To aid in understanding my piece entitled “The US Presidential Election: Two Questions From Canada”, I’ve prepared the following sketch of some of the the differences between our two countries.
1. Economics/size/trade
2. Geography and early exploration
3. History – a short version
4. Political structure
5. Rights and freedoms
6. Party system
7. Elections
8. Judiciary
9. Culture/values
10. Demographics/immigration
11. Media
12. Health care
13. Education
14. Incomes/taxes
15. Crime and guns
16. Defence/military
17. Energy
18. Religion
19. International affairs/multilateral institutions
Wrap up
1. Economics/size/trade.
Canada: the size differences are huge. Canada’s current population is nearly 37 million (we’re less than 10% of the US population).
Canada’s GDP is similar to the state of Texas, at around US$1.8 trillion.
Land masses of the two counties are similar: 9,985,000 sq km for Canada and 9,834,000 for the US. Coast lines: 202,000 km for Canada (the Canadian Arctic with its huge islands contributes to this); 19,900 km for the US.
The US is Canada’s biggest customer. Trading operates under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) signed late 2018 and in force last July. Canada’s provinces are in large part overwhelmingly dependent on keeping the borders open with the US. Forty-nine per cent of Ontario’s gross domestic product depends on trade with the United States (for Quebec it is 23% and Alberta 31%).
Trade matters much more for Canada than the United States. In only two American states out of 50 – Michigan and Vermont – does trade with Canada exceed 10 per cent of their annual economic output. Governors of US border states and American chief executives who conduct significant business with Canada are our main allies south of the border.
Agricultural land is 6.8%; arable (suitable for crops) land 4.7%; forest 34.1%. Irrigated land 8.700 sq kms. Canada has more fresh water than any other country (9% of Canadian territory is water). It has at least 2 million and possible over 3 million lakes (more than all other countries combined).
Canada went metric (that is the International System of Units or SI) in 1976 (speed limits, distances, weight, etc.); conversion started in 1970 and is still not complete. Gasoline pumps were converted from Imperial gallons to litres in 1979. (Canada’s Imperial gallon is 4.55 litres – about 20% or one-fifth greater in volume than the US gallon; the US version is 3.79 litres.)
America:
The US population is 336 million, the world’s third largest.
The total US economy was the largest in the world at US$20.4 trillion. (Data from the International Monetary Fund).
Canada is the second largest trade partner with the US (after China). The goods and services trade between the two totalled $729 billion in 2018. US exports to Canada were $364 billion, while imports were $355, resulting in a trade surplus with Canada of $9 billion.
Agricultural land is 44.5% (more than 6 times Canada); arable land 16.8%; forest 33.3%. Irrigated land 264,000 sq kms.
The US remains non-metric or “customary”. An attempt to convert was made in 1975, but conversion was voluntary, so no one did it. It remains one of three countries in the world to not adopt the metric system for weights and measures.
Key take aways: Size matters. Canada has little economic impact on the US (and the world). Trade matters more for Canada. Canada can only leverage through association and collaboration with other countries/states. Much of Canada is not suitable for crop development.
2. Geography and early exploration.
Canada:
Canada and the US are landlocked along a very long sea to sea border plus the lump of Alaska perched on our north-western flank. The Canada/US border is the longest international border in the world between two countries at 8,891 kms (of which 2,475 is the border of Alaska with BC and the Yukon). It is also demilitarized, but custom-controlled. In response to COVID-19, commercial traffic could cross the border but it was closed to “non-essential” travel (as of March 21/20; it reopened Sept 8, 2021 as long as people have been vaccinated).
Stretching north from the Mackenzie River delta, southern Hudson Bay and up to Labrador and the islands of the Arctic Archipelago is a vast area of inhospitable tundra terrain dominated by permafrost, characterized by short summers, long winters and low annual precipitation (a “polar desert”). While early hunter-gatherers crossed the Bering land bridge roughly 14,000 years ago, it remains thinly populated, containing today in Canada around 100,000 people.
Canada has a vast network of fresh water lakes and rivers upon which the canoe was the ideal vessel for traveling in the early years of European explorers. These waterways are closely connected through generally short portages with minimal elevation difficulties, and navigable (at least by canoe) through natural drainage patterns. There is a fortuitous collection of great arterial rivers. On top of that there are three key lakes which serve as hubs – Lakes Superior, Winnipeg, and Athabaska, all low altitude. In addition there are two main gateways – the St. Lawrence River and Hudson Bay.
The prime resource starting in the 16th century (and through to the price collapse in the mid-18th century) was furs, usually beaver pelts. The voyageurs pushed farther north and west, developing a transport system spanning 6 – 7,000 kilometres to bring in trade goods, obtain the furs then bring them out to Montreal or York Factory. The Hudson’s Bay Co had a trade monopoly in Rupert’s Land from 1670 until it was abolished in 1870, when it ceded an area of nearly four million square kilometres (Rupert’s Land, now the Northwest Territories)!
Canada’s first transcontinental train arrived in Vancouver in 1886, strengthening the connection of BC and the NWT to Canada which they had recently joined (and serving as a bulwark against potential incursions by the US).
One element of national identity has resulted from Canada’s northernness, its cold climate and its rugged landscape – and even its seasons. As political scientist Peter Russell in his book Canada’s Odyssey said, “Surviving and prospering in this forbidden northern clime could be a strong source of pride…There could be an element of racial Darwinism in this celebration of making out in the north”.
Canada’s north presents many opportunities, including east/west travel through the Northwest Passage (and as the climate warms, this will become more navigable), oil and gas plus mineral sources, and increased farming.
Not surprisingly there are some environmental connections between the two countries. The US-Canada Migratory Bird Treaty is now the longest-running commitment to conservation between two countries anywhere in the world. Every year, billions of birds fly south – more than 70% of Canada’s breeding bird species leave Canada in the winter. Essentially Canada’s is the US’s nursery and the US is Canada’s haven. Each needs the other. Some concern exists in that in the late days of Trump’s presidency a rule change was about to be made to exclude “incidental” bird mortality caused by industrial practices.
There is another consequence of geography that is political, and it has to do with internal trade relations between Canadian provinces. Most provinces trade more with international markets than they do with each other. (Canada’s exports are the fourth most concentrated by destination out of 113 countries, principally due to a large share of exports going to the US.) This is at least in part because our trade infrastructure now favours north-south connections more than east-west ones. It takes a minimum of 70 days to move an oversized load from the southern Ontario manufacturing hub to Alberta vs moving the same load from South Korea to Alberta via a US port city (30 days).
Being joined at the hip, Canada feels everything the US does. President John Kennedy understood the dynamics. In a 1961 speech before the Canadian Parliament he said that we share a continent where “geography has made us neighbors, history has made us friends, economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies”.
America:
The US enjoys some real geographic advantages: protected on two sides by wide oceans, and on the other two sides by land borders with two nations with which it enjoys peaceful relations.
Its location is entirely within the temperate zones, which are the world’s healthiest environment, as well as the most productive for agriculture. As a result, the US is the world’s biggest agriculture exporter. It has large stocks of fossil fuels and of most essential minerals.
The Oregon Trail (see: 3. History) was initially laid by fur traders and trappers in the early eighteen hundreds, then cleared increasingly westward to take wagon trains, all the way to Oregon. During the 1840s to the 1860s the Trail and its offshoots was used by 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers, and business owners and their families. The Oregon Trail, and the California Trail which brought settlers from Missouri to what is now the state of California, were conduits for a great mass migration westward.
In 1869 two railways (the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific) connected in Utah, resulting in the first transcontinental railroad across the US, opening up rapid growth in the American heartland for settlement, allowing commerce to thrive, away from navigable watercourses for the first time. Interestingly, the US has the world’s largest network of navigable internal waterways, permitting bulk transport by ship, the cheapest form of freight.
Some practical issues of geography emerge from time to time: the Great Lakes water challenges, other water challenges, softwood lumber, Arctic sovereignty, etc., but continue to be resolved by politics and the courts.
Key take aways: Canada is separated by three oceans from all other countries in the world except the US. This physical distance from other countries makes diversifying trade challenging. The US has significant advantages from their geographic positioning. Canada needs east-west infrastructure planning (think China’s One Belt One Road initiative). Defence (likely shared) of the north will increase in importance.
3. History – a short version.
Canada:
The original inhabitants of the country, the Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples, were a few hundred thousand in what was Canada in the 17th century. Generally they led a nomadic life surviving on fish and game; farming did occur within the Eastern Woodlands peoples, particularly along the shores of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. They were often at war. As traders and settlers descended on this new (for them) country, Canada was opened up geographically through the canoe, which was a native design (as pointed out in 2. Geography).
Europeans came with other things that brought significant cultural and physical changes: written languages (and eventually lopsided treaties), guns which replaced the primitive weapons, missionaries to convert the “savages”, and most significantly, diseases. It has been estimated that the latter resulted in a 90% decline in the aboriginal population.
After a century of preliminary exploration of the St. Lawrence regions and the Atlantic seaboard, France established a firm colonial base in 1608 at Quebec. One year earlier England planted her first permanent continental colony at Jamestown, in the Colony of Virginia on the bank of the James (Powhatan) River.
In 1763, following the British victory at the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City, France surrendered much of its North American territory to Great Britain (Treaty of Paris). This created the basis for the modern country of Canada. France formally ceded New France to the British, and largely withdrew from the continent. Britain guaranteed French Canadians limited freedom of worship; it also secured Dominica, Tobago, St. Vincent and Grenada, returned Martinique and Guadeloupe, plus received Florida from Spain (in compensation, Spain received part of France’s vast Louisiana territory.) France retained fishing rights in Newfoundland and acquired the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
French Canadian nationality was maintained as one of the “two founding nations” and legally through the Quebec Act of 1774 (sort of French Canada’s magna carta), which abandoned assimilationist and anti-Catholic sentiments and ensured the maintenance of the Canadian French language, Catholic religion, and French civil law within Canada; this remains true today.
