to those that can afford the option?
Well, obviously I strongly disagree with this justification, but it's thought that if you allow for private healthcare options, that will suck resources out of the public system. If I use my own money to pay for the attention of a doctor, that's me taking that doctor away from the public system, making everyone else worse off.
Not sure if you're trying to downplay the problems or just offering a tip, but "You can flee the country and pay out of pocket somewhere with a functioning healthcare system" isn't much of a defense. Millions of Canadians aren't able to afford flight, hotel, time off work, arrange care for their dependents etc to go down to the states for weeks to resolve health issues. Not to mention, not all Canadians are even allowed to go to the states (people with criminal records, for instance). Also, hopping on a flight isn't an option for people with ongoing needs.
Yes those are real issues, and I didn’t necessarily mean to go to the United States, lots of people in the US also flee the border for certain medicine.
It’s, of course, a both/and situation. Try to improve things at home while searching for options if needed.
I do believe there is a bit of absurdity going on where parts of the Canadian system are trying to save money though by offering suicide.
> On a philosophical level, I think it plainly evil that, even after I've paid such high taxes to fund everyone else's treatment, and then after the government refuses to provide me with adequate healthcare, after already paying for services not received, they then make it illegal to use whatever money I have left to provide basic healthcare to myself and my family.
The evil part seems to be where they bilk you out of your tax dollars a few steps up the chain.
Downvoters may think this is an argument against universal healthcare, not realizing that it’s really an argument against a particular style of universal healthcare. Some countries, such as France and Switzerland, have a private sector that parallels the public sector, providing that escape hatch that Canadians are missing (unless, as you say, they cross the border to Bellingham or Buffalo, and can pay the US’s astronomical out-of-pocket expenses).
Most Canadians of sufficient age know that our healthcare system used to be the envy of the world. Sadly that has not been the case for 30+ years, and every government of the last few decades has compounded that problem. Some of it isn't even about funding per-se, but greed, bureaucracy and institutional power grabs.
We don't really have "universal healthcare" at all anymore, I don't know what you'd call such a dysfunctional system.
Don't worry, there's arguments against every system of health care, including the American health care and insurance industry. Doesn't mean there aren't productive reforms that can be done.
A linguist friend once told me that language patterns in North America run north/south. For whatever reason, culture and migration seem to work the same way.
If you are from BC, you are more likely to travel to or move to California than you are Nova Scotia or Florida.
Likewise, if you are from Montana, you probably feel more comfortable in Alberta or Saskatchewan than you would in New York or Alabama.
While our governments function very differently, NAFTA has removed most of the institutional barriers preventing the natural movement of money, people and culture between the two places.
time zone and climate vary much more east west than immediately north south considering the populated zones of Canada are almost entirely 100km from the US border.
What radio and then TV did, the Internet has continued. The world is shrinking, its cultures are merging, one day there will be one language, and one culture, or... maybe two yelling at each other.
I once heard, in the early 2000s, that more than 1/2 the languages spoken 150 years ago are gone.
eh, the internet also provides plenty of ways to split off into subcultures. maybe the subcultures cut across traditional nationalities but they're still there.
I am an American and I support having less "American news"...way....way less
When I was younger I enjoyed reading my local newspaper (local news/local sports/classifieds), the USA Today (national news/sports), and the Wall Street Journal. Between those 3 I felt pretty well informed and enjoyed my daily ritual of reading them in the morning at school in the library. Unfortunately as other commenters have noted the quality of journalism has gone way down hill since then.
I used to pay more attention to the news but it became such a time sync that I came full circle, no I check the local news station in the morning and apnews, if it doesn’t hit the first page of those, it’s not worth reading. Occasionally I’ll read something more in-depth like propublica but that’s it. Worrying about things you have little to no power over is kind of useless.
The quality and Quantity of journalists has fallen off a cliff over the past 30 years. In 1990's there were 500,000 journalists, now we have around 100,000. Investigative journalism, where you get a crew of people and fly them across the world, and conduct first-hand research, is basically gone.
It is surprising to me that this is not common knowledge and we have people disputing a basic fact.
A counter point to your assertion is that more sources are better, if they are not all saying the same thing and being controlled by the same few owners. Which in today's world, in the west, most certainly are. Many years ago the news was covered from multiple angles so even with few sources I felt I was getting more insight to the story due to different perspectives.
Honestly due to the deluge of news I feel people today are more opinionated, less informed, easier to manipulate/deceive via controlled narratives, and have way shorter attention spans. The quality of journalism is so far gone it is laughable, so having more of a bad thing doesn't make it better imho.
Thinking from 10,000 feet, the quality of the media seems bad at a time when anyone can publish contradicting accounts, with evidence, on the internet.
Do you think the old media was actually better? Or was there just no platform for dissenting voices?
If there are no dissenting voices heard, then the media seems like “the truth”.
This is exactly why authoritarian governments and religions are very concerned about counter narrative publications. They want the people to believe that the official sources are the truth.
I mean, yes, but they also love playing the "Firehose of falsehood game", and playing with 'Bullshit Asymmetry'.
The problem with reality is it's way more complex than binary, things are not black and white. If you can't have and control a single news station, then make thousands of them that take small pieces of truth and stir them in a bucket of shit. Pump countless dollars of petro money into these sources so they have extreme reach into societies. Use the latest targeting tools to pull these people into their own little reality tunnels they'll have a hard time getting out of. Watch and laugh as the nation collapses in its own civil war.
How much does a country allow foreign actors to dictate what their citizens hear?
