MattFast

Ooi, what are the biggest differences between Canada and the USA?

Please, be serious

wakeech

well, the culture of the two countries is vastly different... in the States, they have politics which concentrate heavily on the right side of the democratic spectrum, whereas Canadians are much more European in flavour, with broad political and social intrests... for example, we Canadians have long treasured our (surprisingly efficient... i've seen the numbers compared to the States, it's amazing) Health Care system, where in the 'States talk of such a system is "very liberal" (which is an INSULT in the States, meaning you are TOO free, TOO big government)
actually, Canadians are far more European than Americans, especially the Quebecios... our culture is also far more ingrained with the primary industries which origionally brought wealth to the different regions...
for instance, out here in British Columbia on the west coast, lumber, and Pacific salmon fishing, and the Rocky Mountains are a part of "who we are"...
likewise, on the praries through the middle of the country, grain raising, and other sorts of farming, and the vast, open, flatness of those praries are a part of "who they are"...
on the east coast (this region is famous for its accents and local sayings, stories, and grammar) is heavily influenced in its identity still by fishing the Grand Banks, mining coal, and a general marine economy... the coast is rocky, violent, and cold, with huge swings in the tide over the day... this is a very big part of "who" atlantic canadians "are"...

this is only scratching the surface of Canadiana, but i just saw this HUGE EXPANSIVENESS OF THE FORUM!!! HOOORAY!!! NO LONGER WILL I SIT AND GROAN THAT THERE IS NO ONE TO REPLY TO AGAIN!!! HOOORAY!!!! :D

thank you, thank you god... oops, i mean BOOSTD7

Aesculapius

Hey guys!

I just have a slight issue with the comparison between US and Canadian health care. I have Canadian collegues and I can tell you that you are right.....Canadian health care is more efficient.....financially. I don't believe that it is more efficient as far as health care. Health care in the US is RAPIDLY available to everyone....albeit at the expense of cost.

The US has been afraid of anything that resembles Socialism since Stalin. And in our society, nothing could be "bigger government" than nationalized health care.

Back on topic

I also agree that Canadians are more European. I would say that a different way. Americans are much more up tight. Less political of me...but true.

Anyway, congrats on the forum!

wakeech

i don't wanna get into a debate about what system is better, care for cost, but i'll just say that almost nothing we Canadians have is as good as you Americans, albeit at a lower cost. roadways, railways, military, etc etc etc... just don't forget our population is about 1/10 of the US's (our 30 million to your nearly 300 million).

a few of the things, MattFast, that're better in Canada is the beer, the cost of housing, and the cost of cars. thank god for Molson, Labatt, and low demand!! :D

Quick_lude

You forgot hockey! We RULE! :D

zoom44

and you forgot moosehead!!

there is a similarity in how we travel. when you canadiens travel oversees you have a mapleleaf on your backpack, coat, hat etc. and now when we americans go we wear one to. nobody wants to shoot at you folk

Immi

you forgot igloos

edv

There's a lot more in common between us than there are differences. Canadians are smothered by US culture and have difficulty holding their own. (how many Canucks would recognise Wayne & Schuster over Ginger & MaryAnn?)
Despite our 'European' bent, remember that all of North America was founded and still suffers under a stifling puritanical religious fundamentalist blanket...even after 400 years.
Things that are commonplace in Europe can still be taboo here...erotica in advertising, lenient soft drug laws, goverment-controlled prostitution, and even having a glass of wine at dinner as a 3-year-old.
We're really nothing like Europe at all, unfortunately.

Buger

It's not that hard to tell the differences. Guess which ones are the Canadians in the picture. :D

73JPS

Well, excellent replies, all. To which I would like to add the following:

I just got back from Chicago visiting my best friend who is a Canadian working in the fine U.S. of A. He has been there for about three years. He is a fairly observant sort, and definitely on the right, or Republican, side of the political scale. His observation on the single biggest difference between Americans and Canadians:

GUNS, GUNS, and more GUNS.

It would be EXTREMELY rare for a Canadian to EXPECT that his neighbor owned a hand gun. In the United States, however, it would be extremely rare to expect that one's neighbor did NOT own a hand gun. The citizens of each country quite simply hold a vastly different view on the right to bear arms, or perhaps more accurately at this point in history, the NEED to personally own a hand gun.