When news of the Paris Treaty reached the western Indian nations and they learned that France purported to hand over the Indian nations’ lands to Britain, they took up arms against Britain and its American colonies (the Pontiac uprising). That war ended only when, at Niagara in 1764, representatives of 24 nations native to North America accepted British peace terms – to respect the Indian nations’ ownership of their lands and to restrict European settlement to lands acquired by the Crown through treaties with their native owners. As political scientist Peter Russell said, “The Niagara treaty can be regarded as Canada’s first Confederation, for it set out the terms on which Britain and many Indian nations agreed to share the country and have peaceful relations.” Today these rights and freedoms are enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Then in 1791 came the Constitution Act, a compromise that divided the Province of Quebec into two parts, Upper Canada, where most Loyalists had settled and which used English common law, and Lower Canada, where the French Canadians lived, retaining the privileges from 1774. A bill of rights (the first version) was entrenched into the Constitution (see 4. Political structure).
After the American Revolution ended in 1783, migration of Loyalists from the US, along with a stream of immigrants from Britain, very quickly made the English-speaking people the dominant European population of the entire Canadian territory, so in a sense the American Revolution made “English Canada.”
Both the Americans and Canadians declared victory in the War of 1812. It fuelled patriotism in both countries. Canada (Upper and Lower) emerged with an increased sense of patriotism and united to maintain its freedom. The Canadian militia, formed mostly by farmers – not professional soldiers (nor much support from the British, but important and critical support from its Indian allies – the alliance of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes axis) performed well. The Treaty of Ghent in 1815 terminated the war, leaving Canada still a British possession.
On July 1,1867 an act to create the Dominion of Canada, called the British North America Act, was proclaimed by the British Parliament and it served as Canada’s “constitution” until 1982, when it was renamed the Constitution Act, 1867, when the British Parliament’s authority was transferred to the independent Canadian Parliament.
The three British colonies (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada – which was at the time comprised of Canada East or Quebec and Canada West or Ontario) were united as “one Dominion under the name of Canada” and provisions were made that the other colonies and territories of British North America might be admitted.
Added later were, Manitoba (1870); Northwest Territories from the vast expanse controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Co (1870); British Colombia (1871); Prince Edward Island (1873); Yukon from the western part of NWT (1898); Saskatchewan and Alberta (1905); Newfoundland and Labrador (1949); Nunavut from the eastern part of NWT (1993).
Canada had a very different history of relations with Indigenous peoples, who were crucial allies in wars with America. But, as Peter Russell said, “For the Indigenous peoples in Canadian territory, Confederation was simply a continuation of the colonialist subjugation they had been experiencing since the War of 1812”.
Law and order defined how the Canadian west expanded. In 1873 Parliament established a central police force, the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), which enforced the law. (The name subsequently was changed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, and which today has jurisdiction in 8 provinces and three territories.) They operated mostly in Saskatchewan and Alberta and then later on into B.C. (Manitoba was already a province) though central control was always in Ottawa. The NWMP were a significant feature in all of the communities as they grew. The Mounties were sent west partly to prevent the US from taking over Canada’s West, as she had done with Texas and the rest of the south west with wars with Mexico.
Canada had its own gold rush in the Yukon (1896-99), which helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska.
Canada was formed in part to protect itself from an American invasion (“American expansionism” as it was being referred to), as well as economic strangulation. The Fathers of Confederation were faced with the task of bringing together small, sparsely populated communities scattered over immense distances. Not only were these communities separated by natural barriers that might well have seemed insurmountable, but they were also divided by deep divergences of economic interest, language, religion, law and education. Communications were poor and mainly with the world outside British North America.
Casting forward to World War II, in 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany, the Canadian cabinet and parliament made the decision, and to what extent – and this was not the result of an attack on Canada’s own soil. (This was different than the outset of the First World War in 1914, when Britain declared war, Canada, as a Dominion of the British Empire, was automatically at war as well.)
Canadian forces were involved in the 1950–1953 Korean War to help South Korea repulse the North’s incursion. 26,000 Canadians participated on the side of the United Nations, and Canada sent eight destroyers.Canadian aircraft provided transport, supply and logistics. 516 Canadians died. After the war, Canadian troops remained for three years as military observers.
Regarding Canada’s involvement in the Vietnam War (1964-74), the country was heavily involved — for and against. Canada harboured roughly 30,000 American draft dodgers. But at the same time, about 30,000 Canadians volunteered to fight in Southeast Asia. (Despite a law that made it illegal, many Canadians chose to sign up to fight.) Canada was also involved in secret missions, weapons testing, arms production, and the supervision of ceasefires.
America:
Early years: started with the arrival of Native Americans in North America around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many disappeared in the 1500s. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas. Most colonies were formed after 1600. By the 1760s, the 13 British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. This North American colonial life experience began to mark Americans as different from their European forefathers.
Early settlement of the US by Europeans proceeded much more quickly and on a much larger scale than in Canada, somewhat due to the more temperate climate. Many arrived in the early 1600s, from England plus the Spanish and French built settlements in Florida, the Gulf Coast and along the Mississippi River. Most were farmers.
From 1775 to 1783, American Patriots in the 13 colonies fought a bloody War of Independence (the Revolutionary War or the American Revolution) to be free from the yoke of a British king. The colonies were upset by the British crown extracting what were considered unfair taxes; as well they objected to their lack of representation in the British parliament, demanding the same rights as other British citizens. While the war progressed, a growing majority of colonists favoured independence from Britain. On July 4, 1776 the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence.
In 1783, the Treaty of Paris formally ended the Revolutionary War.
The Northwest Ordinance (or the Ordinance of 1787) is considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress. It dictated that popuIar, i.e. local sovereignty develop the West. It established the precedent by which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states rather than with the expansion of existing states. The Ordinance of 1787 established the concept of fee simple ownership by which ownership was in perpetuity, with unlimited power to sell or give it away. That was called the “first guarantee of freedom of contract in the United States”.
Regarding the War of 1812, the United States had been itching for a war with Great Britain since the revolution. There were a number of grievances, e.g. the British Navy had been searching vessels anywhere to find British sailors who were escaping British service. The US emerged from the war with a sense of power and increased national spirit, having taken on the British might.
The 19th-century movement of settlers into the American West, began with the Louisiana Purchase (where the US, in a great deal, bought the vast territory of Louisiana from France in 1803) and was fuelled by the California gold rush (1848-55), the Oregon Trail and a belief in the (controversial) concept of manifest destiny. Relationships with the original inhabitants were more confrontational than that of Canada’s. President Andrew Jackson, through the 1830 Indian Removal Act, transported 250,000 native people westward to open up more land to make way for the importation of slaves. While Americans sprinted across the Great Plains to get to Oregon and California, the Indigenous groups were forced to relocate to what was called the Great American Desert because it was thought that the land was useless. The huge irony was that it was only later that Americans realized that the land was good for buffalo and would be ideal cattle country.
The US was more the “wild west” than Canada, often lawless. Vigilante law, guns and lynchings featured more than law enforcement and courts. There was no equivalent NWMP. West of the Mississippi, elections chose judges and some law enforcement. Today, sheriffs are usually elected across the US.
Slavery and the Civil War: the practice of slavery in the United States was one of the key political issues of the US 19th century. Slavery had been a controversial issue during the framing of the Constitution. It was the primary cause of the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. The war was fought between northern states loyal to the Union (called the North or the federal government of Lincoln) and southern sates that had seceded to form the Confederate Sates of America (called the South or the Confederacy). The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history with between 620,000 and 750,000 killed. Once over, the Confederacy collapsed and slavery was abolished and four million blacks were freed.
In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation (or Proclamation 95). This changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free.
During the period called “reconstruction” (1865–77) that followed the Civil War, attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war. Long portrayed by many historians as a time when vindictive Radical Republicans fastened Black supremacy upon the defeated Confederacy, Reconstruction has since the late 20th century been viewed more sympathetically as a laudable experiment in interracial democracy. Reconstruction witnessed far-reaching changes in America’s political life. At the national level, new laws and constitutional amendments permanently altered the federal system and the definition of American citizenship. In the South, a politically mobilized Black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican Party to power, and with it a redefinition of the responsibilities of government. (Source: Britannica.)
Regarding World War II, the US joined the war in late 1941, two years after it started, and only after the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour – an attack on their own soil.
Regarding the Korean War, the United Nations, with the US as the principal participant, joined the war on the side of the South Koreans; the People’s Republic of China and Russia came to North Korea’s aid. After more than a million combat casualties had been suffered on both sides (and the American death toll being 40,000), the fighting ended in 1953 with Korea still divided into two hostile states.
Regarding the Vietnam War, competing interpretations remain unresolved today. This was a controversial war that profoundly shapes public memory of its meaning and is of ongoing significance to American national identity and foreign policy. Similar to the Korean War, the Communists in Vietnam were supported and guided by the Soviet Union and China. Therefore, the war in South Vietnam, as went the rhetoric, was not considered an isolated, local conflict, irrelevant to American national security, but rather one that was inseparable from the nation’s highest priority — the Cold War struggle to contain Communism around the globe. Policymakers further warned that if South Vietnam fell to Communism, neighbouring countries would inevitably fall in turn. The war as it was actually conducted by the US and its allies was a disaster by every measure. The US dropped eight million tons of bombs on South and North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in a war that cost three million lives, half of them civilians. The harshest assessment has been that the war was not a Cold War struggle between East and West but was really a civil war greatly exacerbated by foreign intervention.
Key take aways: Canada’s origins emanated from peaceful separation from Great Britain vs the more violent separation experienced by Americans resulting in greater antipathy to government in general. Strong American national pride and honour became important cultural traits. There is a stronger history of abiding by laws and a police system in Canada vs the more open, “law in your own hands” culture of the early American experience. As Canada’s west opened up, control was very much centralized in Ottawa, as opposed to the locals deciding in the US west. America has had a more confrontational relationship with its native population. Canada (English speaking) was in a sense created by the American Revolution. The US has had an inclination in its past to assert its military power and engage in conflicts to defeat “terror” and bring peace and self-determination to other lands, probably exacerbating international violence. Canada has seen itself more as a “peace keeper” internationally.