> A counter point to your assertion is that more sources are better, if they are not all saying the same thing and being controlled by the same few owners. Which in today's world, in the west, most certainly are. Many years ago the news was covered from multiple angles so even with few sources I felt I was getting more insight to the story due to different perspectives.
I've found ground.news to be a good tool for finding different angles on stories. Sadly it only split sources based on American left/center/right which certainly is different from where I am (South/West Europe), but better than nothing.
I used Google News regularly for years, but I've had to abandon it. It has so many sources, and 9/10 of them are pure garbage. I mean absolute dreck.
More perspectives are better, except you have to rank the perspectives by descending popularity and then pick the top X, where there's a strongly diminishing return on every source after that.
Other people have pointed out that "American news" also displaces local news in the states, but it's worse than that: this stuff you see on CNN isn't actually about the important events going on in the world, it's an entertainment product engineered from a mishmash of urgent-sounding background music, very serious faces and sound bytes selected to compromise between sounding interesting, and supporting a pre-selected story arc. In other words, "American news," displaces all real news, anywhere.
At pretty much all levels of news (and discourse in general) it seems like all we really care about now is who the President is. Secondary to that, maybe the party (though I'd say it's less about party and more specifically about culture).
Local politics get very little consideration unless something really controversial happens. I think the reverse should be true -- state, county, and city laws have way more effect on my daily life than federal.
It’s funny that you say that, because that’s exactly what a president is supposed to be.
“He presides over the executive branch.”
It’s supposed to be the most boring name, to contrast with the idea of having a king-like leader.
It turns out human anthropology resists such ideal concepts. But the government does function without the need of a highly competent president -The current president’s dementia is a case in point (recall the special counsel said he wasn’t mentally fit enough to be guilty of any wrongdoing).
I had hoped that 4 years of Trump + 4 years of Biden would be enough for people to realize that maybe the president is not as important as made out to be.
But just the opposite has happened.
Which is funny because half the country would vote for a lamp post if it was running against Trump, and vice versa.
> maybe the president is not as important as made out to be
I mean this just isn't the case. A certain president was very responsible for our current Supreme Court and there are real consequences for everyday Americans.
The south has went bonkers with anti-abortion legislation, there was an attempted coup, and also the President is now ultimately and completely immune from consequences. Did we all just collectively forget this happened?
This doesn't even touch on the right's future plans for America. Like, for example, abolishing the department of education. Again - what do you think will happen in the South if that comes to fruition?
People who are disconnected from this are so from a place of privilege. It's easy to say "everything is fine" when, because of life circumstances, you will never be the target of anything ever.
I have young women in my life and I've seen firsthand how this has affected them. I know drag queens and I've seen how much more hate they get. I know a teacher and she is terrified about the future (or lack thereof) of public education.
> A certain president was very responsible for our current Supreme Court
Do you really think Trump had even heard of the judge names he picked? Also, do you think Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have picked "good" justices? I think you're giving Trump too much personal credit here.
Same for most of the other issues you highlighted, which I don't disagree with, but at the same time I don't think Ron DeSantis or any other candidate would have been a stark difference from Trump.
"eliminating the Department [of Education] is hardly a new notion. Republicans have been calling for its abolition pretty much since its inception in 1979. In 1980, the year after Jimmy Carter fulfilled a campaign pledge to the National Education Association by creating the Department, Ronald Reagan pledged to dismantle it"
"National figures’ promising to abolish the Department (and then not doing so) has been a staple of GOP politics and party platforms for four decades. In 1994, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” advocated eliminating the Department. In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole did the same. In 2011, the GOP presidential debates featured an infamous moment when ED was one of three cabinet departments that Rick Perry promised to eliminate—and one of the two he could recall"
In my opinion, we're not going to fix much by electing a "good" president. We've built a tower of shit and putting a ribbon on top isn't going to make it smell good. We spend so much time and energy arguing about the color of the next ribbon, and all that does is distract us from the shit pile.
> I think you're giving Trump too much personal credit here
Yeah I think you're right - it's more so his party.
> I don't think Ron DeSantis or any other candidate would have been a stark difference from Trump
Yeah probably not (and maybe worse even).
> we're not going to fix much by electing a "good" president
Probably not, but a blue president won't abolish the department of education. Nor would they instate a requirement that all government employees must pass an exam proving they're conservative (yes, real).
The problem is we have two right-leaning party. The moderate one, the dems, who do almost nothing. And the far-right one, which is dangerous. Like... actively looking to make everyone's lives worse at the behest of corporations and the ultra-wealthy, and then to top it off, enforce religious values and good morals.
It's a shitty situation, but in my opinion an easy choice. At least currently. The repubs have gotten much more radical in the past decade IMO.
> I dream of an executive branch without a president. I don't see why we need one.
Maybe what the US really needs is a Prime Minister. Subordinate the executive branch to the legislative branch, as is the norm in the Commonwealth, the majority of Western European nations, Japan, among others
And a figurehead/symbolic/apolitical President with little real power – like the Presidents of Austria, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Malta, etc
Congress often falls into periods of internal leaderlessness or effective ruderlessness (there is supposed to be an internal hierarchy of leaders in both houses - if there was a prime minister tomorrow, their title today would be "speaker" or "majority leader.") Taking into account the role of the president to take up the reins in those instances, and the consequences of the times a president has remained deferential in attitude despite there being nobody to defer to, we probably need a separate election for president.
