In the case of the U.S. that culture would be the WASPy social ethic of the original elites, which was carried forward until recently. That's more Puritan in New England, less so in Virginia, and non-existent in the Deep South. I'd call it the protestant work ethic, but I think there's something much more distinct in the U.S. Whatever Canada has going on is also distinct, though definitely seems close to the U.S. Mid-Western Lutheran culture.
The irony is that these days I'd argue it's immigrants that come closest to exemplifying the traditional, dominate U.S. ethic. Previous immigrant groups, like the Irish and Italians, didn't bring that culture but merely adopted it--in some cases poorly. (Maybe because they were less educated than the current influx, or because the British Empire left such a tremendous technocratic legacy throughout Asia, especially compared to Southern and Eastern Europe.) The past 50+ years a poor, white, Southern ethic seems to have come to dominate popular U.S. culture. That culture emphasizes the pursuit of wealth and the trappings of wealth rather than valuing work for it's own sake, despite the rhetoric. It also emphasizes blue collar "authenticity" over respecting the dictates of the elite, which on balance is a net negative. This is why that culture looks down on education, and why it's lost on so many people that so-called "book learning" is actually a kind of labor--a labor that alot of people dislike just as much as mopping floors, but something you endure nonetheless because it's what the WASPy work ethic demands, especially in the current economic environment. A college education is for many people the same kind of sublimation of personal aspirations that going straight to the factory was for people a few generations ago.
It's a shame we don't accept more Syrian refugees. By and large they're the middle class of Syria--educated, family-oriented, and instinctively averse to radicalism and fundamentalism. They've spent decades learning to avoid dependencies on political solutions and to grow business organically rather than through rent seeking. Syria's loss could be our gain. Such a wasted opportunity. It's especially egregious given how grim and horrendous the situation is there.