The Right Honourable Bev McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada ended her speech to the Centre for the Study of Canada in 2004 with the following insights: “The… difference in Canadian history which has affected our notion of individual rights is our position as a middle power, poised just to the north of the most powerful nation on earth. As the smaller and weaker of the two countries which occupy the North American continent, we tend to define ourselves not only positively but negatively in terms of what we are not. We are comfortable with ambiguity. We are less inclined to see issues in terms of irreconcilable positions, more inclined to question and accommodate. We are deeply internationalist. At the same time, our situation has induced zealous concern that we protect our own distinctive culture and way of being. Canada, the small boy on the block, suffers the small boy’s apprehension. Not the apprehension of being knocked off the block; our countries have a long history of peaceful coexistence. Rather, the fear of economic and cultural absorption, of being swamped by the larger, louder American forces to the south. All this has affected our conception of rights. Our spiritual situation somewhere between the United States to the south and the European tradition across the Atlantic is reflected in our Charter, a melange of European and American notions.”
4. Political structure.
Canada:
Both countries are democracies and both are federal states. Canada is a constitutional monarchy within a commonwealth led by a prime minister. A monarch (currently Queen Elizabeth) is the Head of State of Canada and is represented by the Governor General, and the prime minister is the head of government. In practice, the executive powers are directed by the Cabinet, a committee of ministers responsible to the elected House of Commons and chosen and headed by the prime minister (PM).
The Canadian system of responsible government rests on the principle that the crown doesn’t get involved in politics. The people, and the people’s elected representatives, decide how the country will be run. The viceregal deference to the supremacy of Parliament respects the primacy of democracy over monarchy. The essential role of a governor-general is to officiate rare but potentially dangerous disputes over who has the democratic legitimacy to govern.
Canada chose federalism to manage its vast, divergent area. Canada’s constitution, and particularly the way it has been interpreted by the courts, spells out the division of responsibilities. The central government focuses on issues of national importance and local matters can be dealt with locally in the provinces. The truth is that Confederation is a constant pas de deux between the two.
In Canada’s parliamentary system, government rises out of a majority in the House of Commons (where it can lose the confidence of the Commons and fall) so a government’s legitimacy is always contingent and can be booted by the legislature. Parliamentary-cabinet government is based on a concentration of powers. The PM and his ministers must be a member of one house or the other (the House of Commons or the Senate). A feature of Canada’s parliamentary system is that it gives majority governments almost unchecked legislative power. An important difference with the US is that the PM has both legislative and executive power due to support from one (or more) party in the legislature.
Once assuming a majority in an election, there is a fixed election date four years hence in which to govern and effect changes. (Minority governments are more fragile regarding their time in power.) At the mid-point of a governments term, in reality most actions tend to become highly political and geared to the next election. Unlike the US, the PM can continue as head of state as long as he gets reelected; there is no term limit. A newly elected PM also takes over the reigns of government quite quickly after winning an election (usually in less than two weeks), as opposed to the 72 to 78 days in the US.
Canada’s electoral system is referred to as a “single-member plurality” system (also commonly called a “first-past-the-post” system). In every electoral district, the candidate with the highest number of votes wins a seat in the House of Commons and represents that electoral district as its member of Parliament. An absolute majority (more than 50 percent of the votes in the electoral district) is not required for a candidate to be elected.
There is no direct equivalent of the US vice president. The position of deputy prime minister was created first back in 1977 under Pierre Trudeau and it is not always filled. It is currently occupied by Chrystia Freeland, while she also serves as minister of finance. The deputy PM does not automatically assume the PM position if the incumbent dies or resigns. None have gone on to become prime minister.
Then there is the Senate. The Senate is modelled after the British House of Lords and consists of 105 members appointed by the governor general on the advice of the PM. Seats are assigned on a regional basis: four regions—defined as Ontario, Quebec, the Maritime provinces and the Western provinces—each receives 24 seats, with the last nine seats allocated to the remaining portions of the country: six to Newfoundland and Labrador and one each to the three northern territories. Senators serve until they reach the mandatory retirement age of 75, and with a publicly funded minimum annual salary of $164,500 plus a tax-free housing allowance and a generous pension.
As a matter of practice and custom, the Commons is the dominant chamber (even though the Senate is called the “upper chamber”). The PM and cabinet are responsible solely to the House of Commons. Parliament is composed of the two houses together with the monarch (represented by the governor general). The majority of government bills originate in the House of Commons.
The Senate plays a critical part in Canada’s democracy. Its members review bills and propose amendments, hold consultations into pressing matters and produce useful reports. They can even introduce some types of legislation that go on to the House of Commons for passage. They can provide what is often referred to as “a chamber of sober second thought.”
Canada had nothing like the presidential pardon. The concept of clemency began as a power of the king in medieval England. It lives on in Canada through record suspensions, formerly known as pardons, available to offenders who complete prescribed periods of lawful behaviour after finishing their sentences. A criminal conviction review is also avaiiable through the justice minister’s office to those who claim a miscarriage of justice. There is also a royally prerogative of mercy exercised by the governor-general on the advice of cabinet. There is no almost flamboyance around Canada’s pardon program; it’s hands-off for politicians.
Regarding the civil service, they are focussed on the interests of the country, not necessarily to the government of the day. They remain in place, performing their duties regardless of election results and party affiliation. (Not so in the US, as I will point out.) They make the transition from one government to another (if the electorate so decides) as smooth as possible.
America:
The US constitution deliberately spread out power between the three arms of government – executive, legislature and judiciary, and ensured each arm was able to limit the power of the others. Election of a president was placed in the hands of an Electoral College as opposed to directly (as takes place in Canada). The terms of the office of the president and the two chambers of the legislature (Congress) were all set at different lengths.
So that political power should not be excessively in the hands of the larger states, the House of Representatives is constructed on the basis of population and the Senate composed of an equal number of representatives regardless of population. This tends to give disproportionate influence to the smaller states, and where the population is more rural and conservative. It seems that this is not as in balance today with the presidency and the Supreme Court assuming more and more power. (There are some who think the president making judicial appointments gives him special powers.)
The US system is very unique in that it was created almost from the bottom-up, i.e. a certain amount of power was released to the national government after the quite autonomous states (the 13 original ones) assumed their power and almost reluctantly ceded power to the federal government. (At the heart of the Civil War was who had the right to determine whether slavery was or was not permissible.)
The 1789 Constitution attempted to provide a sophisticated balance of powers between the federal and state governments. Today, the powers of the federal government remain strictly limited (see the 10th Amendment of 1791), which leaves a great deal of authority to the individual states. As Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA and author, has said, “This federal system allows 50 states to constitute 50 experiments for testing different government policies”.
The US presidential system is different from that of Canada’s regarding a current government’s legitimacy. The president heads the executive (or administrative branch – the branch responsible for administrating or executing the decisions made by Congress) but is entirely separate from the legislative branch (Congress). Further, presidents must battle the power held by Congress, which as mentioned is split into two bodies, the Senate and the House of Representatives, that are often at odds with each other and in which party discipline is sometimes weak. In a sense there is no single head of power.
The US president has certain legislative powers (the ability to veto Congress; issue executive orders and pardons; withhold information from congress). The office of the president (and by extension those who occupy it) receives esteem and ingratiation similar to the Canadian monarchs (and their representatives) and he/she becomes an unifying figure in the same way a monarchy is, and someone who embodies the nation as a whole. Ex-presidents are an elite club and are granted deferential treatment. The 1958 Former President’s Act provides a robust support system/pension, office staff, Secret Service protection for life.
An important difference between the two countries is that the president is prevented from being elected to the office more than twice (the 22nd amendment). Given this limitation, voters know a second term will be the last one. There is no term limit in Canada. Another difference is that the US elects through the Electoral College a “president-elect”. Though planning for transition can start at any time before a presidential election, the transition formally starts when the outcome of the election become known, and continues until inauguration day (from 72 to 78 days), when the president-elect takes the oath of office, at which point the powers, immunities, responsibilities etc. of the presidency are legally transferred to the new president.
Another difference is the position of a vice president, who is indirectly elected together with the president to a four-year term of office through the Electoral College. Canada, as mentioned, has no direct equivalent. The Constitution does not expressly assign the vice presidency to any one branch (executive, legislative, both or neither). The duties of the vice president, outside of those enumerated in the Constitution (i.e. he/she is president of the Senate, although rarely actually presides over the Senate), are at the discretion of the current president. Each vice president approaches the role differently – some take on a specific policy portfolio, others serve simply as a top adviser to the president. Interestingly, of the 47 vice presidents (previous to Pence), nine have succeeded to the presidency, and four have been elected to the presidency in their own right.
Regarding presidential pardons: the founders of the Constitution intended clemency as a check on the federal judiciary. The two acceptable reasons for granting a pardon were to show mercy to an individual who is unfairly punished or to serve the public good. The crime must be committed, it must be a federal offence, and the pardon can’t be used to stop or undo an impeachment. There has been a growing politicization of clemency. Both Bushes and Clinton have used the power inappropriately to help their executive branch officials and excuse financial contributors. Under Trump this has increased: he has given clemency more frequently to prominent Republicans, his supporters, and people with connections to himself. There is even some evidence that a lucrative market for pardons exists, with some of Trump’s allies collecting fees from wealthy felons to push the White House for clemency.
History shows that a president has about two years to enact a handful of major laws. After that, Congress tends to be unwilling to take risks during election season.
Regarding the civil service, a change in the administration in Washington dictates a wholesale change in the upper ranks. This often leads to massive upheaval at the top levels of authority.
Key take aways: while both countries have democratic systems, the American version was formed out of fear of an overpowering government and nervousness over dictator-type versions. This can result in great tension existing between the three levels of power and the need for collaboration and trade-offs in public policy development. Canada allows more power to reside with one party, with fewer checkpoints. This possibly results in more efficient governance, but can lead to a four year “dictatorship”. PMs can stay around, as long as they continue to get elected; presidents have a two term/eight year maximum.
