U.S. Ambassador says Canadians are consuming 'unhealthy' amount of American news
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I have a great respect for the US. Realistically, feel the US is family, and like family, I love and care for it. Yet at the same time, sometimes I shake my head, wonder what my sibling is doing, baffled... often concerned out of care for them, sometimes out of self interest. Yet I still care, and want the best for them.. even if pissed off, angry, or upset with that sibling.
There is so much shared history, coupled with so much bafflement.
I guess the best way to put it, is the relationship Canada has with the US is exceptionally nuanced, and this holds true for many Canadians.
But it's not like you guys are completely normal ;-). For example, Confederate flags are actually a thing in Canada. That's wild to me.
As my history teacher explained to me, back in the day, a small offshoot of Confederates had it with the war. They were weary. They were exhausted. And so, as many American hippies and conscientious objectors have done in the past, they decided to flee to Canada.
At this time however, they were worried about passing through Yankee territory, and also about their own troops shooting them for desertion. So, cleverly they modified their flag, and their uniforms, in subtle yet not quite discernible ways.
When approached, they would hold up their hands and describe at great length that the flag was much like the Ship of Theseus, each thread had been carefully replaced, and that their philosophical belief was that it therefore was not a Confederate flag. It may seem and look as such, but it as most certainly not! "What!", they would decry at such statements, "Are you ignorant louts! Have you no philosophical roots?", and so soldiers would feel great shame, and let them pass.
Thus after much hardship they managed to cross the border, settle down in a small town. I'm sure the flag you saw was probably only isolated to that one rural town though, but even so it just looked like a Confederate flag. It was instead copied from that other, unique flag.
Okay that got a good chuckle out of me lol. Quality shitpost, could have sprinkled some lost cause/daughters of the Confederacy gaslighting in there too
Also seen one in Cambridge. And I don't mean Cambridge Massachusetts, I mean the original.
Next thing you know, people will start getting their knickers in a twist over someone flying a Daesh flag.
Both of which aimed to solve for problems faced by Americans in America by doing something in Canada, when the same problems don't apply to Canada.
Nah. Canadians regularly see themselves as Americans with respect to political processes and laws. Presumably because of said American media consumption and believing what it portrays also applies to Canada.
Like how Tim Horton's, the quintessential Canadian institution, was bought by Burger King and remains "Canadian" if only for tax reasons.
Many countries and cultures are struggling with the excessive power of American capital, it bring with it Us-style management and 'way of doing things'.
I bet if you rated all countries in the world by how much common people know and spend time looking at the internal politics of neighboring countries, Canada would be easily top 5. On the other hand, most countries outside North/South America have thousands of years of shared history, unlike the 3-4 hundred ones by (non-native) Americans.
In my opinion, Canadian should stop with this obsession and engage more with local politics.
Same with Mexico, but Mexicans are nowhere near as addicted to American news (Spanish language or English language).
TBH, most people consume news as entertainment, and outside of Postmedia Network media, Canadian reporting is fairly bland and boring.
Also, having spent some of my youth in rural and urban BC, in most cases purely Canadian television media didn't even really exist - everyone would be watching either a reskin of an American channel (Family Channel aka Disney) or an American channel (CNN, PBS, Fox).
Sure you had CBC but it was filled with ads and never talked about local issues anyhow.
That said, Western Canada is for all intents and purposes the exact same as Washington/Montana/Alaska - almost everyone in BC, AB, and the territories has at least 1 close relative who's an American or immigrated to America, and the only difference was that signs were occasionally in French, BC Ferries had a tiny portrait of Queen Elizabeth tucked in a random corridor next to a portrait of Harper or Trudeau, and Costco served poutine and charged 2x for milk and goods compared to the one in Bellingham
In my opinion, this should be done by the entire world instead of obsessing over a no named senator said something scandalous on Twitter
So what is being a Canadian anymore ? It doesn’t really matter but they really should stop trying to illegal cross the northern border into the US
Of course, when you're a small nation right next to the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it's easy to have your media sphere be overwhelmed by the glut coming from south of the border. This is especially true as institutions like the CBC and NFB have come into increasing irrelevance while the internet replaces them. But this should not be misinterpreted as the country missing an identity or viewing itself as the same as the USA - that's simply not the case.
On a casual viewing, the similarity of external culture looks the same: we have the same shops, the same ugly modern strip malls, etc. We mostly look at talk somewhat the same, certainly in urban centers. But when you dive into the heart of our cultures, we had very different histories, and that's reflected in some big societal discrepancies. The USA is a bit of an outlier in a number of ways, and in many ways Canada resembles Scandinavian countries more than the USA.
