Will Canada really orient towards non-US countries more in the near future?

[Bcasey25raptor]

We are moving away from the US on trade and thats a GOOD thing, as for culture, well we probably will integrate further.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I think that English Canada differs from the US in some very profound and measurable ways. In terms of everyday impact, a laundry list would include: religiosity and church attendance, willingness to use public transit, general trust in government, attitude toward gun control, violent crime rates, etc.

I'll also throw in a couple of traits that I think the US does better, although a lot of it is not as easy to keep statistics on: Americans are more driven, intelligent Americans are more inquisitive and less likely to accept things at face value; Americans have a stronger sense of tribal pride (60% of the time this is a good thing); Americans are more philanthropic.

When you think about this, this is remarkable.

English Canada is physically and linguistically tethered to the most powerful culture on the globe and also tethered no one else (except Quebec); we are tied at the hip to a culture so big and powerful that people halfway across the world who don't speak English fear losing some of their indigenous culture to creeping Americanism.

Why don't we have the same gun ownership rates? Unlike them, a large part of our raison d'etre was to hunt for furs in the vast wilderness. Why do we have double, often triple, the public transit ridership rates that they have? Our cities are just as hopelessly built around the car as theirs are. Why do we have the church attendance of a Western European country? We should have been a magnet for immigrants of religious persecution as much as they were during the 19th century. The list goes on. These traits are so pervasive that they are common across all of Canada, irrespective of region, city size and social class. When it comes to church attendance or gun ownership rates or public transit ridership, southwestern Ontario has more in common with Quebec or Belgium than it does with Michigan.

Now I suppose the rebuttal would be that the US is the exception and not Canada, and that we are in line with Western Europe when it comes to a lot of these social metrics. And my response would be that it doesn't matter, because Western Europe is 6,000 km away, not 60, and that most of the fundamental differences that Canada has are postwar developments when Western Europe - even Britain - was out of the picture for many of us.

This is one of the better rebuttals that I've read on this topic.

I agree on a lot of your points, but you also open things up to more questions.

My response below is half-Acajack, and half-devil's advocate.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

I think that English Canada differs from the US in some very profound and measurable ways. In terms of everyday impact, a laundry list would include: religiosity and church attendance, willingness to use public transit, general trust in government, attitude toward gun control, violent crime rates, etc.

(...)

Why don't we have the same gun ownership rates? Unlike them, a large part of our raison d'etre was to hunt for furs in the vast wilderness. Why do we have double, often triple, the public transit ridership rates that they have? Our cities are just as hopelessly built around the car as theirs are. Why do we have the church attendance of a Western European country? We should have been a magnet for immigrants of religious persecution as much as they were during the 19th century. The list goes on. These traits are so pervasive that they are common across all of Canada, irrespective of region, city size and social class. When it comes to church attendance or gun ownership rates or public transit ridership, southwestern Ontario has more in common with Quebec or Belgium than it does with Michigan.

If you look at Canada's "performance" on a lot of these measures though, we're often better than the Americans but only middling or even below average when compared to Western Europe or OECD averages.

We talk a lot about how safe Canada is, but our violent crime rate is actually higher than most of the countries we like to compare ourselves to.

We do have a better social safety net than the Americans do but the trendline over the course of my adult life could be described as "whittling away" with the result that for example we have fairly high child poverty rates - lower than the U.S. of course but higher again than most of the countries we allegedly are more similar to.

We might not have a gun obsession but we're not as anti-gun as we like to think, and the abolition of the long gun registry by the Tories has not been reversed by the Liberals, and as far as I can see is still a political issue only here in Quebec (which to use your example, might be closer in mindset to Belgium than Michigan - I'll reserve judgement on SW Ontario for that one ).

Also, things are not static as you know and the U.S. happens to be a big place. Some states like Massachusetts have pretty comprehensive public health care at this point, and the country had made decent progress nation-wide on that with Obamacare, but then came Trump.

There is push and pull on both sides of the border on issues, and sometimes the U.S. even pushes itself more to the left, and sometimes Canada pushes itself more to the right. Obviously the two countries never end up quite in the same place because the "baselines" or starting points for the shift aren't the same.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Now I suppose the rebuttal would be that the US is the exception and not Canada, and that we are in line with Western Europe when it comes to a lot of these social metrics. And my response would be that it doesn't matter, because Western Europe is 6,000 km away, not 60, and that most of the fundamental differences that Canada has are postwar developments when Western Europe - even Britain - was out of the picture for many of us.

If we go with the assumption that this is mostly a post-war thing, while the period involved is about half of Canada's history since Confederation, it's still just a blip on the broader historical continuum.

I don't know if we can truly draw any conclusions about how durable this specific incarnation of the Canadian psyche and values will be.

Give the extremely high degree of "capital C" cultural cross-over that you yourself acknowledge, the idea that Canada's "small c" culture might dovetail even more with that of the U.S. is every bit as plausible as one that sees the areas of distinctiveness that you've astutely pointed out persist for quite some time.

In my observation, episodes of rapprochement between Canadian and American society/mindset/small-c culture are more common (though not exclusively limited to) periods when things are a bit more benign down south.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by Acajack

If you look at Canada's "performance" on a lot of these measures though, we're often better than the Americans but only middling or even below average when compared to Western Europe or OECD averages.

We talk a lot about how safe Canada is, but our violent crime rate is actually higher than most of the countries we like to compare ourselves to.

We do have a better social safety net than the Americans do but the trendline over the course of my adult life could be described as "whittling away" with the result that for example we have fairly high child poverty rates - lower than the U.S. of course but higher again than most of the countries we allegedly are more similar to.

We might not have a gun obsession but we're not as anti-gun as we like to think, and the abolition of the long gun registry by the Tories has not been reversed by the Liberals, and as far as I can see is still a political issue only here in Quebec (which to use your example, might be closer in mindset to Belgium than Michigan - I'll reserve judgement on SW Ontario for that one ).

Also, things are not static as you know and the U.S. happens to be a big place. Some states like Massachusetts have pretty comprehensive public health care at this point, and the country had made decent progress nation-wide on that with Obamacare, but then came Trump.

There is push and pull on both sides of the border on issues, and sometimes the U.S. even pushes itself more to the left, and sometimes Canada pushes itself more to the right. Obviously the two countries never end up quite in the same place because the "baselines" or starting points for the shift aren't the same.

I'd like to think Canada takes the best of both places.

Europe is no paradise - it has its own flaws and limitations, depending on the country. It might be more 'trendy' in certain views - especially from a distance - but getting closer up reveals its own set of problems. We're more attuned to the USA's problems simply due to their size, proximity and a shared language.

That's the rub though - nobody has ever stood apart by being in the middle of two points. Yet, we remain one of the happiest places on Earth. Funny how that works.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by wave46

I'd like to think Canada takes the best of both places.

Europe is no paradise - it has its own flaws and limitations, depending on the country. It might be more 'trendy' in certain views - especially from a distance - but getting closer up reveals its own set of problems. We're more attuned to the USA's problems simply due to their size, proximity and a shared language.

That's the rub though - nobody has ever stood apart by being in the middle of two points. Yet, we remain one of the happiest places on Earth. Funny how that works.

I largely agree. But to be the annoying devil's advocate yet again, some cynics will say that we might actually have the worst of both places.

We have lots of this, for example:



And not very much of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2i0Bc3f7jk

[Acajack]

We also have way more this:



Than this:



(this is supposed to be a HSR train in a fancy modern station)