A PM can get turfed out on a non-confidence vote, but a president is like a monarch for four years (unless impeached, which is very difficult requiring a two-thirds vote). In both countries there is an unwritten two-year rule of performance effect: get it done quickly then fight for re-election. The Senate is vulnerable to the criticism that they are not elected, have cushy pay and pensions, and have little oversight on their attendance and performance. The Canadian Senate is vulnerable to the criticism that they are not elected, have cushy pay and pensions, and have little oversight on their attendance and performance.
5. Rights and freedoms
Canada:
As referred to (in 3. History), entrenched in the Constitution of Canada (1982) is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (simply the “Charter”) – probably the most significant development in Canada’s civic culture since Confederation. This is a bill of rights providing Canadians fundamental freedoms and rights (democratic, mobility, equality, language ). The fundamental freedoms are freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief, expression, the press (and of other media of communication), peaceful assembly and association. It is sort of a bond of citizenship.
Generally democratic rights include protection of the right to participate in political activities and the right to a democratic form of government. Mobility rights protect Canadian citizens entering, remaining, and leaving Canada. Legal rights deal with the justice system and law enforcement, e.g. the right to life, liberty, and security of person; freedom from unreasonable search; presumption of innocence, etc. Equality rights mean equal treatment before the law. Language rights provide the right to use either English or French in communications with the government plus the right of English and French in minority communities to have ones children educated in their own language. There are other important rights, including Charter rights being granted equally to men and women; preserving separate schools; Charter to be interpreted in a multicultural context; the Charter does not derogate (i.e. devalue) existing Aboriginal rights and freedoms, etc.
Canadians and Americans have different perceptions of the relationship of the individual to the state. The Canadian Charter contains an explicit recognition that rights are subject to reasonable limits flowing from public or collective interests. Also the Canadian constitution grants rights that are intended to recognize minority communities and enhance their vitality. In both respects, the Canadian Constitution is a product of Canada’s history. (Also, many rights and freedoms in Canada are subject to a legislative override, found in the notwithstanding clause of Section 33 of the Charter.)
As an example, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of expression, subject to such reasonable limits as are “demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society”. In other words, we have free speech, but the state can limit it in reasonable ways. This may be contrasted with the absolute language of the First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights, which states: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” The words of the Canadian guarantee acknowledge the state’s right to limit free speech; the words of the American guarantee forbid the state from doing so.
The US Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. The preamble of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1867 states: “It shall be lawful for the Queen…to make laws for the Peace, Order, and Good Government of Canada.” Says lots about our different approaches. A local Peterborough activist, Rosemary Ganley, had a good way to put it in one of her newspaper columns, “The first is confident, and startlingly self-centred. It glorifies the individual and his tribe before all”. The Canadian peace, order and good government is “modest and communal and underlies our halting but real attempts to put flesh on the idea of the common good: Equality, universal services, a fair tax system, inclusion of all and, more recently, making amends with Indigenous people.”
America:
The Bill of Rights is the name for the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, which limit the power of the federal government and guarantee citizens certain rights. The amendments were written in 1789 by Jame Madison, and were based on important ideas about personal rights. The Bill of Rights went into effect in 1791, when 3/4 of the states agreed that they were fair.
They cover such areas as: first amendment (the government can’t make any religion an official religion nor stop anyone from practicing a religion; freedom of speech and the press; freedom to peaceably assemble); second amendment (people have right to own firearms); right through to the 10th amendment (which states that if the Constitution doesn’t specifically say that a federal government has the power to do something then the power goes to the state government).
Key take aways: these bills or charters virtually guarantee the same individual rights, except the US “right to bear arms”. The core distinction between the US Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter is the existence of the limitations and notwithstanding clauses. Free speech is more narrowly conceived in Canada than in the US. Canada is more tolerant of state limitation on free expression than the US. In the US the ethic of the individual is foremost; in Canada there is more concern for the general public welfare and members of disadvantaged groups.
6. Party system.
Canada:
Federally, Canada has three major parties and some small ones. The reality is that two of those parties have shared power at the federal level for 150 years; the Liberals and Conservatives have rarely been threatened by radical alternatives. Even the third “major” party, the New Democrats (which can be defined as “socialist” philosophically), were long ago absorbed into the system, with Liberals usually stealing their best ideas. While the NDP has never gained national power, in minority situations, it has forced the other two parties to compromise. The Green Party and the Quebec nationalist Bloc Québécois have grown in prominence, exerting their own political influence. Federal politicians tend to be less doctrinaire as they have to deal with both French and English, and now Indigenous Canada, usually leading to moderation and compromise.
Canadian conservatism, like Canada, was founded not in opposition to the existence of government, but rather on its necessity. Their cornerstones are things such as freedom of speech and freedom of thought and religion. The roots of Canadian conservatism come from a different place than the US. As the Globe & Mail stated in an editorial, “Our Tories were the people who didn’t make a revolution, and who didn’t think shooting your neighbours over a minor tax dispute was the definition of ‘freedom.’ Our original conservatives knew that, while order without freedom is tyranny, freedom with out order is chaos.”
Few Canadians actually join a political party (the number is estimated to be 1 in 600). If you want to become, say a liberal in Canada, you have to join the Liberal Party.
The civil service is mostly made up of career bureaucrats, non-partisan professionals who serve whatever party is in power. Some political (“exempt” ) staff work directly for cabinet ministers, and are not members of the civil service. Deputy Ministers running departments are civil servants as opposed to a US undersecretary (and several layers below) who are partisan appointees.
America:
US has two political parties. There is no socialist party. Despite what the Republicans say, the Democratic Party is pro-capital and pro-business and both speak largely to the middle class. Democrats have generally been in the centre-left and currently support social justice, a mixed economy, and the welfare state. Bill Clinton shifted the party towards free trade and neoliberalism (a confusing term that usually means privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector, etc.) which shifted the party to the right.
The Republican Party has generally been the more market-oriented of the two, often favouring policies that aid American business interests. They’re big on defence, free trade, respect for American traditions and Christian values, limited government, opposition to trade unions, pro-individualism, advocacy of American exceptionalism and defence of Western culture from the perceived threats posed by communism, socialism, diversity, and moral relativism.
The conservative ideology occasionally gets reset. Since Reagan (left in 1999), the ideology had held that the only way to make small government better was to make it smaller and the only good tax was a lowered tax. Since 9/11 the party has doubled down on a path that has led to the growth of Fox News, the creation of the Tea Party, and, ultimately, the emergence of Donald Trump. In particular, their rejection of a healthcare plan such as Obamacare was counter to what most Americans wanted. A good example of the angst the Republicans are going through is the conservative pundit and writer David Frum, who from his current position as senior editor at The Atlantic, continues to goad the conservative movement to adopt a less ideological and more centrist space. He also has contempt for Trump, tweeting in 2018 he was “the worst human being ever to enter the presidency, and I include all the slaveholders.”
In 2009 the Tea party movement commenced. It is a fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party. It calls for lower taxes, and a reduction in the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. It opposes government-sponsored universal healthcare. It has been described as a mixture of libertarian, right-wing populist, and conservative activism. It has had a major impact on the internal politics of the party and (through the Tea Party Caucus) it votes like a farther right third party in Congress. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group, founded by businessman and and activist David Koch, has been a major force behind the movement.
The Democratic Party moved comparatively further to the left under Barack Obama’s presidency (2008-16) which included the passage of Obamacare. Former vice president, Joe Biden, had to contend with the party’s left wing in his efforts to become the party presidential candidate in 2020, in particular Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Senate Democrats, who has presented a more left (democratic socialist) leaning side of the party (along with such individuals as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts, etc.).
The two party system has resulted in an entrenchment that causes a huge number of Americans to think “my party right or wrong” and to rationalize wrong behaviour. Today, the parties are quite at odds with each other. As just noted, even within each party, challenges are growing between a radical wing and a more moderate one. There certainly appears to be a more doctrinaire approach to party membership and attitudes. Issues that might be considered matters of personal conscience in Canada (abortion, same-sex marriage, capital punishment) tend to follow party line in the US and become quite divisive. This is a quite polarized, almost tribal outcome; the demands of the political “base” of each party become more important than achievement of a national consensus.
As of May 2020, Gallup polling found that 31% of Americans identified as Democrats, 25% identified as Republican, and 40% as Independent. Additionally, polling showed that 50% are either “Democrats or Democratic leaners” and 38% are either “Republicans or Republican leaners” when Independents are asked “do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?” The literature on what determines a voter to follow a particular party, or be an independent, is complicated and ranges from following what were ones parents allegiances, to membership in social groups, to age/life-cycle factors, to many other influences.
In the US you can register as say a Democrat or Republican with the state government. In the general election, you are eligible to vote for any candidate from any party. It doesn’t matter if you’re registered for a political party.
The US bureaucracy is composed, to a much greater extent than Canada’s, of political appointees. The entire senior management at highly technical government departments like Agriculture and Energy serve at the pleasure of the president. Every administration names up to 6,000 senior bureaucrats, very few with partisan tasks.
Key take aways: Canadians are less doctrinaire about party politics than Americans. Having a third or fourth party provides alternatives for voters that probably eases dogmatic party politics. There is comfortable acceptance of government role in the daily life of a Canadian and not as much cynicism regarding the function of a politician. More people formally choose a political party in the US. The US Republican Party, through its shift to Trump politics, has the potential of self-harm (destruction?).
7. Elections.
Canada:
In Canada, elections are run by independent and professional election agencies – federally and provincially. Pan-Canadian rules exist for national elections. Canada has a broad and inclusive approach to voting.
In 2006, the Canada Elections Act was amended to require that each federal general election must take place on the third Monday in October in the fourth calendar year after the previous poll. Most provinces and territories have introduced similar legislation. These laws, nevertheless, do not curtail the power to dissolve a legislature prior to the fixed date on the advice of the relevant first minister or due to a motion of no confidence.