Also, Canadians may not think of themselves as Americans, but young Anglo-Canadians are products of American culture. I roomed in college with one for a year and nothing was distinctly non-American about him besides the accent.
War Plan Red by Kevin Lippert suggests relations between the two countries is also similar to mutually annoyed suburban neighbors.
Disclaimer: I only ever go to BC (and I have lived in the PNW most of my life), so this might be a very biased hot take. I bet Quebec is a little bit different, as well as the other provinces & territories.
I once heard, in the early 2000s, that more than 1/2 the languages spoken 150 years ago are gone.
I will say though, weighing in on a neighbouring nation while only having visited one of its provinces strikes me as a little bit conceited. A visit to BC is not going to give you much of a perspective of the diversity of this country.
Also: our health care is amongst the worst of the western nations at this stage. Subsequent governments have carved it away to be a shell of its former self.
That's a little harsh, I admitted as much in my post. I figured that my disclaimer would clarify that what I really think is "The PNW is very similar no matter which side of the 49th parallel you find yourself on."
I withhold any opinion on your health care; I've heard negatives, sure, but I've got no skin in the game. Philosophically I like it better than what we're doing in the US, even if the results have been lackluster so far.
The state has a monopoly on the purchasing of healthcare services, it is illegal in most provinces to buy any healthcare for your family. The official marketing is that services are given out in priority order. In practice, it's rationed according to a lottery, your connections, whether you can afford to live near medical center, your ability to advocate for yourself, ability to show up an hour before a facility opens and wait in line for 5 hours, push through constant gaslighting by doctors whose goal is to dissuade you from receiving care (they'd rather you just give up and go home, here take this antibiotic and get out of my face), willingness to embellish symptoms to get higher priority placement, etc.
When the system utterly fails you, you have zero recourse. You just accept that you won't get to see a specialist for 6 months (if you're lucky, often a year). There is no escape hatch. Only if you're lucky enough to afford paying out of pocket and be able to get out of the country to get medical attention.
Millions of Canadians have no access to a family doctor (25-60% of British Columbians, for example). With increasing frequency, Emergency Rooms themselves are closing their doors (can't operate a whole 24/7 rotation).
On a philosophical level, I think it plainly evil that, even after I've paid such high taxes to fund everyone else's treatment, and then after the government refuses to provide me with adequate healthcare, after already paying for services not received, they then make it illegal to use whatever money I have left to provide basic healthcare to myself and my family.
The evil part seems to be where they bilk you out of your tax dollars a few steps up the chain.
Why is it illegal to purchase healthcare privately? When I lived in the UK, I skipped the NHS and used my private insurance all the time to avoid all the issues you listed. Why not make it available to those that can afford the option?
It’s, of course, a both/and situation. Try to improve things at home while searching for options if needed.
I do believe there is a bit of absurdity going on where parts of the Canadian system are trying to save money though by offering suicide.
We don't really have "universal healthcare" at all anymore, I don't know what you'd call such a dysfunctional system.
Canadians have known more what is going on in America than Americans for at least the last 35 years.
I love Canadians but never in my adult life have Canadians not been just salivating to have a conversation about American news with an American.
Those are the West (everything west of Upper Canada), Upper Canada (triangle formed by Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal), Lower Canada (Quebec), and the Maritimes.
If you're going more granular, you have Newfoundland, which is very different from the rest of the Maritime provinces (they have their own dialect of English), the North (sparsely populated but the kind of Canadian that lives there is different), and to a point Vancouver and Vancouver Island.
Of those, the West is functionally the Midwest (Vancouver and Island are not meaningfully distinct from Seattle/Portland/Bay cities in terms of politics) where each province is flavored towards the State to its immediate south, Upper Canada is culturally NYC-DC North (and for that reason is as hostile to the rest of the country as NYC/DC are to the US in general), Lower Canada is French (obviously), and the Maritimes are the Rust Belt.
The reason for Upper Canada's insularity (and to a point, Lower Canada's) is its age and geography: as the US found out in 1812 it's very difficult to reinforce across the Great Lakes. As for the West, there might as well be no border at all, so commerce and culture move freely (it also helps that, because plentiful natural resources and space causes a freedom-focused outlook on human rights, most people who live in the West will naturally have that in common with their southern counterparts).