Congress only falls into "periods of internal leaderlessness" because (1) it doesn’t matter so much when it does because Congress is relatively powerless (compared to a Westminster system Parliament), and (2) there is no mechanism to trigger an early election (again unlike the Westminister system)
If the US adopted a parliamentary system, then Congress would have to nominate a Prime Minister – and if it failed to do so within a reasonable period, it would be dissolved and a new election would be held for it. Fear of having to face the voters again is a great motivator for legislators to get their act together – especially since voters rarely take kindly to being called upon to vote again so soon.
This is becoming a problem in latin america as well and you see people importing culture wars issues that are not really relevant to their local politics and further muddying the waters and distracting from the actual issues facing them
Colombian here - that phenomenon has been present since I can remember. Lots of upstart people here wanting or feeling like they're part of the culture of the USA just because. Go to r/Colombia and see how many of those Dunning-Kruger commenting balls of ignorance profess a stupid and weird hatred for communism and socialism, and they don't even know what those words mean, let alone tell them apart.
Another part of it is that the "international" section of our media is just about regurgitating whatever they say at CNN, FOX or whatever they have there, so the information almost always is arriving already biased (for example, they made here a big deal about the mishap of Biden's mental block at that debate, but they have never mentioned all the links between Trump and Epstein). Though I'd concede the phenomenon has aggravated due to social media, our hiperconnected reality and the increased amount of people moving there, legally or not.
Communist and socialist (by name) regimes in South America have caused more trouble for their own citizens than any leftist (by name) regime has caused for the world of capital. I don't think those posters necessarily absorbed that opinion from the US, in fact I think the US absorbed a lot of its own anticommunism from refugees. Historically it has been the business community advocating for détente and trade.
Absolutely. What troubles me in this discourse about "socialism" is that when it's brought up it's USSR and Cuba as opposed to Scandinavia. Northern Europe countries, despite the weather and high taxation rates, consistently occupy the better part of all kinds of lists trying to assess the level of happiness and social cohesion. Of course there are other reasons for it, such as a largely mono-ethnic population, but I doubt their vast social net hurts.
Because currently most socialist, or kind of socialist, countries globally have a higher quality of life than countries like the US.
Of course, what we need to acknowledge is that this shit is complicated and there's nobody that's one thing. There're no purely free market Capitalist nations because that would lead to crimes against humanity beyond our comprehension. There're also no fully communist nations anymore - when there were, they lead to crimes against humanity beyond our comprehension.
Everyone, everywhere, has a mixed system. Whereby the public sector exists, operates, and owns some stuff. Some public sectors own more than others. Those that own, say, education and healthcare SEEM to be doing better than those that don't. Their citizens are healthier, more educated, and seem to be doing better overall.
Not necessarily, for a small but very elucidativo example see the 'amigx' 'amigues' 'latinx' thing.
At least Brazil has had a significant amount of levantine immigration and a few refugees recently, so it's not out of place to sympathize with the Palestines wrt the incursion
The UK also has a problem with the right wing trying to import American "culture wars" issues for their own benefit, and it has nothing to do with Gaza — specifically, they bring in the US talking points about trans issues, using "woke" as the next step on the euphemism escalator now that "politically correct" has worn off, blaming millennials for everything, and a conspiracy theory about 15 minute cities (despite almost all of the UK being within 15 minutes of all the important things already, including the car-focused bits like Milton Keynes and small Welsh hamlets like Abermad).
Still, at least it means the Tory party completely forgot about wanting to bring back the hunting of foxes on horseback.
These all seem like really bad examples, panic over trans people has some very real, very British sources and 15 minute cities (and related concepts like LTNs and the ULEZ) is not something regularly discussed in the US.
Much better examples are US Southwest/Californian concerns around water scarcity being imported to places where water is not scarce, or similar concerns around emissions from electricity generation being imported to places that use high amounts of renewables/nuclear energy. Another example is civilian disarmament fear mongering switching from being about cheap handguns to "assault weapons" after DC v Heller.
The reaction to George Floyd in UK was quite strange, with "don't shoot" protests and "defund the police", when the UK police is not even armed and gets paid like half of their American counterparts.
Although the pushback against trans activist policy has come mostly from the right in the US (with some notable exceptions - Kara Dansky of Women's Declaration International, for example), it's a different story in the UK.
Around the mid-2010s, two events occurred in close succession: the Conservative government of the time proposed a policy of gender self-identification, and trans-identifying male prisoner Karen White was charged with sexually assaulting female prisoners while he was incarcerated in a women's prison. He was later convicted and it was uncovered that he'd been sent to the women's prison due to his "female" identity, despite having previous convictions of sexually assaulting and raping women.
The reaction from women was immense, organised on Mumsnet and other forums, mostly by left-wing feminists. After a lot of protest and publicity, the Tories dropped this policy. It was only later on they changed tack with policy proposals that shifted the balance away from trans activism, mostly to draw a line between them and Labour.
Cis women who rape women and cis men who rape men have always gone to prisons aligned with their gender identity. The issue with the normalization of rape in prison is unrelated, and should be solved without throwing trans people under the bus
This ideological argument was attempted back then too, but it's rejected by most people, who see the reality of the situation: men being locked up in women's prisons.
It should be no surprise to anyone that such a policy is very unpopular. Prisons are separated by sex for good reason.
Trying to pretend that some of these male criminals are women just because they said they are is not a particularly convincing argument.
Pretty interesting how being anti-prison rape is considered an ideological argument. But hats off to the real winners of this situation: the bisexual rapists who get to rape no matter what ideology their captors have, I guess.