Re selection of riding boundaries (and the infamous problem of gerrymandering): since 1964, federal riding boundaries have been drawn up by independent electoral commissions (not self-serving politicians). Each province has a commission, led by a judge appointed by the provinces’s chief justice. Redistribution happens once a decade, after the census. There are public hearings and MPs can lodge objections, but the drawing of boundaries is out of their hands.
Another important change took place in 2013 when 30 new seats were added to the House of Commons. That moved Canada closer to “rep by pop” not only within provinces but among them, with the previously underrepresented provinces of Ontario, BC and Alberta receiving additional seats. Disparities still remain, in part rooted in the Constitution, which effectively guarantees some overrepresentation of small provinces in the Commons.
Party financing laws ensure that elections can’t be hijacked by moneyed interests.
Canada’s federal election finance laws put limits on contributions to political parties and candidates. Only individuals – not corporations or trade unions – may donate. In 2020, contributions are limited up to $1625 a year to each political party.
America:
National elections are run by a crazy-quilt of state administrations (usually aggregating information collected at the county level) with widely varying rules and standards. They are over-seen by partisans of whatever party happens to to be in power at the state level.
Regarding gerrymandering, it still exists – it’s been a bipartisan sport. It reached new heights after 2010 when Republicans won a spree of state elections using modern data and software. One study of subsequent elections concluded that an average of 59 seats in the House of Representatives were won thanks to the crooked boundaries drawn by gerrymandering. There are some prospects of change. In 2018 in Michigan, voters backed a new independent commission to oversee redistribution.
The influence of money in the American electoral system is enormous. Effectively a candidate can spend any amount he can raise and thus buy any kind of media necessary. (The Political Action Committees, or super PACs, provide enormous financial influence.) As a result, there is a formidable financial barrier for another party to enter. The system has been described as a plutocracy, since it is effectively controlled by private finance from big businesses and donors who expect some return on their largesse.
Key take aways: with significant contribution limits, the influence of money in Canadian politics is a great deal less than south of the border. In Canada, there are more checks and balances in voting district choices and process, as well.
8. Judiciary.
Canada:
Remember first that politicians pass the laws. Members of the public can challenge those laws as infringing on rights or beyond the scope of the elected lawmaker. The courts then review the dispute and make a determination. If the lawmaker is unhappy with the result, they go back to the drawing board and redraft – and so on. Judges don’t write laws; they interpret them. Elected officials don’t trump judges, and judges don’t trump elected officials.
Canada’s Supreme Court appointment process is significantly less partisan, less political than the US. Only the Cabinet, a standing committee in the larger council, advises the governor general on judge selection and this advice is usually expressed exclusively through consultation with the prime minister. Thus the provinces and parliament have no formal role in such appointments (sometimes a point of contention).
The culture of the Canadian Supreme Court is profoundly different than that of the US. Some questioning by MPs takes place but is far more gentle than what Judges Kavanaugh and Barrett have recently experienced in the US. You can’t tell how an individual judge will vote based on which party put them on the court.
In Canada, courts can only direct legislatures to fix flaws in a law, so judges in effect serve in an advisory capacity. Canada allows legislatures to overrule judicial decisions under some conditions
The concept of “originalism” that has gained ground in the US, i.e. the idea behind it being that judges can, by research, determine the “original intent,” of a constitutional provision, and then apply that and only that to present-day cases, does not have strong adherents in Canada. Canada’s “living tree” doctrine, which allows interpretation of the Constitution to evolve with the times, has been ingrained in the country for some time. (The dynamic of this issue ranges between determining what gives a judge the special wisdom to evolve the Constitution over time, all the way to asking how judges can divine the original meaning of a document written over 200 years ago.)
America:
In America, courts have grown very powerful. The Supreme Court in particular. David Kaplan, author of The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court in the Age of Trump wrote, now that Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated to the Supreme Court, the court “will turn decisively to the right, and policy on abortion, health care, climate change, immigration, affirmative action and gun regulation will continue to be determined by judicial fiat. Most important, the court may achieve the central, but frequently overlooked, conservative goal of the modern era ‘deconstructing the administrative state.’ That means denying federal bureaucrats the vast regulatory authority they exercise over financial markets, the workplace, the internet and the environment.” Kaplan suggests that Congress has been delighted to have the justices settle contentious issues, lest legislators have to do the dirty work themselves. He states that the US has the most powerful court in the history of the world.
The US Supreme Court’s power is hardly spelled out in the Constitution. In a 1803 case the power of “judicial rule” was established, which claimed without justification unto the court the ability to declare duly enacted laws unconstitutional. So ever after, the justices have had the last word on the Constitution.
Presidents view as a political prize, the act of appointing people who will make the “correct” rulings – based not on the ideal of neutral legal principles, but on partisan policy preferences. Trump tweets were of “his” court, as if its members were beholden to him. Decisions by 5-to-4 votes have become the rule and unanimous votes are the rare exception.
Because judges are often elected, massive campaigns are run to prevent having that happens or prevent their re-election. The Brennan Centre for Justice, in a review of judicial elections in state courts, concluded that millions of dollars are spent on negative ads that characterized candidates as issued lenient sentences.
In no other democracies do judges on a top court serve for life. (In Canada mandatory retirement age is 75.)
The idea of “originalism” is gaining ground in conservative legal discourse. The motive behind it is to fashion an argument that could oppose and eventually reverse Warren and Burger Court precedents that expanded sexual freedoms and limited the power of majorities to enforce morals and hierarchies.
Key take aways: one could argue that there is a legitimacy problem when US judicial appointments become partisan. There can be a lack of trust in the high court decisions when people see it as an extension of politics. The US high court is making decisions more properly left to elected representatives. However, let’s not forget some obvious, and important, things – that both countries believe in the rule of law and that both countries have a jury system for criminal and sometimes civil trials.
9. Culture/values.
Canada:
Canada was created out of an allegiance to the authority Americans rebelled against. Probably as a result, Canadians have a collective willingness to set aside some individual liberties for the common good.
At the same time Canadians will change direction if and when they are convinced of the necessity to do so. The current pandemic is an excellent example: generally Canada is adapting to radical change in a short period of time. Other examples of this inclination include: creation of universal health care in the 1960s; repatriation of the Constitution; renegotiation of a free trade agreement with the US in the late 1980s; the legalization of same-sex marriage, of cannabis and of assisted death.
The United States arose out of a revolution against colonial authority. Canada, by contrast, arose by evolution. Canada never revolted against its European colonial past, never defied the mother country. As a result the Canadian attitude toward authority and the state is fundamentally different than the American attitude toward authority and the state. Indeed, the different political circumstances of creation of our respective nations are reflected in the tone of our constitutions. The American Constitution begins with the words “We the People…”. The people are virtually absent from the Canadian Constitution, which opens with a formal “Whereas the provinces have expressed the desire to be federally united into one Dominion”.
To put it another way, the US emerged from its colonial period abruptly and bloodily, with a determination to protect the individual citizen against the tyranny of the state. The individual and the state were – and to some extent, continue to be seen – as potential adversaries whose interests may come into conflict. By contrast, Canada emerged from its colonial period later and more peacefully and gradually. State officials were never cast as possible adversaries of the individual. The relationship between individual and state is more symbiotic. The state is regarded as having the responsibility to create the conditions for individual fulfilment to a greater degree than in the US. Hence, the Canadian universal medical scheme, widely seen as a pillar of Canadian Confederation. Canadians are more willing than Americans to trust the state, and more willing to blame the state if poverty abounds or medical needs are not met.
Regarding family benefits, Canada has mandated leave and benefits. The government supports this through provincial employment insurance. The program includes both mothers and fathers. The US is less progressive, offering some support under the Family and Medical Leave Act. It allows for 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
Canada has a universal public pension plan.
The incarceration rate of Canada is 114 per 100,000 population vs that of the US at 655 per 100,000 population. Canada has a government run prison system.
America:
Wade Davis (in an August 6 Rolling Stone article entitled The Unraveling of America) takes a critical crack at describing the American culture: “The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very ideas of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care. What every prosperous and successful democracy deems to be fundamental rights – universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly, and informed – America dismisses as socialist indulgences, as if so many signs of weakness.”
The US has a significant inequality problem. It is more extreme than in any other major democracy. Fewer and fewer Americans are cornering more and more of the wealth. That is accompanied by low socio-economic mobility. Americans born poor are likely to remain poor. As Jared Diamond says, “the US is a country of 332 million inhabitants that operate as if only 50 million of them matter”.
The base pay at the top of corporations is commonly 400 times that of their salaried staff, with many earning orders of magnitude more in stock options and perks (vs in the 1950s where salaries of CEOs were, on average, just 20 times that of mid-management.) The elite 1% of Americans control $30 trillion of assets, while the bottom half have more debt than assets. A fifth of American households have zero or negative net worth; this rises to 37% for black families. The median wealth of black households is a tenth that of whites.
The prison population is greater than six times that of other rich nations. Privatized prisons have flourished in the States; there is some evidence they contribute to the high incarceration rates. In a recent investigative report, the New Orleans Times-Picayune asserted that the profit motive in Louisiana’s prison system was behind its harsh criminal sentences, and contributed to the state apparently having the highest incarceration rate of any jurisdiction in the developed world.
The US remains the only Western democracy that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest.
Key take aways: there is room for significant unrest in America that proclaims equality, but doesn’t always deliver on the promise. The dominance of the individual, masks the benefits of the collective. Flag-wrapped patriotism should be considered no substitute for compassion. There is an incarceration mentality in the US, possible driven by a lock ‘em up mentality and possibly the privately run prison system.
10. Demographics/immigration.
Canada:
Canada differs significantly from the US in its cultural make-up. It has Quebec, a province of French speaking people totalling 8.6 million people (23% of Canada). There are two official languages for the country, with French spoken by nearly 30%, mostly in Quebec.