Definetly need to split this further:
Prairies - Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta
Mountains - Everything inside the Rockies
BC - Its it's own thing
Just a heads up, Newfoundland isn't a part of the Maritimes at all, and those from Newfoundland will certainly remind you of that if you lump them in :)
The cultural division between BC and the 'west' (AB, SK, MB) is pretty strong.
Southern Ontario is a lot closer to upstate ny / the midwest than NYC, I'd say.
The Maritimes is much more like New England than the rust belt. Newfoundland isn't even part of the Maritime provinces - it's part of the Atlantic provinces.
If you are from BC, you are more likely to travel to or move to California than you are Nova Scotia or Florida.
Likewise, if you are from Montana, you probably feel more comfortable in Alberta or Saskatchewan than you would in New York or Alabama.
While our governments function very differently, NAFTA has removed most of the institutional barriers preventing the natural movement of money, people and culture between the two places.
And much lower wages and opportunities, but the same (or higher) housing prices. There's a reason you don't live there.
When I go to Montreal, I definitely feel this way. The rest of Canada feels pretty much like a clean America.
And the convoy protests were funded by interests in the US. So it was a US political protest on Canadian soil.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/class-action-rcmp-abuse...
Are you arguing that Canada "physically segregates" its underclass to a greater extent than the US does? I don't think that's actually true.
In 1970 Detroit, the city was 30% black. What comparable city does Canada have?
Also, keep in mind that in both Canada and the US, a plurality of the underclass are of European descent: in 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 37.2 million Americans were living below the poverty line, of whom 42.7% were non-Hispanic White, 28.0% Hispanic, 22.8% African American, 1.6% Native American, 4.8% Other. [1] (I don't have equivalent figures for Canada at hand, but I expect they will tell a broadly similar story, with European-descended people being the plurality of the Canadian poor.)
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/2021-census-...
"Higher numbers of hate crimes targeting a race or an ethnicity (+12% to 1,950 incidents) and a sexual orientation (+12% to 491 incidents) accounted for most of the increase in 2022. In 2022, hate crimes targeting a religion were down 15% from 2021 yet remained above the annual numbers recorded from 2018 to 2020."
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240313/dq240...
Compared to 6,567 in the US during the same year.
https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/hate-crime-statistics
Per capita values are indeed higher for Canada due to the population difference.
It escalated pretty quickly. She got so frustrated that she comparted the flyover provinces to the Deep South in the US. The situation took five years to resolve.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/joni-mitchell-wants...
It is as tightly bound to the US as Puerto Rico. I can't imagine Canada adopting economic, military or cultural policies that favor US enemies without being strong-armed out of it by the US.
It is a charged question, and I mean it as a hypothetical. But countries form through common language, culture, religion, geography, interests or trauma/war. Anglo-Canada and the US have all the good things in common and no war/trauma keeping them apart.
At times, Anglo-Canadians feel more distinct from French-Canadians than they do most Americans.
Ofc, if you've been a stable nation for century+, then there's no good reason to fix what's not broken.
Quebec has tried to separate twice in the past 50 years, and comes within a Brexit's margin of actually getting it done (and if it wasn't for Montreal, they'd already be gone).
The seed of that separation was, naturally, caused by a military conflict between what would become Western Canada and what used to be Upper Canada.
Canada isn't actually as stable a country as Ottawa might have you believe.
The whole Quebec movement is basically dead in the water now.
An entire generation of Canadians didn't exist or don't remember that.
I'd argue the GWOT, the Great Recession, and COVID have had a stronger impact on modern (2020s) Canadian politics and discourse than the Quebec Independence Movement.
Quebec's Separatist party has complete electoral dominance (except for Montreal, but Montreal is the least Quebec part of Quebec) and has the ability to force the government's hand on most things.
If the Eastern Big City Party loses the next election as is projected (and the Bloc correspondingly loses all of its power) they'll be back.
Only voters who are 65+ are split on soverignity. Every other age demographic overwhelmingly supports remaining in Canada [0]
This can be seen with the CAQ, which has poached most of the PQ's leadership and campaigns almost entirely on Bill 21 and immigration [1], not on "Quebec Libre"
[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/17/quebec-francois-leg...
[1] - https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/bill-21-groups-f...
[0] - https://policyoptions.irpp.org/fr/magazines/mai-2024/sondage...
Your initial point was not that people chose the PQ over language concerns, but that the party had transitioned. The party has done no such thing. It's doubling down on separatism if anything. It's crazy.
Did you mean Lower Canada instead of Upper Canada?