Sociology of the society as a whole perhaps, but the first three letters of LGBT are not magically immune and the fourth letter is not magically capable.
And physiologically, someone whose outie was surgically modified into an innie is going to have just as many difficulties topping as a natural born woman.
I remember hearing about some boy who was sent to a prison for a minor offence, was raped, got HIV.
Regardless of your intent, which I cannot know because I am not a mind-reader, what you write here therefore still comes across as if it was ~"it's only bad when pre-op trans women do it".
Please refrain from deliberately misreading my comments.
Sexual assault and rape is terrible, no matter who the perpetrator or victim is. On this, I assume we agree.
The issue here is policy changes that remove one of the most important safeguarding measures to prevent this in the prison system: segregation by sex, so that all male inmates have no physical access to any female inmates.
The UK prisons are a total clownshow atm, recently there was a string of female prison guards that were jailed for having sex with (male) prisoners, filming it, and of course smuggling drugs, etc. Also Prisons have run out of space so many offenders were let out early.
Jesus, sounds like it's just the UK prisons trying to project their awful "justice" system on their own victims. I give the American justice system a lot of shit based on my personal experience with it, but it sounds like police in general are struggling with maintaining their representation of justice in the modern era, especially with how publicized it can get when they fail to deliver.
All government funded systems in the UK have spent the last 14 years struggling, because the UK government of that era tried to get over the recession caused by the global financial crisis in the late 00s by cutting absolutely everything they could possibly cut.
Israel is clearly the moral side of this conflict. This conflict began only because Hamas attacked and captured hostages. And it only continues because Hamas refuses to let them go.
I think people in other countries have trouble believing this motivation because they don't see how a country care this much about a regular citizen. But today, IDF recovered Farhan al-Qadi, and the whole country celebrates it. Can you imagine random people in US celebrating that Evan Gershkovich got release in the recent exchange with Russia? I doubt most american citizens even heard this name.
This whole thing will be over when hostages are back. Whoever captured and holds them is the devil who made all of this happen.
It seems like Hamas knew they could trigger an overwhelming response from Israel, and so they sacrificed innocent Palestinians to do it. They were correct, yeah? They wanted to make Israel look bad in the eyes of the world. And now we get pictures of dead Palestinian children. Israel may equate Palestinians with Hamas, but I don't think that is a universally held opinion in the rest of the world.
Does it? Israel provides them with food, water, electricity. Treats them in hospitals. Warns them about incoming strikes. I don't know any other country in the world which treats a hostile population like that in time of war. I also don't know a single other war with such a low civilian-to-combatant killed ratio. Usually it's somewhere around 9; in this war, the estimates are around 1-2.
This whole thing will be over when hostages are back. Whoever captured and holds them is the devil who made all of this happen.
There's the devil who made the hostage situation happen. And the other devil (and his allies) who made the calculated decision to allow Hamas to flourish for so long, and who apparently (now 11 months into this disaster) has never been particularly interested in resolving the hostage situation in the first place.
Both are ultimately responsible, and deeply immoral.
To quote trudeau (sr) "Living next to you [America] 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."
Fact is, as a middle power country next to a super power, american politics has an inordinate impact on us, and we can't even complain to our local congresman, since obviously we dont have one.
The US is by far Canada's main trading partner, with 66% of Canadian foreign trade being with the US. It exports 17 times as much to and imports 4 times as much from the US than its next largest trading partner, which in both cases is China. Many companies operating in Canada are American owned, and many Canadian companies have a significant presence in the US as well. The Canadian financial sector is heavily integrated with the US.
Canada and the US are close military allies. They share the world's only binational military command (NORAD) which is responsible for air defense of both countries. Canada has joined many US led military operations including Korea, Afghanistan, and both Gulf Wars. The US strongly influences military procurement in Canada, with Canadian units designed to be seamlessly interoperable with US forces.
The US and Canada share the world's longest border, which is rather porous. Large numbers of citizens of each nation travel to the other frequently, and many people have family on the opposite side of the border. Many Canadians live for an extended period of time in the US for education or employment.
Basically any economic, military, or immigration policy change in the US is going to have a huge impact on Canada.
Every Canadian province except PEI trades more with the US and with the rest of Canada.
When Trump was elected the first time, super genius Canadians vowed to fight his trade policy by targeting American politicians in states that trade with Canada, threatening to cut them off. The only problem with that is that Canada is far more dependent on trade with the US than US states are with Canada. <https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8q9h8i/canadaus_tra...>
The Canadian brain drain, it fundamentally affects the Canadian culture and economy by the constant loss of talent and aptitude. The gravitational pull of the U.S. is too powerful. Even I studied at two elite US schools, which put me on a path to H-1B like my peers in grad school一 but I didn't pursue that for personal reasons.
That's not really a consequence of US policy though, that's a consequence of private universities in the US being better. You could argue that is a consequence of policy but that's a fairly downstream effect and I'd argue that Canadian policy is to improve Canadian institutions is the solution so it's still in Canadians hands.
I see it not as a consequence of policy but a bigger picture consequence of hegemony, a sociopolitical and technological phenomenon over human societies. More concretely, I'd argue the neighboring Canadian brain drain is dual to the Mexican migration and exploitation of Latino workforce, again this gravitational pull of a world superpower being at work. It is a broader problem--the harm done to the social integrity of neighboring states--than merely policy.
No its a consequence of earning potential after going to school. If you go to the US you get special student visa which allows you to earn USD and if you are goijg into medicine your lifetime earnings are considerably higher in the US.