Canada’s aboriginal population totals 1.7 million (of which 60% are First Nations people, 36% Metis and 4% Inuit). The French and English, in conjunction with aboriginals and immigrant communities that came thereafter, found strength not in unity, but in harmonious coexistence.
Canada sees immigration as important to its economic success. At least one-fifth of Canada’s population is foreign born (vs one in eight in the US). The Canadian demographic makeup will continue to evolve dramatically. Canada currently maintains the highest rate of immigration in the developed world, largely now from Asian countries. Visible minority groups, which have higher birth rates and younger populations, are expected to grow at roughly eight times the rate of the rest of the Canadian population over the next two decades. By 2031 one in three Canadians will belong to a visible minority and one in four will be foreign-born. About 96% of visible minorities will live in cities.
During the period from Confederation to WWII Canada’s population grew fourfold, from three million to nearly twelve million. Much of the English-speaking growth came from the British Isles. Beginning in the late 1950s, Canada gradually opened its doors to immigration from all parts of the world, a change that has made the Canada of today one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world.
Under the Harper Conservative government (2006-15), Canada regularly accepted around a quarter of a million immigrants a year. The current Trudeau Liberal government (since 2015) has been steadily boosting that level, to more than 300,000 a year, the most since the 1920s. COVID-19 has changed that this year. For decades, Canada has been considerably more comfortable with immigration – the welcome of new citizens – than the US. Once the COVID-19 crisis passes, that reality will remain.
Both countries have a system for importing an underclass of low-wage, temporary, non-citizen workers. And employers’ reliance on that exploded over the past decade. In some areas, such as certain types of labour-intensive agriculture, the use of temporary workers has become so ingrained as to have become necessary. Presently Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program allows in around 84,000.
Nearly 80% of Canada’s population live less than 150 kms from the border. with the northern territories virtually uninhabited. The population is concentrated in urban areas (rural being home to fewer than one in five). Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal make up a third of the total population.
America:
In 1980 almost 90% of the US electorate was white; today over 30% of the voters are non-white and that’s growing. This is specially true of Spanish-speaking people, who number 41 million. White voters make up a majority of the US electorate, although their share of the population is shrinking over time. As of 2019, non-Hispanic white Americans made up 69% of registered voters, down from 85% in 1996, while Black and Hispanic voters each make up around 11% of registered voters. (Pew Research Centre)
The US has the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world after Mexico. They come from a variety of counties: Mexicans first came as refugees from the Mexican Revolution (1910-20); refugees from Spain fled the Spanish Civil War (1936-39); Puerto Ricans number 5 million on the US mainland where they can vote (the 3.1 million on the island can’t vote in US elections); Cuban exiles arrived who opposed the 1959 Communist revolution under Castro; migration during the Contras War (1981-90) which rejected the socialist government in Nicaragua; Salvadorans fled the civil War of the 1980s; Venezuelans arrived after rejecting their regime.
Trump has been shutting down immigration, while leaving the door open for temporary non-immigrants. His travel bans on certain counties, crackdowns on temporary visa issued to citizens of others, and efforts to make it harder for highly skilled workers to get visas have had a trickle-up-to-Canada effect. Regardless of Biden vs Trump the political dynamic in the US will have a strong anti-immigrant component that doesn’t exist at the same level in Canada.
A quarter of the US population resides in only three states, California, Texas and NY.
Key take aways: The US is likened to a melting-pot; Canada to a mosaic. Immigration is part of Canada’s economic, and as a result, its social and cultural character. Canada is the world’s leading immigration model. America seems to be turning its back on the historic role immigration has played. Latino refugees have a history of fleeing political tensions, often with socialist regimes (and possibly being very anti-socialism as a result). Canada, as a more welcoming nation than the US, has, to its advantage, garnered contributing newcomers to its shores.
11. Media.
Canada:
Canada has the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), a state owned radio and TV source (introduced in 1935 and 1952 respectively) competing with the private networks. Research has indicated that countries with strong and well-funded public broadcasters have higher levels of social trust and social cohesion; as well they have people who are less likely to hold and express extremist political views.
Since the 1970s, Canadian radio and television stations have been required by law to air a minimum percentage of Canadian content.
Canadian conservative commentators are in no way comparable to those in the US.
America:
As Wade Davis says, “The republic that defined the free flow of information as the life blood of democracy, today ranks 45th among nations when it comes to press freedom.”
There is a fiercely ideological, well-financed and media-savvy US right-wing.
The US news media in the 2016 election probably underestimated Trump, and did not understand the Trump voter. There is some validity to the observation that there was a “liberal media bubble” in the US. On the other hand there is reason to believe that the American media are totally enthralled with Trump’s bizarre behaviour. They certainly gave (and give) him massive, free platforms following this one-man circus around the country. He also has one outlet as a full supporter: unabashedly, Fox News continue their biased reporting, without shame.
Cable news (Fox and CNN both guilty) has sought to make stars out of journalists, but journalism isn’t meant to be celebrity entertainment. It’s the work that’s meant to be important, not the author. The Limbaughs, Gingrichs, Hannitys, Ingrahams, Becks, O’Reillys and Carlsons are all providing celebrity entertainment. They have become active participants, not impartial observers.
Then social media picks it all up and makes everything worse; the loudest and most extreme gets the most attention. As study after study has shown, social media encourages people to indulge their emotions, not to apply logic or reason. These channels encourage us to huddle amongst like-minded people and then helps us radicalize.
The use of social media has exploded as an influence on the populace, particularly the young. Trump has chosen to make extensive use of social media as sort of a “bully pulpit”, bypassing traditional media. His personal Twitter account, which he uses several times a day, has over 32 million followers. Add to that his POTUS Twitter account (over 18 million followers), Facebook pages (over 22 million likes), plus You Tube and Instagram subscribers.
Key take aways: Canadians receive a media diet that has more balance and is less politicized than American. As a result, perhaps, there is less cynicism towards government and public policy. Trump has undermined the belief in, and respect for, journalism in general. Social media, as pathways to polarization and misinformation, has the same dominating influence in both countries, as it knows no political boundary.
12. Health care.
Canada:
Canada has universal health care. Simply put, anywhere ones goes in Canada, if they get sick or have an accident, hospital care is free. (This is also true, with some restrictions, on medical problems when travelling in foreign countries.) Hospitals cater to the medical needs of the collective, not the individual. Canadians have their choice in selecting a family physician; this is not state dictated, contrary to what some believe.
Almost one-third of all spending on health care in Canada is private, and the part that is publicly funded is mostly privately delivered. Doctors, for starters, are for the most part small business operators. There are also private clinics in most provinces that offer services on contract to the public system. For non-essential services like cosmetic surgery, not covered by medicare, doctors can charge patients directly. Private insurance companies are permitted to cover a wide range of services not covered by medicare (drugs, dental care, private hospital rooms, etc.)
Canadians pay 40% less than the US for prescription drugs.
Canadians live on average three years longer and live healthier on a number of measures. While it is likely to do with many factors that are part of the so-called social determinants of health, the universal health care system probably has an important role.
Regarding the current pandemic, the Canadian system has performed well, especially including the health care system. On a per capita basis, Canada has suffered half the morbidity and mortality (US mortality rates per population are 2 1/2 times that of Canada, as of this writing).
Canada has some major cracks, though, particularly regarding primary health care. Those with access to a family doctor are declining, particularly in smaller communities. There remains a constant struggle between the provinces (where most health care responsibility lies) and the feds, from which large money transfers come.
America:
The American system is a mixture of public and private insurance. Via Medicare, the government provides insurance coverage for around 53 million elderly. Through Medicaid around 62 million lower-income persons are supported. Veterans receive coverage via the Veteran’s Administration. Nearly 180 million employed by companies receive subsidized health insurance through their employer. Around 52 million other people directly purchase insurance either via the subsidized marketplace exchanges developed as part of the Affordable Care Act or directly from insurers. The private sector delivers healthcare services (with the exception of the Veteran’s Administration). The number of uninsured fell from 42 million in 2013 to 28 million in 2016 (13.3&% to 8.8%) primarily due to the Affordable Care Act.
The US will probably tinker with their system, particularly under a Democratic administration (moving physicians away from the wasteful fee-for-service model toward value-based systems; regulating drug prices, adapting Obamacare, etc.).
US health care costs are considerably higher than other countries as a share of GDP, among other measures. The costs, at 16.9% of GDP, are five percentage points higher than the next highest country. Canada costs are around 10% of GDP.
Surprisingly, US quality of health care is low by OECD measures. The Commonwealth Fund ranked the US last in the quality of health care among similar countries. Some indicators can be illustrative; for example the US has a higher female obesity rate than Canada (33% vs 19% in Canada).
US drug prices are the highest in the world.
COVID-19 has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. The percentage of American victims of the disease who died has been six times the global average. As Wade Davis says, “At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying every day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic cost to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.” This was written in August 2020; the situation continues to decline.
Key take aways: Canadian health care is more democratic and less costly than that of Americas. It is unlikely the US will move to universal coverage. Canadian inclination to choosing the collective good has resulted in better COVID-19 outcomes.
13. Education.
Canada:
Education is a provincial matter, so the federal government takes a hands-off approach. There is no national governing body for education. This results in slight differences in the education between provinces. Both Canada and the US have state paid education through to the post secondary (college/university) level. This universal schooling ensures differences in language, gender, race, mental or physical disability don’t restrain an individual from receiving an eduction.
Canada scores well on international literacy, math and science tests. On the recent Programme for International Assessment (PISA) tests administered by the OECD, Canada ranked 4th overall globally among OECD countries; the US were ranked 31st.
Private school enrolment in Canada for K to 12 is 6.8% vs 10% in the US.
Canada banned corporal punishment since 2004. It is actually legal in 19 states.
Average university costs are ~$6,500 per year for an undergraduate course and ~$7,100 for a graduate course. International undergraduate degrees run on average C$29,700.