Had Quebec voted Yes, Quebec City would have immediately declared independence. <https://np.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/tkg5gf/who_has_...>
I don't know how that still is a problem?
Quebec exiting anytime soon would be annoying for the country but a tragic mistake for quebec especially in seeing how poorly it has workout for the UK which had been an economic engine. Quebec has been sputtering since the 80s after their last referendum vote and since montreal lost its status as a city of import to Toronto. They would go from a poor economic performer to exceptionally poor.
City of import? Speaking as a tourist at least, Montreal is a much more interesting place to visit than Toronto. Toronto might be larger and have a bigger economy with more industry, but for a tourist I can't think of any reason to visit offhand.
>Quebec exiting anytime soon would be annoying for the country but a tragic mistake for quebec especially in seeing how poorly it has workout for the UK which had been an economic engine.
Separatists might not be that worried about economic power. Are all the Brexit voters unhappy with their vote now? A few maybe, but most probably are happy to be out of the EU, and blame their continued economic problems on immigrants, the EU, etc.
People love to talk about Quebec and separatism, they can go if they want, but they owe us $300B, so I doubt they are going any time soon, their "country" would likely fall over on go.
I don't disagree - separatists don't care because they would be trying to grab power at all costs. The rest of the population would be the ones along for the ride.
Also worth reminding Brexit was reverting to a former country state, quebec separatism would be wholly new uncharted waters.
It was on the table.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
From the Canadian perspective too, don’t think an American annexation of our landmass would go smoothly… Russians and Ukrainians are indistinguishable to an outsider and are currently unleashing centuries of built up ethnic turmoil on each other.
Anecdotal: I used to work with very right wing Canadian guys who cursed the name of the last president and called him all manner of names because of the trade war. These were the kind of guys who south of the border would have voted for him and bought the hat.
It’s not as simple as shared heritage == shared values.
The US war plan for the UK was similarly weird: according to Miller, _War Plan Orange_ War Plan Red was the result of a deal between the US Navy and Army. The Navy wanted War Plan Orange (war with Japan) and so they let the Army write War Plan Red (the UK). Which was why a war between the two mightiest naval powers on the planet in 1925 called for the US Navy to be on the defensive, at most seize the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Halifax to try and deny them as bases to the RN, and then the US Army would invade a separate nation (Crimson aka Canada) that would probably try and be neutral in the war!
Basically, from what I can tell, the US, Canada, and UK were putting their best war planners on the likely threats, and putting their less experienced and good planners on these war plans. Because War Plan Orange was, at least if you squint, how the US defeated Japan. And the Canadian and UK's war planners for mobilizing in World War Two and sending them to France did a bang-up job. It was just these plans that were not thought through and would have been disasters if implemented.
Both the West and East coasts would immediately have their power grids upended by the loss of Canadian hydro. Fuel supplies (and practically everything else in both countries) would be disrupted as Canadian suppliers turn off the taps and American refineries go dark. Pipelines would, in all likelihood, be sabotaged so that they can't be started up quickly even once controlled. Large parts of Canada would go on a sudden bread and meat diet, since they rely almost entirely on imported fruit and vegetables.
Neither side would likely have the element of surprise, since both sides would be compromised by a large number of people in their command structures who are either from the other nation or sympathetic to it. A significant portion of U.S. forces would likely refuse to follow orders unless there was a damned good reason to invade Canada. Civil unrest in the U.S. itself would be a huge problem for the same reason. U.S. rivals such as China would pounce on the opportunity to take advantage of things while all this is going on. If the U.S. rolls into Canada then nobody is going to give a fig about Taiwan.
Occupation would be another matter entirely. The territory is massive and the enemy indistinguishable from yourself. Canada would present many of the same difficulties with terrain as Afghanistan, but with a populace that can tell which end of a toaster to plug in.
And the line loss would be too great to economically ship canadian electricity to California
The reality is that there is no dividing line between Canada and U.S. when it comes to electricity. Power grids cross the 49th at will. In California, you're on the same interconnection as Vancouver and Calgary.
Conflict would disrupt power in both countries, and much further from the border than you may suspect.
I don’t buy it. Massive generators larger than the Canadian market go down from time to time. There’s dozens of contingencies in place.
The modern and even pre-modern history of Ukraine is inseparable from a degree of violence that only existed in north america when directed towards slaves and indigenous population. There are not centuries of built-up ethnic/nationalistic turmoil between the U.S. and Canada, although I'm sure you could find some crazies who've convinced themselves there must be.