Canada has great schools but you don't have brand recognition/massive alumni networks/endowments like the US nor do you get visa access.
>The Canadian brain drain, it fundamentally affects the Canadian culture and economy by the constant loss of talent and aptitude. The gravitational pull of the U.S. is too powerful.
Context for others: If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance <https://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_...> that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too.
By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.
>Even I studied at two elite US schools, which put me on a path to H-1B like my peers in grad school一 but I didn't pursue that for personal reasons.
And you, of course, know that not doing so made you unusual.
Context for others: The probable successor to Trudeau as Liberal party leader went to Harvard. Not for grad school, for undergrad. Put another way, she has never attended higher education in her home country. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrystia_Freeland> Trudeau's pedecessor as Liberal leader spent 30 years outside Canada, mostly in the US, before being lured back to lead the party. After failing to become PM he immediately left Canada again for the US. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ignatieff>
And the choice had consequences to the us/canada relationship (just like the choice not to go to iraq did). Such choices affect us policy to canada down the line.
> How does US policy tangibly affect Canada? Outside of NAFTA, what else is there?
I think this is the wrong question, because U.S policy has many interactions with Canada (whether they're tangible or not is a valid question), but the point in my mind is how much of that is 1) Impactful enough for arbitrary Canadians, such that knowing about it would allow them to make different decisions or avoid negative outcomes 2) how many of what passes the first test makes it into news that people should be watching. Policy that impacts Canada is usually nuanced, detailed, esoteric, and you have to deliberately seek out fact-based documentation on it. If you're an importer/exporter, remote contractor, dual citizen, ya you should be doing that, but it's not likely coming from CNN or w/e.
and for that reason, I'd argue that it's not just important for Canadians to stop ingesting American news, but people in general should severely reduce even the tacit awareness of the goings on elsewhere in the world. Ignorance is bliss isn't taken far enough. I could have gone the entire last decade without knowing who the U.S president was, and I would have been probably better off, save for a few scant social situations where it would've been relevant.
Trade is certainly a large factor which is why I mentioned NAFTA but that's just the nature of the global economy. The US also is affected by policy decisions in China.
It's not like the US sending billions to Ukraine or the security of the southern border affect Canadians. No politician is proposing any sort of dramatic shift in the US' relationship with Canada. There's no need for an average Canadian to have an opinion on Trump vs. Harris aside from being dragged into a culture war by consuming US centric media.
I completely agree; we have the same issue here in Australia. When I came home to find my elderly father watching Fox News, claiming that the election was stolen, I realised that the cable box parental controls might actually be for parents!
I'd worry that this type of public announcement by a US ambassador is part of propaganda to manufacture consent for the Canadian government to either block select US "news," and/or promote select Canadian "news" - where many people don't realize that this current government already does censor/block news from organizations that are above a certain size.
Seeing bits of the DNC last week with celebrities like lil wayne making appearances, a packed stadium and whatnot, is there anything comparable in Canadian politics or even other parliamentary systems like the UK? American politics (and the news focused on it), is quintessentially American: big, loud and over the top.
We've got spending caps and short limits on election campaign length to avoid exactly the kind of insanity that is the American election cycle. I'm not sure it works 100%, but it does seem a little more sane.
Works where i am in the EU. Our national elections (I'm not a national, so I can't vote.. I just watch from the sidelines) had about 5% of the 'noise' of any US elections.
For which i am eternally grateful.
Fair play to the DNC, though. Their convention this year was very interesting.
But - where are we at? Eighty days to suffer until the US elections?
IMHO, it's way too much.
Ehhh not really, short election cycle. Federal politicians hold relatively low-key party and supporter events to drum up support, probably earlier this year than ever that I've seen, but it's nothing close to the scale of the DNC or w/e. We also have leader debates which I find fun to watch, but our politicians are more or less fancier regular citizens. Same with billionaires and other celebrities, we just couldn't be bothered, they go about their business and we mention we saw so and so.
I missed that convention. Did President Mountain Dew Camacho make an appearance with Lil Wayne by any chance? Or did the red circus convention get him (I understand they did get Hulk Hogan)?
Annoying excessive coverage of US politics has been a thing in Denmark since 2008. Although nowadays we at least have the excuse that the US has replaced both China and Germany as our main trading partner and the Danish GDP probably fluctuates a little whenever the FDA looks in the direction of Novo Nordisk.
This is an expected consequence of American hegemony. When so much of our culture is imported from America, we end up feeling American. To a degree, what happens in America really does affect our lives, even more than what happens in Canada in many cases. When everybody around you is focused on American issues and American politics, they start to vote based on these imported ideas and make them Canadian ideas.
I live somewhere in the Northeast and have access to CBC and Global on my US television package and boy is it wild to sit back and watch the Canadian version of what's going on in America every night on their news.
If you grew up in the 70's there was a lot of Canadian programming that Americans could watch on PBS. One in particular was called "Fast Forward" which covered topics in TV, Radio, and Computers in a very nerd-kid-friendly format. Only a few scraps of it remain on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vjkuFk2mOEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kye9emAtBkU
By far the thing I remembered most was the animation from the National Film Board (NFB) which gave me a few early lessons in Canadiana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZyDsF-Gp3o (Any Habs fans out there?)
But when I talk to Canadian friends / co-workers these days, the younger ones are completely unaware of the older cultural ephemera. Even saying I was really into Gordon Lightfoot doesn't seem to have the same resonance that it used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmGBna0JJ_U
The CBC basically parrots the US mainstream media like MSNBC and CNN. Which makes sense because the CBC rarely send their own reporters south, they rely on the newswire like Reuters.