Personally, I spend about 60 days a year in the States, and (with due respect to the fact that various States have differing laws on where and when a hand gun can be carried) it rarely occurs to me that some of the citizens I encounter might in fact be carrying a gun. In all liklihood, I would expect that the majority of the people I would encounter in the States probably own a hand gun. In Canada, I am pretty sure that ordinary citizens are not allowed to carry a hand gun on their person under any circumstances, and it is rare for a Canadian to own a hand gun.

Strangely, though, my buddy owned a registered .357 Magnum which he kept at his place in Toronto when we were going to school... yet he has no gun at his place in Chicago!

wakeech

it's true that we are more similar than different, and we ARE being smothered by their culture, but it's more of the shared experience of the white, anglo, North American that we get the most from them...
erotica is quickly spreading through all media, and is becoming increasingly racy for our youth (me), so i don't think it'll be all too long before it's the same here...

btw, i KNOW who Wayne&Schuster are, but Smith&Smith was way better... LONG LIVE RED GREEN!! and "The Daily Show" will never come close to touching "22 Minutes", or ever have a comic as genius as Tom Green or Jim Carrey (although they're pretty Americanized now... )

another thing that i contend is that Canada isn't half as puritanical as the US, with the exception of the Reformers (country folk, and tighty-whities), with wide support for things like safe injection sites becoming increasingly popular here in BC, legalization of marijuana (something the US would NEVER EVER do...) inching closer and closer... legal recognition of homosexual marriages, talk of getting rid of "God Keep Our Land" from our national anthem... the whole concept of being a mosiac rather than a "melting pot"... Canada is still quite different from the US

73JPS

Hey Buger...isn't South Park in Colorado? Like, is South Park close to Aurora?? Do you KNOW those guys??? Can you get me Cartman's autograph???? :D

Buger

Hi 73JPS,

It's a bit southwest of Denver and Aurora. I haven't been there yet but if you pay me some $, I'll send you Cartman's autograph. :D

Sputnik

Alot of that also depends on where in the States you're talking about. It's quite different between the San Francisco area and Utah, for example. But even with the "range" that there is in the States, it is still a relatively narrow range compared to the rest of the world. And I'm not referring to "extremes" either.

---jps

loungeliz

don't get me started...

-We have "poutin". There is nothing like gravy and cheese on deep fried pototoes to clog your arteries... But, hey it DOES taste good!

- Our cars are faster :D (it's colder here so we get a denser air/fuel mixture in the engine, kinda like a poor mans turbo...).

- We claim to be a bi-lingual nation, but are no more bilingual in English/French than the US is bi-lingual in English/Spanish

- US has a president, that has the ***** to make a stand (rightly or wrongly), . We have a Prime Minister that only can make a decision after a public opinion poll is taken.

- Loonie (ie Cdn$) will soon be referred to as the "Northern Peso", unless the US decides to waste trillions on another 10yr Vietnam style war and we stand on the sidelines in the name of peacekeeping and being impartial...

- Contrary to popular belief cars are more expensive for us... Prices appear cheap on US/Cdn conversion, but don't forget Canadians are generally poorer than their US counterparts (last time I checked I did not get paid in US$, so converting a cars price to US$ does not make sense to me, as a basis to argue we are getting a great price), plus we pay more tax on the purchase price (GST/PST/HST), and don't forget we pay more income tax so we have to earn more "before" tax dollars to buy that car...
PS. Merceces-Benz made me sign this piece of paper saying I would pay them 20% of the retail price of my car if I sold it in the US within 1yr. Which I thought was very strange, b/c I am leasing the car, thus do not own it, and thus cannot sell it. Personally I think it is just a scam to make me think I was getting a GREAT price...

- We are much more socialistic... (eg. healthcare, housing, education, unemployment benefits, maternity benefits, etc).

- We can't kick a deadbeat tenant out on the street during winter, which means most of the year...

- We pay much more tax and also have much more waste. How does a $1 Million gun registry cost $1 Billion? I still want to know.... but see next point...

- Canadians are... hmm... I'm hunting for the word... Shall I say more "passive" than Americans. Where are the protests in the street demanding accountability in the wasting of our hard earned money? What's the saying "a Billion here a billion there, pretty soon we're talking real money..."

-We no longer pull our weight to maintain freedom. Personally I'm embarassed... In the World Wars, Canada did a tremendous contribution, perhaps bigger than the US on a per capita basis. eg. We stormed 1 beach in Normandy, an equivalent per capita contribution for the US would have been 10. Now, we can only send snipers because we can no longer afford to send something significant like fighter planes (in fact we're trying to unload fighter planes to newly minted Nato countries...), but a rifle and scope is within our military budget...