In 2016, 24.4% of Canadians aged 25 to 64 had a college diploma, 3.1% had a university certificate below bachelor’s degree and 28.5% had a bachelor’s degree or higher, adding up to 54.0% of Canadians aged 25 to 64 with either college or university qualifications..
America:
US has the Federal Department of Education (currently led by billionaire Education Secretary Betsy deVos, who is an outspoken supporter of school choice, school voucher programs, and charter schools). Being monitored by a single authority, there are no differences between the education systems in each of the states. The feds have developed the Common Core, a set of standards outlining knowledge and skills that American students should have at each grade level. (Perhaps a good idea for Canada!)
Charter schools – I.e. publicly-funded schools that operate independently from the public school system and are comparatively loosely regulated – are big in the US, with almost 7,000 in operation. (In Canada only Alberta has a small, 13-school charter movement.)
US college costs are high with average annual tuition at a public college estimated at $8,200. For a private college, this increases to $21,200. Most American colleges require the submission of SAT scores along with GPA. (Canada has no standardized test requirements for applying to post-secondary institutions.)
The US leads the world in science, technology and institutions of higher education. In recent decades, far more Americans have won Nobel prizes than have the citizens of any other country.
About a quarter of American adults, 26 percent, have a high school diploma. Another 21 percent have attained a bachelor’s degree, while 9.3 percent of adults over 25 have a master’s degree. Almost 2 percent of Americans have a doctoral degree. Disparities in educational attainment still exist along racial lines. More than 37 percent of non-Hispanic white Americans have a college degree, while just 23 percent of African-Americans have reached the same level of formal education. Only 16.4 percent of Hispanic Americans have a college degree. (The numbers have gone up over the past 20 years: African-American college graduation has doubled since 1991; Hispanic college graduates has increased 60 percent.)
Since 2009 the US has had 57 times as many school shootings as all other major industrialized nations combined. (Canada had two over the same time period.)
Re colleges, according to surveys, public opinion has been declining, especially among Republicans and the white working class. The higher education industry has been criticized for being unnecessarily expensive, providing a difficult-to-measure service which is seen as vital but in which providers are paid for inputs instead of outputs, and which is beset with federal regulations that drive up costs.
There is an issue of literacy. Nearly one-third of the US population is illiterate or barely literate. Chris Hedges in his diatribe, Empire of Illusion – The End of Literacy argues that the US “culture is imploding, that the population is severing itself from a literate, print-based world – a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas – for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, and a celebration of violence.”
Key take aways: from K to 12, there is really not much difference in the systems, but the outcomes are different with Canada producing better results. US college system will be under extreme financial and performance pressures. US literacy weaknesses potentially spawn poor information or misinformation.
14. Incomes/taxes.
Canada:
The old belief Canadians are a higher-taxed people than Americans is no longer true. An OECD study, “Taxing Wages 2018,” found that the employee net average tax rate for a single person in Canada with no children was 22.8% in 2017, the 11th lowest among 35 OECD countries. The US clocked in at 26.1%. The difference is much more extreme when it comes to households with children, thanks to the Liberal party expanded child benefit.
According to KPMG the corporate tax rate in Canada was 26.5% compared to 27% in the US (January 2018 data).
The incomes of both countries are in macro terms closely aligned. The US Census Bureau reports the medium income for US families at $63,179. In Canada, the median income ranges from $45,220 to $89,610.
America:
The tax reform package passed by Congress in 2019 has made Canadian corporate tax rates no longer competitive, so some decisions have to be made regarding Canadian strategies.
Key take away: Canada has no choice but to remain in synch with US policy.
15. Crime and guns.
Canada:
There is little romance and necessity associated with carrying guns in Canada. As mentioned before, adequate policing has served the purpose of safety, plus there is no history of the necessity for militias.
There were 542 homicides reported by police in Canada for a rate of 1.8 per 100,000 population, compared to 15,517 homicides in the US, for a rate of 5.5 per 100,000. Canada’s firearm-related homicide rate is about seven times lower than that of the US.
Canadian law classifies firearms into three categories: prohibited, restricted, and non-restricted. Prohibited firearms include military-grade assault weapons such as AK-47s and sawn-off rifles or shotguns. Handguns are generally classified as restricted weapons, while rifles and shotguns are usually non-restricted.
Anyone wishing to buy a gun in Canada and/or ammunition must have a valid licence under the Firearms Act. To obtain a firearms licence, all applicants must undergo a screening process, which includes a safety course, criminal history and background checks, provision of personal references, and a mandatory waiting period.
America:
There is a militia spirit derived from an early dependence on arms to protect themselves from foreign armies and hostile Native Americans. Survival depended upon everyone being capable of using a weapon. Prior to the American Revolution there was no money or government desire to maintain a full-time army, thus the armed citizen-soldier carried the responsibility. So service in militia, including providing one’s own weapon, was mandatory for all men.
Closely related to this was the frontier tradition regarding the need for a means of self-protection closely associated with the nineteenth century western expansion and the American frontier. There was a cowboy archetype of individualist hero (largely established by Owen Wister and his book The Virginian).
This has all resulted in an obsession with guns. US citizens own 393 million guns; they own more guns than those held by civilians in the other top 25 countries combined. They own nearly 100 times as many firearms as the US military and nearly 400 times as many as law enforcement. Americans make up 4.4% of the global population but own 42% of the world’s guns. The practice of “open carry” (the right to carry an unconcealed loaded gun) is permissible in most states. The purchase of semi-automatic guns is legal in most states, as are automatic weapons made before 1986.
The Second Amendment is supported and revered. It is one of the ten amendments to the Constitution comprising the Bill of Rights; it states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The meaning of this sentence is not self-evident, and has given rise to much debate.
As a result the statistics are grim. The US is the most densely armed country in the world and as a result the most violent rich nation in the world, with a murder rate 4 or 5 times that of Europe. The US homicide rate is three times that of Canada.
Mass killings in the US are a disturbing feature of the society. While definitions confuse the data, the simple fact is that there are many. In the past decade alone 346 American students have been shot on school grounds. From 1966 to 2012, 31% of the gunmen in mass shootings worldwide were American.
Leading the charge is the National Rifle Association (NRA) which is among the most powerful special interest groups in the US, with a substantial lobbying budget.
This is somewhat disturbing in a society, as historian Margaret MacMillan says in the Oct 10 Globe & Mail, with “a populist leader who appeals to the fears of his followers and labels his opponents as law-breakers or traitors; a society dividing itself into mutually hostile camps; rhetoric escalating; and armed militias sauntering about, apparently with impunity.”
Key take aways: without more control over weapons in the US, death rates will continue at uncivilized rates, and possibly climb, including mass killings. Canadians remain generally in favour of strict gun laws, and are not inclined to adopt the loose US gun laws.
16. Defence/military.
Canada:
Canada has spent much of its history (after the British connection) protected by the US, whose military (and economic) might has offered a shield against international uncertainties.
The Second World War saw an enormous rise in Canada’s military. By the end of the war, Canada had the fourth-largest air force and fifth-largest navy in the world, as well as the largest volunteer army ever fielded. Today Canada’s forces cost C$20 billion annually and are ranked 74th in size compared to the world’s other armed forces by number of total personnel.
In 1953 Canada built the Mid-Canada Line across the north, which was manned by the Canadian military. In 1954 the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW), a series of radar stations across the Arctic, was established jointly by the US and Canada. It was to detect Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole. It was transitioned to a new system in 1985; most of the 63 bases have been deactivated; a few upgraded.
Canada has been entirely nuclear-free since 1984, when it returned the last batch of Genie nuclear-tipped missiles to the Americans. Ever since, Canada has pursued a policy of increasingly strict non-proliferation.
The Canadian military, since the end of the Cold War (where it was contributing to the security of Europe in the face of the Soviet military threat), has been involved with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in international security operations through the United Nations Peacekeeping operations, e.g. Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014. (An interesting aside: the idea of a collective security alliance of Western democracies, which culminated in NATO, was conceived by a Canadian diplomat, Escott Reid.)
Canada refused the invitation to join the US in their invasion of Iraq in 2003 (our intelligence services assessed that Iraq did not have an active weapons of mass destruction program). Besides it was not sanctioned by the United Nations. This angered George W. Bush and his generals.
America:
In 1940, the US had a smaller army than Portugal. Within four years, 18 million men and women would serve in uniform, with millions more working double shifts in mines and factories that made America, as President Roosevelt promised, the arsenal of democracy. Amazing things happened during that period; for example a single American factory, Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal, built more tanks than the whole of the Third Reich!
But the US never stood down in the wake of victory. To this day, American troops are deployed in 150 countries. Since the 1970s, China has not gone to war; the US has not spent a day at peace. President Carter recently noted that in its 242-year history, America has enjoyed only 16 years of peace, making it “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.”
Since 2001, the US has spent over $6 trillion on military operations and war (money that perhaps could have been invested in infrastructure at home). China, meanwhile built its nation, pouring more cement every three years than America did in the entire 20th century. (Source for previous two paragraphs: Wade Davis again.)
The US spent 3.4% of their GDP on their military (vs 3.9% for Russia). In total dollars, the top four countries spent: US 732 billion, China 261, India 71, Russia 65. Canada spent $22 billion.
Key take aways: Canada needs to continue to work collaboratively with the US, along with contributing selectively to its own defence, e.g. protection of its three major coast lines. It needs to remain a strong partner in NATO. The US appears too broadly committed around the world. There is a pro-military culture in the US that will likely remain.
17. Energy.
Canada: Canada has a highly sophisticated energy industry and is both an importer and exporter of crude oil and refined products. Canada’s reserves are third only to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Nearly all of Canada’s oil sands (95%) and much of its conventional oil reserves are in Alberta. The balance is concentrated in several other provinces and territories, e.g. Saskatchewan and offshore areas of Newfoundland.
Canada is the world’s fourth largest oil producer and exporter. Canada’s energy system is divided between an oil-and gas-rich west and a consumption-heavy east. Canada imports significant amounts of oil into its eastern provinces since its oil pipelines do not extend all the way across the country plus many of its oil refineries cannot handle the types of oil its oil fields produce. At the same time Alberta is selling its oil to the US at a huge discount, Eastern Canada is buying over 800,000 barrels/day from the USA, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Norway and Nigeria.