Then they just layer on a "aren't you glad you aren't American?" narrative on top, which keeps Canadians voters distracted from the problems in their own country.
Rampant immigration? A few token articles a year. Superficial analysis using government talking points.
> Then they just layer on a "aren't you glad you aren't American?"
Can you point to an example? I dont get this vibe.
> The CBC basically parrots the US mainstream media like MSNBC and CNN.
On what issues? On American politics issues, I do find CBC to use less inflammatory language than MSNBC and certain anchors on CNN.
> Rampant immigration?
Are you referring to immigration to Canada? You say 'rampant immigration' as if it is implicit that 'immigration' itself is bad. You didnt feel the need to specify or qualify anything other than 'immigration'. This is such a severe oversight to me that it discredits your opinion on these types of topics in my eyes. There is so much to unpack in Canadas immigration policy that to categorize it away as 'rampant immigration' is telling of a lack of understanding of the details of the topic of immigration in Canada.
I think ironically people hate CBC because they've been told it's gov funded. I watch CBC Marketplace, Fifth Estate, podcasts, 22 minutes, it's all pretty good. Sure you can dig into it and be skeptical of the narrative or w/e, but I think they do a decent job of neutrality, especially more than obviously right leaning publications like National Post. Rarely does CBC make the current administration look good. CBC was making Trudeau look bad long before everyone else jumped on.
To some extent it's reasonable for Canadians, Europeans etc. to be interested in American politics, say on trade or foreign politics because it affects us in real ways especially these days with the world situation, but I also think we're honestly past 'peak Americana' culturally.
Personally speaking being German, my father (60) was in the West Germany army, stationed in Canada and the US for a while, you can tell he was deeply influenced by how Americans live, what cars they drive, how their houses and kitchens look, what their aspirations are, etc. For my generation, already not the case having come of age during the 2000s, seemingly less so for people who are even younger.
I think it's tempting to think America still has a big cultural influence because of how prevalent English is and the media, memes and mannerisms that come with it, but at a deep level I think people have become much less influenced by it. It's the kind of error people made on China, were they thought the internet and media would just turn all the young Chinese into de facto Americans. People today are more fluent in American news and culture but they're also much more capable of just ditching it.
I don't think we're past the peak. American companies are more important than ever, and American media dominates everything. Everything is centralizing in America, and that's why people are watching its news and adopting its culture wars. Every generation of Germans have less of an accent. China and India are not likely to become hegemons, but we could see LATAM become a larger player as the EU fades.
> To some extent it's reasonable for Canadians, Europeans etc. to be interested in American politics, say on trade or foreign politics because it affects us in real ways especially these days with the world situation...
That makes sense to me but I also don't actually see that happening in practice. Disclaimer, I'm American so I really don't know but, whenever I hear/read a foreign politician talking about a President (elect), they aren't talking about policy.
It leads to some unusual cross currents. A few years back following the Canadian trucker protests, some of the defendants cited their "First Amendment rights":
Tamara Lich, the Alberta woman whose GoFundMe campaign raised over $10 million for the convoy, and her husband had their day in court—and Dwayne Lich said he was innocent, because: “Honestly? I thought it was a peaceful protest and based on my First Amendment, I thought that was part of our rights.”
The judge then asked, “What do you mean, First Amendment? What’s that?”
"Objection votre honneur !" is a running gag in French courts, from litigants fed on US procedural drama... In French procedure, such interruption is wholly out of order.
This is by design. Aside from the points raised by others on the reality of living next to the world's biggest superpower; our media landscape is fast becoming a monopoly. That monopoly is owned by Americans [1].
Engaging in passive news consumption will quickly turn one into a brainwashed zombie. Active news searching on a specific topic you have some interest in and a at least a small amount of background knowledge as to where to look is a far more rewarding use of your limited time. e.g.
site:oilprice.com canada | canadian
Try it with ft.com or nytimes.com too. And then try it with rt.com and globaltimes.cn to get the Russian and Chinese spin. Somewhere in there you might get an accurate picture of reality - unless they're all on the same page about something they want to hide from public view. Don't forget to look at the negative space in the image.
American news outlets are like food chains who've figured out that if you serve junk food with tons of sugar and some addictive chemicals, your customers will turn into addicts.
Everyone should probably consume less news but what is happening in the US right now will have a dramatic effect on our northern neighbors so I don't think being informed on the happenings is the worst idea
If you're constantly consuming American news, you might think so, but I'm skeptical anything sufficiently significant is so worth a Canadian occupying their mind with.
> what is happening in the US right now will have a dramatic effect
So... what is that and why would it have a dramatic effect? How do you define dramatic effect? We have our own issues that people are surprisingly uninformed about (to be fair, it's just an impression I get, I'm also only as informed as I am, there's only so much one can devote to it compared to the result), and yet deeply affected by. For example, a huge portion of people are affected by being priced out of having a home or even a stable life, yet they most likely couldn't name which level of government has authority over which (high level) facets of policy that might be related to that, or who any of the housing ministers are, and won't get off their ass to vote.
I'm not convinced that for an average Canadian, other than getting something to talk about, it is or has been in recent memory at all useful to pay attention to American news, to such an extent that functionally zero aspect of most people's lives would have even a marginally different outcome having been completely ignorant.
That's not to say that aren't _at_all_ useful things to keep up with depending on who you are, but it's wildly unlikely in my opinion that's going to come general news media.