-Disney World is nicer than Wonderland...

-and lastly before people think I am un-Canadian (but then again having an inferiority complex would be very Canadian...), Canada is consistently ranked by the UN as a better place to live and raise a family than the US....

Quick_lude

Don't even get ME started.. I love Canada but this apathy towards Jean Cretin's Liberal Government is driving me nuts.. What the hell will they have to do before people wake up?!

wakeech

i don't wanna get into a shouting match, but our (relative) price level IS lower: cars, houses, the cost of living in general IS lower here... i know that per capita GDP is lower here, but that doesn't mean it's not comparatively cheaper to live.
our government isn't perfect, but what is?? i'm not trying to apologize for it, but everywhere you look, in every country of the world, EVEN the magnificent US of A, there is gargantuan waste... at least our health care system is slick, and is "free" and open to every citizen, rich or poor.

our dollar also isn't that bad, and it's not "always dropping though the floor", the US's is just propped up by high future expectations, and general distraction from the economy by the government... Canada has seen steady, and high, growth through the US's troubles...

as per Canada's involvement on the international scene, i'll say "no comment". it's not up to me to decide, or judge what exactly is the right thing to do, as i haven't all the information or experience in such matters.

Quick_lude

I wasn't going to do this but you forced me to it.. This is exactly what I'm talking about.. The "other places are worse" Canadian attitude.. So does that mean the Liberals can waste OUR hard earned taxpayer money?! Why do we accept this mediocrity? Why shouldn't we strive to be the BEST country to live in and pressure our government to govern our money in a smart, responsible fashion?!

Here are some tidbits on the latest 1 Billion Gun Registry fiasco.. I hope our US brethren don't laugh at us too much..

Canada's billion-dollar gun registry employs 1,800 bureaucrats, who spend their days tracking down duck hunters and farmers.

By comparison, Canada hired only 130 additional customs officers to protect our borders after Sept.11.

Here are a few more eye-rolling facts about the gun registry, mostly unearthed by MP Garry Breitkreuz from Saskatchewan.

Internal audits show that government bureaucrats have a 71% error rate in licensing gun owners and a 91% error rate in registering the guns themselves.

The government admits it registered 718,414 guns without serial numbers. That means either the bureaucrats forgot to write them down, or the guns didn't have serial numbers in the first place. That's as useless as registering a vehicle simply as "a blue Ford Explorer."

To these gun owners, the government has sent little stickers with made-up "serial numbers" on them, that gun owners are supposed to stick on their guns. And everybody at the gun registry is praying that criminals who steal those guns won't peel off the stickers.

Some 222,911 guns were registered with the same make and serial number as other guns. That's not just useless -- it's dangerous. If someone else with a "blue Ford Explorer" is involved in a hit and run, you'll be the one getting a knock on the door by the RCMP.

Out of 4,114,624 gun registration certificates, 3,235,647 had blank or missing entries -- but the bureaucrats issued them anyways.

In the beginning, the government's firearms licences had photographs on them - just like driver's licences do. But after hundreds of gun owners were sent licences with someone else's photo on them, the government decided to scrap photos on the licences altogether, rather than fix the problem.

Private details about every gun owner in the country are put on one computer database, called CPIC. That's valuable information to a peeping tom -- or a criminal. The CPIC computer has been breached 221 times since the mid-1990s, according to the RCMP.

In August of 2002, the gun registry sent a letter to Hulbert Orser, demanding he register his guns, and warning him that it's a crime not to. Orser died in 1981.

Garth Rizzuto is not dead, but he's getting older -- he applied for a gun licence 21/2 years ago. He hasn't been rejected. They're still "processing" his application.

Some 304,375 people were allowed to register guns even though they didn't have a licence permitting them to own a gun.

On March 1 of 2002, bureaucrats registered Richard Buckley's soldering "gun" - that's right, a heat "gun" used for welding tin and lead. No word yet on Buckley's staple guns or glue guns.

Some 15,381 gun owners were licensed with no indication of having taken the gun safety courses -- one of the main arguments for licensing.

Despite the billion-dollar taxpayer subsidy, gun-owners must still pay $279 for the required licences, registration, photo ID and other costs to register a single gun. That's as much as a gun costs in the first place. It's a tax -- a tax on rural Canada.