Similarly, Poland once occupied Moscow in the distant past and has managed to persist as a distinct nation, though the Russian calculus sometimes worked out against Poland such as during Russian-Prussian or Soviet-Nazi alliances.
Ukraine and Russia have their own history yet Ukrainians have managed to valiantly persevere as we can witness today. Unfortunately for geographic reasons the strategic calculus there is much tighter than US-Canada or Russia-Poland.
By the British, not by "Canada" (which didn't exist).
To put another way, even had the US not invaded British North America, the UK would still have attacked Washington as part of the overall war. The one did not cause the other.
The strategic reasons for a potential attack are similar, and the same risks remain.
The US invaded and failed. Had they succeeded I doubt the British would invade Washington vs strengthening their position in the remaining colonies.
I think this is a misconception. It is the responsibility of the general staff to have a plan for any eventuality. The existence of such a plan does not imply that the political leadership has seriously considered launching military operations against a friendly neighboring country.
The only real opposition to this in the USA will come from conservatives who are upset at the large amount of "New Democratic" voters.
Also, Doug ford is no conservative, he’s just liberal lite. A pathetic spineless being
Americans on either side of politics think that Canada is full of super-leftists (and there is no shortage). But were Canada a part of the US in 2016, Trump would have won AB, SK, and quite possibly enough of the GTA (the parts that loved Rob Ford, and as "Ford Country" has repeatedly won the province for Doug Ford as mentioned) to win ON, the province most resembling MI/WI/PA, the three states that Trump unexpectedly won the election with.
Just this little hiccup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812#Invasions_of_Canad...
Although with our cooperation at D-Day maybe Canada considers that water under the bridge.
On the other hand, the difference between a dialect and a language is an army and a navy, neither of which Canada has much of.
Midland American English is what we would call the standard American accent. Most of Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and parts of surrounding states speak in this.
French-speaking Quebecers self-identify as follows:
- Canadians first, and Quebecois second.
- Quebecois first, and Canadian second.
- Quebecois, and not Canadian at all.
The majority of French-speaking Quebecois do not self-identify as being in the first category, and a very significant percentage identify as being in the third category, with a plurality falling into the second category. I think it's safe to say that almost all French Canadians in Quebec identify as culturally Quebecois.
I lived in Quebec during the Cultural Revolution in the 80s, and was there for the first referendum, but I left because it became clear that Montreal was a bad place to be if I wanted to raise English-speaking children. In the end, I didn't feel any great need to pay for the sins of centuries of Quebec Anglophones that weren't my ancestors.
Once you wander outside of Montreal, into the countryside, dislike of Anglophones is common to the point that it feels almost dangerous, and gets even worse the closer you get to Quebec City.
In my experience, tolerance of Anglophones in Montreal has decreased dramatically in recent years. I was in a clothing store on St. Catherine, neer Bishop Street (once the heart of Anglophone Montreal). When two American tourists came in, and asked for help, the young shopkeeper responded: "On ne parle pas Anglais ici" (one does not speak English here).
A friend of mine graduated from a high school in Westmount (home to the Anglophone elite, most pointedly hated by Francophones). He said that of his friends in high school, none had remained in Quebec, because even though all of them spoke fluent French, being Anglophones, they were not able to find jobs.
A point of translation nuance here: in American English “one does not speak {language} here” carries with it an overt sense of pretense or unpleasantness, whereas in French “on”/one is very commonly used as an alternative to “we” in informal conversation, and does not carry any of the same tone as using “one” does in English. While the translation is correct at a literal level, idiomatically it’d just be “we don’t speak English here”.
The "on" is impersonal and quite different from "nous". I think a translation should reflect the universality of the statement.
Oh I agree that the translator understood the nuance and I agree why "we" was proposed. The translation is correct, as is the original one.
I was proposing another alternative that incorporates the cold impersonality of "on" whilst not sounding pompous. The server was being viscous, not pompous.
I don't think my translation is "correct"; it hinges on my reading that the server was rude and nasty. A reading based on living in latin countries but also one based on my English Canadian prejudice that French Canadians all speak English but resent having to (don't fault them for it either)
I find translations fascinating as a subject. While there can be a bad translation, there is never a perfect one.
https://www.commeunefrancaise.com/blog/on-or-nous#:~:text=%E....
French Canadian is the cruelest sounding language I have ever heard.
Note: there are some wonderful French Canadians out there. Just not that day at that register in that Macdonalds.
We tried to annex them in 1812, but they were technically British so it doesn't count.
