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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
We've got same-sex marriage, medical marijuana -- and, hey, 80 percent of us think Bush runs a rogue nation! But I'd better warn you -- we're not as blue as you think.
Nov 15, 2004 |
Dear friends back home,
Hey, sure, no problem, the couch pulls out and it's yours whenever you show up. But so many of you are dreaming of leaving America for the biggest, bluest state of all, Canada, I figured I'd offer a little orientation. I know, we've been out of touch too long. Can you believe it? It's been more than a dozen years since my partner landed that cushy professorship in Vancouver and we transplanted here from San Francisco. But sometimes it takes a little thing like an electoral disaster to put old friends back in touch.
Anyway, your sudden interest in your northern neighbor has not gone unnoticed up here. We've all seen that cute map showing "The United States of Canada," combining your blue states and Canada and cutting loose the red states of "Jesusland." We did note that Canada's main immigration Web site got swamped by U.S. traffic when Bush won. And just yesterday the CBC (sorta like NPR) reported that a local law firm, its phone ringing off the hook, is "planning how-to-come-to-Canada seminars" for "Bush refugees."
Prepare to be welcomed with open arms. Literally, in the case of Marry an American, a wry Web concoction by the editors of Toronto-based This Magazine. Sample: "If George W. Bush is re-elected, single, sexy, American liberals -- already a threatened species -- will be desperate to escape. These lonely, afraid (did we mention really hot?) progressives will need a safe haven. You can help. Open your heart, and your home. Marry an American."
Before you pack up the Prius for that endless ski vacation, though, I should warn you. When it comes to political struggle up here, it's not like you're going to get a lot of R&R. But more about that in a minute.
No doubt, Canadians feel your pain. Two-thirds of them, according to a Time magazine Canada poll, believed your choice of president would affect their lives at least as much as the election of their own prime minister. And two-thirds were pulling for Kerry versus 19 percent for Bush.
So now that the deed is done, no need to be polite about Dubya around Canadians. Nearly eight out of 10 here say he runs "a rogue nation," and most adults under 35 believe America has become "a force for evil in the world," according to another October poll (this one conducted by the Dominion Institute and the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, and reported by the Canwest news service). Global warming, AIDS, even SARS, are more scary to Canadians than terrorism, the survey found. The vast majority would rather spend new tax money on healthcare and education than the military, and 40 percent think Switzerland has it right: "focus on being a great place to live rather than working on international issues."
How blue can you get, eh?
Can I mention a sensitive name? Ralph Nader likes us so much he wrote a book called "Canada Firsts," chockablock with Canadian achievements. Guess who invented the first publicly owned utility, the first credit union, the first social club, the variable pitch propeller, pabulum, standard time and the first rotary snowplow? Better believe it.
Along the way, Canada also developed its own political culture, the one you find so alluring just now. Politics is a hardball sport here, make no mistake, but the voter spectators aren't driven plumb nuts by the game. Part of the reason is the parliamentary system, where the parties and their platforms outweigh cults of personality.
Part of the reason, too, may be a different rural history. In America's hinterlands, the famous "paranoid style" of politics has been stoked into blazing fear and resentment. But not nearly so much across the Canadian prairies, which historically have given rise to great, empowering cooperative movements. Universal healthcare up here started in Saskatchewan's wheat basket. It's the philosophical cousin to the Wheat Pool co-op and the chicken growers' cartel that makes me pay 10 bucks for a scrawny fryer -- but it keeps the lights on in Moose Jaw.
Whatever the reasons, "the central difference" between Canada and the United States, writes political philosopher Joseph Heath, "is that the majority of Canadians have no ideological opposition to government."
Heath's book "The Efficient Society" is his attempt to explain why, year after year, the U.N. Human Development Index ranks Canada among the tiptop nations on earth to live, well ahead of America in most respects. "We do not love the state, but neither do we fear it. Thus we get all the benefits of a loosely regulated economy while also enjoying the massive improvements in social welfare that can be organized and delivered only by government. This has proven to be a winning formula."
Boring, I know. Except Canada keeps cranking out social experiments way too daring for Americans. Same-sex marriage? Legal in six provinces. Guns? Gotta be licensed and registered. Kyoto? Check. Executing prisoners? No way. School funding? Tying that to local property taxes would be illogical, so poor neighborhoods get the same school funding as rich ones, or more. Cannabis? Canada was the first nation to allow marijuana as medicine, and our Senate says pot should be legal. Heroin? Um, I go by a government-funded safe-injection site on the way to work every day in downtown Vancouver. Soon a trial experiment prescribing the stuff to hardcore addicts will be underway.
Still bored? What if I told you the crack smokers are jealous? They want their own safe smoking rooms and have organized a protest.