The government spent $29 million on advertising for the gun registry -- including $4.5 million to Group-Action, the Liberal ad firm under RCMP investigation.

zoom44

getting away from the gun issue for a second. dont take this as inflammatory but i think i read somewhere recently that with your "free" health care system it costs your government something like $3.00 us for each tablet of tylenol. i can almost buy a whole bottle for that. do you think this is a correct figure?

73JPS

Uh, no... I don't think that would be a correct figure. It would seem that to price the entire health care system in terms of the cost of Tylenol would be problematic at best. I mean, does that include the cost of the Doctor making his rounds at the hospital who has determined that the patient should come off morphine and down to Tylenol?

Having said that, (honestly, I am not flip-flopping here) it would not surprise me if the government is capable of wasting money in a fashion that would equal them paying for Tylenol at the rate of $3 a tablet... I guess if that is what you meant, then maybe it is true...

On the other hand, I read that something like 80% of all statistics are made up...

73JPS

And to add to the gun registry thing, this from the Globe today: (going by memory, so don't hold me TOO closely to the numbers...)

The claimed point of the firearms registry is to cut down on crime committed with the use of firearms.

BUT:

25% of firearm violence in Canada occurs at the hands of the native peoples, although they only account for less than 2% of the population. Yet, Natives are either exempt from or refusing to comply with firearm registration.

The transaction of attempting to purchase ammunition in Canada without the valid paperwork is good for up to six months in jail. However, by virtue of 200 year old law, the Canadian government must supply the native people of this country with ammunition.

Brilliant, eh?

wakeech

trust me, that figure is not correct.
if one measures the amount of money spent on health care (which includes drugs, doctor's visits, stays in hospital and associated costs, and health insurance among other things) as a percent of GDP, Canada spends in the order of 3-5% (i really can't remember, have to get out my old ECON 282 notes... ) less than the US, while we have more hospital beds per 1000 people, and our average stay in hospital is days longer... supposing that our doctors are just as good as American doctors (which is a pretty fair assumption, looking at how many are moving down there for the $$), one could say that we are getting far more for far less. "just the facts mam, just the facts." :D

on 73JPS's comments on the gun thing, and about how many Aboriginals there are in Canada (~2% of the pop), it's kinda strange that they account for something like ~12% (or was it even bigger than that?? it's at least that big) of convicts in prison (among males, and is much much higher than that among females)... what is happening in Canada in the Aboriginal community is a travesty, and adding onto 73JPS's comments on that 200-year-old law, it's obvious not many people are paying attention.

Gord96BRG

I'm in complete agreement about the mediocrity and dishonesty of the Liberals. Their Red Book of election promises in 1993 was a complete sham - 10 years later, they still have not implemented many if not most of them (plenty of which were reiterated in the 1996 premature election, but still aren't fulfilled). Out West, we love to blame Ontario - if they would not have repeatedly elected almost all Liberals for the last 3 elections, we would have some accountability. Despite the obvious Liberal disdain for the people, Ontario continues to love the Liberals. Sheila Copps weaseled for months to get out of her election promise to resign if the GST was not scrapped, and when she was finally embarrassed enough about the ridiculous extent of the weaseling to actually resign, Hamilton promptly re-elected her. Thanks, Ontario! After all, the Liberal's pattern was well-established in 93-96 - it's just been more of the same since (over 2 more elections, wherein Ontarians have indicated that they love the abuse!)

Regards,
Gordon

wakeech

please, let's not turn this into a conservatist rant against liberals...

in any case, doesn't matter your place on the political spectrum, all politicians everywhere, no matter who they are, are "dishonest" and "weaselly" at one time or another... they have, and will continue, to make big promises, make up numbers, and claim things that they may or may not be able to realistically do... it's thier job, it's the only way they'll get elected and do the things that they think are important.
the Reformers and Liberals and Tories and New Democrats and Pot Smokers and whomever else are all the same, and they'll all be equally as bad... those who support them say "they're not perfect, but they'll do", and those who are in support of someone else will say "they are not perfect, and will never do" supposing that their own party of choice will be perfect, good, wholesome, and exactly what the electorate needs to reach utopia.

i'm not a liberal supporter, i've never cast a vote in the favour of any one political party, ever (i've been too young, by days in the last provincial election), so please let's not have any personal attacks, or better, any political distractions to this thread which is about canadian culture. no, politics isn't inherently cultural

Immi

Do you dislike the Liberals or the current leader?

What have the liberals done to make the west dislike them?
-i'm just curious, cause they've done a decent job in ontario - for we are the main economic and commercial city in all of canada and without us canada is nothing

go have fun with your alliance clowns