To be clear, Facebook chooses to block it because they don’t want to compensate Canadians news outlets, not because the act requires blocking, which is common misinformation that has been spread.
I think everyone understands that facebook had to pay a linking tax whenever anyone including government officials posted a link to a news outlet on a list. They decided not to.
It was a crazy foolish law that hurt those news orgs that thought they were the reason Canadians used social media. It reminded everyone their are plenty of ways to get news outside of the mainstream Canadian news cartel. Canadians are not seeking out these news orgs shows what their value really is to the average person
When things are repeated often enough with a certain slant (e.g. "Facebook is ..." rather than "Canadian news companies via the Canadian government are ..."), it affects both people's thinking on an issue and what people less connected to the issue are aware of.
Many many right wingers in Canada do not understand that. They truly believe the government is requiring Facebook to block all Canadian news. I know this because I live in a small town and have talked to these people. It’s also plain to see on any local Facebook group when the topic comes up.
I agree it’s a foolish law, but there’s rampant misinformation being spread about it.
They don't even need superficially American news channels to get the American viewpoint, since the overwhelming bulk of Canadian "news" outfits other than the CBC are owned by American vulture capital firms, including all of the ones that advocated for the link tax.
This is unfortunately also true for lots of non-Canadians(that are not Americans). That includes me - the number one source of news i use is the NYT, and I think I can tell you more about American politics/politicians than I can about any other country
I wish this was mirrored and Americans would consume Canadian news instead of local news about Canada. Maybe some more ppl would build more nuanced understanding of how universal healthcare care works beyond “they all die in the waiting line”
>Maybe some more ppl would build more nuanced understanding of how universal healthcare care works beyond “they all die in the waiting line”
You want nuance? An amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor. <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too, and am hearing more reports of the same in Ontario.
I mean, American companies pay a LOT for that message too. If Americans started wanting affordable services, think of how much money the pharma CEOs would lose.
The U.S. is a TV show the whole world watches. It's not healthy for anybody on either side. The news is making everybody insane, and not making them particularly well-informed in the process.
This is absolutely true. It is wild how many people I know that can name a half a dozen or more notable American Senators, Congresspersons and politicians and yet have barely any working knowledge of even Federal Canadian politics let alone the (arguably more relevant to their daily lives) Provincial and Municipal political issues and persons.
The quality level of the discourse is as you'd expect, very low!
I think they're, in all likelihood, responding to a growing readership. International papers do very well here: even Russia Today had started accumulating market share before it went over the edge and lost too much credibility. I think it is due to the credibility collapse that US-based media has suffered in the recent (years ago) past. Political partisanship had simply become too obvious, and now even the New York Times - our best paper - has all but declared an affiliation.
Had a friend of my SO (we're both Italian) visit us for some days, she's Canadian in her 60s and she talked so much about US politics.
I don't find talking politics much polite, especially because I believe you should first be politically active, with practical things, in your neighborhood and city first and worry about local problems that impact directly your life and those of your family.
Then make the scope larger.
But talking about politics of another country?
I have my personal opinion that the death of newspapers, which were generally local in favor of internet media, which tends to talk about topics with the highest reach completely inverted the political priorities around the world.
I swear in Italy more people can argue more about US politicians agendas and programs but can't name their mayor.
Some people argue that the decisions taken at federal, global level matter more, yet many are unaware that the beautiful house they bought for the view is being discussed to be sold by the city to build houses or a waste dump or many other things that impact your life directly and on which you have yourself more impact than following a US presidential election. And I have endless examples, because in a small village like mine, with 4000 souls, most decisions impact your life. Waste management, funding for the school buses for kids, safety on local roads, etc. This is literally your every day life.
But what people arguing? Whether AOC is too extreme or anti capitalist?
I wonder if it explains their massive levels of assisted suicide.
Instead of dealing with their healthcare and community support problems and supporting people, it turns out to be much cheaper to just kill them. They just had to fire a bureaucrat who is recommending directly to veterans that they kill themselves.
You really must consume your own domestic propaganda for maximum effectiveness, it's more targeted at you and your culture, customs, beliefs, biases, etc
Dude must be from midwest, perfect midwest nice negging here:
“I do think it is odd, particularly when I contrast it to the United States, where…virtually no one in the United States is paying any attention to Canadian politics,” he said.
This is true for most (all?) countries. If there's any country that avoided this fate, I'd like to know.
People don't know what's going on in their own country but obsess over minutae of american politics.
Legacy media is no escape as its journalists themselves are addicted to twitter and reflect that in their work. My local newspaper in germany used to have Trump on the frontpage more then any german politician.
It's a symptom of a problem within the US too. We're an enormous country with dozens of member states and territories, but we obsess about a tiny fraction of the politics. I've known how I'm voting for president for a very long time, but I don't even know what's on the ballot yet for things that probably influence my life more than the presidency.
Those couple things just suck up all the attention.
It's cause Countries are imaginary entities and humans just want drama and don't care to get it from their own imaginary entity or some other imaginary entity.
The "news" are just another form of entertainment. And there a fraction of the entertainment going on in Canada that exists south of the border so people flock there.
This exactly. The US is great at exporting entertainment, and politics is just another form of it. People in Canada and Europe go to see American movies, listen to American music, and watch American politics.
That's why American news isn't about actual things that actually happen, it's not about political positions and legislation, it's instead mostly about fights between people, about who is scoring points against whom, and who is doing better in the polls, and we're all part of a team, and we hate the people who are on the other team.