Canada produces more oil than it consumes and as a result, is a significant net exporter of crude oil. In 2019, Canada was the largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the US, accounting for 48% of total US crude oil imports and for 22% of US refinery crude intake. Canada exported 3.7 million barrels per day to the US in 2019, 98% of all Canadian crude oil exports.
Canada has an extensive network of 840,000 kms of pipelines (vs 4, 023,000 in the US) carrying crude oil and natural gas to domestic and US refineries. The current crude oil pipeline capacity exiting Western Canada is estimated at 3.9 million barrels per day.
Building pipelines in today’s climate of environmental protection is fraught with difficulties. Pipeline proposals that remain active or under construction include:
* the Trans Mountain Expansion Project initiated by Kinder Morgan and now owned by the federal government who have invested $4.5 billion (although their intention is to sell it). It will run 980 km parallel to the existing Trans Mountain oil pipeline and will carry diluted bitumen, or “dilbit”, from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C. It will increase the route’s overall capacity from 300,000 b/d to 890,000 b/d; now under construction
* TC Energy’s Keystone XL, a nearly 2,000 km crude oil pipeline from Alberta to Nebraska; the XL means “export limited”. It has begun, supported by Alberta government equity investment and a loan guarantee. Trump issued a permit approving the project in 2017 and after a court challenge, a new permit in 2019; in service expectation 2023 although Biden has indicated he will not support it
* Enbridge’s Line 3 Replacement Program, which is a project to rebuild and expand the aging nearly 1,700 km Line 3 that takes crude oil from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. The $7.5 billion project will make it safer and increase volume up to 760,000 b/d. (To emphasize pipeline building project difficulties, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project, taking oil sands crude from northern Alberta to Kitimat, a northern BC port, ran into enormous difficulties; in 2016 it was not approved.)
Electricity trade between the US and Canada benefits both countries. Overall, Canada is a net exporter of electricity to the US. Power that flows across the transmission lines between the two countries helps maintain the stability of the North American power grids and helps each country meet periods of peak demand.
America:
In 2019, the US consumed about 20.54 million barrels of petroleum per day. The US imported 9% of the petroleum it used, the lowest since 1957. The largest sources of U.S. imported oil were Canada (49%), Mexico (7%), Saudi Arabia (6%), Russia (6%), and Colombia (4%). The energy supply from Canada over the years has enhanced US energy security and provided Canada with a steady demand for its energy exports.
The US, because of recent growing tight oil and shale gas discoveries, are now energy sufficient.
Petroleum and natural gas are the two largest sources of energy in the US, together providing 63% of the energy consumed (oil 35%; gas 28%). The US has the world’s largest coal reserves with 27% of the world’s total.
Key take aways: both countries are fortunate to have more supply than consumption. Huge transportation requirements (usually pipelines) are needed to balance demand that varies geographically. The two countries are connected by a complex system of pipelines, transmission lines, railways and other systems that are mutually beneficial.
18. Religion.
Canada:
Canadian politics was, at one time, largely defined by divisions between French and English Canadians, or along religious divisions between Catholic/Protestant lines, with these divisions playing out across party politics – Catholics tended to vote Liberal and Protestants tended to vote Conservatives, with progressive Christians supporting the NDP. Currently, if you are a person of Christian faith in Canada, and in particular if abortion is a salient issue, you tend to vote Conservative. The nature of Canada’s first-past-the-post system means that political parties need to have a wide appeal, and generally cannot risk alienating large groups of voters with narrow positions.
Discussions around abortion are off the political table in Canada. Abortion is legal at all stages of pregnancy and funded in part by the Canada Health Act. Inducing an abortion was a crime until 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the abortion law as unconstitutional.
In Canada, 20% of the population acknowledges some regular church affiliation. In the US, it is over 80%. Canadian Evangelicals are much fewer and not quite as conservative as their southern brethren, and Canadian Catholics (numbering 40% of the population) don’t vote as a bloc.
America:
Freedom of religion is part of the US conservative and even greater American DNA. Religion is a factor in US politics unique to western democracies. Candidates openly declare their faith and certain religious groups exert political influence in a manner that would be regarded as improper in Canada and most European countries. (One example: the Christian Coalition of America; recently they strongly took a position on the appointment of Judge Barrett’s to the Supreme Court.)
Americans tend to wear their religious faith on their sleeves; not so in Canada, where it’s a private matter. Americans speak loudly about how their individual freedoms supersede the common good, reflecting how utilitarianism as anethical, a political idea never reverberated in American society. Canadians balance personal liberty with the larger public interest.
Protestant immigrants helped make America a Protestant superpower (and where the European Reformation was born again). Canada, on the other hand, was divided, a product of compromising Anglicanism, French Catholicism, and a Scots and Irish Presbyterianism more interested in confirming its own position than promoting any form of reformation.
One third of Trump supporters come from evangelicals, who want to, among many things, repeal abortion laws and LGBTQ rights.
(There are some preposterous ideas permeating a lot of minds in the US. One example: a Gallup Poll revealed that 53% of Americans are actually creationists, i.e. they think the creation myth in the Bible – that the entire cosmos was created 6,000 years ago – is actually true!)
Key take aways: Canada respects faith, but as one component of living a civil life, not a dominant one, as occurs in the US. Canada seems suited to deal with identity issues because our political institutions were formed through compromise, such as dealing with divisions of English and French.
19. International affairs/multilateral institutions.
Canada:
Canada is a member of a variety of multinational organizations, that are either concerned with its defence, providing aid to to developing countries or coordinating pan-country issues. For example:
* the United Nations (UN): Canada was a founding member of the UN in 1945. (A Canadian law professor, John Peters Humphrey, helped create, as the Director of the United Nations Human Rights Division, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.) According to the Canadian Government website a commitment to multilateralism is the cornerstone of Canada’s foreign policy. The UN “is Canada’s preeminent international forum for advancing issues that matter to Canadians and engaging with partners from around the world to meet global challenges.”
* the International Monetary Fund (IMF) formed in 1944 (at the Bretton Woods Conference – see later) to improve the economies of its 190 member countries (and foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty.)
* the World Bank: provides loans and grants to the governments of low and middle income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects.
* the World Health Organization (WHO): is an agency of the UN responsible for international public health; composed of representatives from all 194 member states. Some achievements: eradication of smallpox and nearly polio; development of an Ebola vaccine.
* North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): Canada was one of the founding members (in 1949). This was Canada’s first peacetime military alliance, placing the nation in a defensive security arrangement with the United States, Britain and the nations of western Europe. It now has 29 members. During the Cold War, NATO forces provided a frontline deterrence against the Soviet Union and its satellite states. It essentially won that “war”, without firing a shot. Recently NATO has been involved in the global campaign against Islamic terrorism. Members, other than Canada and the US, have the resources to handle their own defence needs. Also it’s unlikely NATO will help Canada with respect to its interests in the Arctic. It is probably time to reexamine its purpose and goals. Certainly the US is doing so, as noted in 16. Defence/Military.
* Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization that “works to build better policies for better lives.” Their goal is to “shape policies that foster prosperity, equality, opportunity and well-being for all.” Through OECD Canada contributes aid to the economic health and welfare of developing countries. In 2019, through Official Development Assistance (ODA), it has contributed .28% of global national income (GNI), below previous contributions and well below a target of .7% of GNI. The US contributed .19%.
* United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea: determines, regulates, and controls sovereignty and development in the Arctic. The Arctic may become a theatre of conflict as the ice melts, the shipping of oil and iron ore increases on the shorter Polar route between Europe and Asia, and hitherto unreachable resources become more open to exploration and exploitation.
* General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): formed in 1947; its purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariff or quotas. It morphed into…
* the World Trade Organization (WTO): made up of 123 nations in 1994, replacing the GATT. It is the largest international economic organization in the world. Studies show that the WTO has boosted trade,and that barriers to trade would be higher in the absence of the WTO. Canada is a strong proponent of the multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core. Creating opportunities for Canadian workers and businesses through WTO participation is a central part of Canada’s trade strategy.
America
After the Second World War, the US took a leadership role in world affairs. The world owes a great debt to the US as a result of the Marshall Plan. Rather than reducing Europe to an imperial dependency it restored her as a major trading partner. Further, as a result of the Breton Woods Conference in 1944 it was apparent to the US that the most effective way to protect national interests was through international co-operation.
That conference led to the establishment of important multilateral institutions just mentioned that created common rules, regardless of national power or politics, e.g. the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), GATT and now the World Trade Organization (WTO), and subsequently the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The US has been a leader in crafting this liberal economic order that balanced the need for international co-operation with demands for national autonomy. This enabled a sustained expansion in global trade, helped curb aggressive nationalist tendencies in parts of Europe and pushed back against Soviet expansionism. The removal of the US from many of these institutions over the Trump era has reduced free world collaboration particularly vis a vis states that espouse politically unfavourable ideologies.
Key take aways: if the US removed itself from these organizations, as has been proposed under the Trump administration, trade barriers would emerge. Rules would emerge that are both uncompetitive and anti-trade. It would weaken the underpinnings of democracy.
Wrap up.
It’s always amusing to reflect on an often-repeated quote of our former PM Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who said, “Living next to the United States is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
When I began constructing a word picture of the differences between our two countries, I had no preconceived idea regarding the conclusions or key take aways. But after stepping back from this analysis, Canada emerges in a very positive light – I might even venture the word “enlightened”, and hopefully that doesn’t appear too smug. I remain thankful that my father chose to emigrate to Toronto from England and my mother’s Irish father moved up from Staten Island, N.Y. in the 1930s (after emigrating from Belfast) and brought his linen business with him.
Note: this is an open analysis, that will grow with ideas that can be added as deemed useful to a better understanding of the Canadian/American distinctions and resulting lessons/take aways.