It's sports, but easier to understand than football, quicker than baseball, and more violent than basketball.
What's so annoying is that this isn't even true. There is a lot of local news and interesting happenings all across our country, yet no one here to cover it. It's cheaper to repackage US news as interesting to canadians (how does this US thing affect canada, with an opinion) or just for voyeurism. Watching televised news, I end up knowing more about what's happening as a "human interest" story in some small US town than what happened across our country.
Canadian media has been gutted, and nothing our government is doing actually works---or just fiddles with the knobs ever so slightly so that it appears as we're doing something, when the results are indistinguishable from the null.
As a Canadian I appreciate his concern but kindly ask that he mind his own business. I will decide for myself how much U.S entertainment.. I mean, er, "news" is unhealthy for me, thanks.
Canadian mainstream news sit left but think they are neutral/unbiased because all other mainstream orgs speak from the same narrative. In the US they admit bias (for some reason cnn tries to pretend to be neutral).
Leslyn Lewis is Conservative the cbc wouldn't write an article on her.
Canadian news is shallow and doesn't allow a diversity of ideas so people ignore it.
Only America matters. Canadians cluster on the border with America because only America matters. Canadians read US news primarily because only America matters. Canada's independence is nominal. The nation depends entirely on the US for its security and will obey when commanded. A vassal state.
Given that, it is normal for Canadians to consume American news, and it is only unhealthy in that it is unhealthy for Americans as well.
From a geopolitical perspective this is correct. Canada is forced to operate in lockstep with the US and is completely dependent and ultimately subservient to it. Globalization has done a great deal to homogenize us.
Culturally our differences are disappearing, due to the shared language (in Anglo-Canada) and the internet.
Yet for all that: for the people living, working, and doing business in the respective countries, the actual on-the-ground experience is nevertheless quite different. Depending on the state/province in question, sometimes markedly so.
Is the day-to-day really that different? I grew up in Canada, and then lived in 2 different states in the USA as an adult. I'd say Canada feels as different as say, California is to Alabama.
I mean, California and Alabama feel very different! In a lot of ways I'd agree, or even go further - they're more different than, say, BC and WA.
And there's factors like the urban/rural divide to bear in mind. The Canada along the border resembles the lower 48; north of that it starts to have more and more in common with Alaska.
But everywhere you're interacting with the government the differences are quite stark. Health care, education, firearms, regulations, the social safety net, taxation, drugs, criminal justice...all of these and more are handled in a rather different fashion than in the US.
Some of it depends on where you are in your life, and who you are. If you're a single middle-class white male in his 20s who rents in a major city, you're mostly interacting with the market economy, so the biggest differences day-to-day are the products available to you, your somewhat lower purchasing power, and the fact that you don't have anywhere near as much student loan debt as you would in the US.
But as you drift further from that particular model - as you age and need to lean on health care more, if you want to start a family or buy property, if you have extreme wealth, if you move out further away from major population centres, if you try to start a business, if you're a woman/minority...the differences become more apparent. Not always in the ways you'd expect, too: open racism - against indigenous peoples rather than Blacks - is widespread in Canada, even in major urban centres.
I agree with the part about the halo effect of U.S. security. I don't agree with the part about the America mattering more to Canada than Canada. The problem with that argument is, there's no way in which your life in Canada would be different depending on whether you were aware of the political situation in North America or not. The area in one's immediate vicinity, and the people who live with you and near you, and whether you have enough to eat: that's the kind of thing that actually matters, in the sense of directly affecting your life.
I would humbly suggest the ambassador STFU and read the Bill of Rights.
Yes, our news sucks and is polarizing. Yes, our corporate news sources are largely captured by one side.
But the government has no business trying to suppress discussion.
I’m not claiming that the ambassador acted illegally; I am claiming that as an agent of the US Government he needs to stifle his own opinions when speaking publicly on behalf of the US government and not try to suppress legal speech.
Ever since COVID the US government, especially the executive branch, has tried. Every means they could think of to suppress dissenting opinion while trying to stay just on the legal side of the first amendment. They need to stop.
Absolutely nothing said here is "trying to suppress discussion" or "suppress legal speech". He's sharing his personal opinion on Canadian media consumption habits, which - I suggest you read the Bill of Rights? - he's completely free to.
(that said: I believe he said this in Canada, where the Bill of Rights isn't applicable. We have a similar-but-not-the-same right to freedom of expression enshrined in our Charter, though.)
We actually do have a bill of rights. It predated the charter but basically had no teeth, so its largely ignored. It does have slightly more rights than the charter.
Laws (both federal & provincial) have to follow the charter (unless the notwithstanding clause is invoked). For the canadian bill of rights, basically any ambiguities in federal laws are supposed to be interpreted to be consistent with it, but it cant override anything. Which is pretty damn useless and the reason the charter was created.
[In response to the flagged and dead post (i know its bad form, but i feel i must because this is a really important part of canada) - we do have free speech rights with teeth in canada. They just come from the charter of rights not the canadian bill of rights.]
Further, it is worth pointing out to the Americans in the audience, Canada's freedom of expression isn't anywhere near as blanket-permissive as the US. That's before you get to the Notwithstanding Clause.
This may be true, but i honestly think canada strikes a good balance. Like i'd be curious if anyone has any examples of things that would be protected by the first amendment in usa but not protected by section 2(b) where they think usa made the better choice.
The notwithstanding clause is quite icky. Thankfully its rarely used outside of quebec although the recent "parent's rights" bill in saskatchewan is quite gross.