I'd say Cuba is the exception that proves this rule
I was in Canada last week and I saw a bunch of (real) English and (real) French Canadians. It dawned on me that the French Canadians resemble "redneck" Americans quite a lot more than the English whilst speaking a language that resembles French
The English Canadians (I wasn't in a major urban area, so these are what I call "real" Canadians) were quite different. Very reserved, low key and "proper". Unbearably stuffy.
Are you familiar with NATO? Clearly Canada wouldn’t do that - Canada can’t. But the existence of a treaty organization does not change how distinct we are.
As an example, school shootings. They’re far more rare here than population would dictate.
Canada is indeed an anomaly. I can't think of another circumstance in which two countries that
* share land borders
* are 95% culturally, economically, and politically identical
* do not have longstanding historical grievances against each other
have not unified after two centuries; if anything, this fact implies that annexation is more likely than not to occur, perhaps sometime this century.
Americans on either side of politics think that Canada is full of super-leftists (and there is no shortage). But were Canada a part of the US in 2016, Trump would have won AB, SK, and quite possibly enough of the GTA (the parts that loved Rob Ford, and as "Ford Country" has repeatedly won the province for Doug Ford) to win ON, the province most resembling MI/WI/PA, the three states that Trump unexpectedly won the election with.
When annexation happens I do not expect the US to be interested in Quebec because of language. I suppose that means that sovereignists ought to be in favor of US annexation.
The Americans know as much as me that quick and painful assimilation is possible. Why wouldn’t they wish to impose it on my nation?
It's possible that the US would annex Quebec and similarly keep it as a territory, but more likely is the US not bothering with it at all; why bring within itself an ethnic conflict that has bedeviled Canada for 250 years?
But even setting aside the unlikelihood of Quebecois used to having so much say in governing Canada accepting no longer having voting delegates in the national legislature, surely any such benefit for the US would be a lot less, relatively speaking. And, again, why would we bring in yet another ethnic conflict into our country?
But in general the relationships in NA work more North/South than East/West and the construction of Canada is fairly contrived. So while Canadians have a lot in common with Americans just across the border, this may be more regional cultural relationships. I would posit that your typical Seattle area Washingtonian has a more common culture with a nearby Vancouverite than they would with someone from Florida, Texas or New York.
As a Canadian who is in the process of immigrating to the US, I feel that most Canadians think they are more similar to European than American. I'm basing this from having interacted with many Canadians during grad school in the US whom it would greatly trouble them if someone thought they were American. Perhaps it is a generational thing because I think my parents would probably say American if forced to choose but would say they are Canadians. Perhaps it is an international student perspective. I think most Canadians who think they are American just immigrate.
Curious choice of words.
Why not 'emigrating' to the US?
In my experience, many (Anglo) Canadians behave like the coastal Americans who think of themselves as rather not American despite behaving very, very American.
Case in point: America is a racist country. But the racial quotas in Ivy League Universities are perfectly fair. There is nothing wrong with punishing Chinese immigrants for the sins of English colonists from the two centuries ago.
One I realised I fell into was universally condemning everyone from places I hadn’t been as ignorant. I think what stalls the self awareness is that you think you’re just joking. But you’re not. You’re socially reäffirming a stereotype.
I do it too. It's the way we're socialized here in the US via everything from the media and music to political speeches.
What would be really interesting to know is if either of you are non-American? I have a sense that this proclivity might not be simply an American thing. I've wondered more and more if it's just human?
I’d call out honest self reflection in small groups as uniquely and proudly American. We don’t have small group face-saving as a strong cultural streak. Almost in inverse, we champion it as a sign of trust and intimacy.
> interesting to know is if either of you are non-American
Immigrant American. We tend to be so convinced of our blue-blooded Americanness that we unblushingly use phrases like “blue-blooded American.”
More seriously, America is a superpower. Look at the contemporaries of any great superpower—Rome, the Han Dynasty, the Abbasid, the Ottoman, the British and the USSR—and the dominant narrative—paranoia, almost—is one of decline. Because that’s what’s left. There isn’t a competitor to aspire to. There isn’t pressure to improve. It’s partly why I think a bipolar world is for the best, even if it’s quite deadly—America and China competing is good. Russia diddlyfucking
Canadians who visit for a year think we are totally different.
As an American, I get most of my US news from Canadian sources these days. They tend to be a whole lot better.
When I was younger I enjoyed reading my local newspaper (local news/local sports/classifieds), the USA Today (national news/sports), and the Wall Street Journal. Between those 3 I felt pretty well informed and enjoyed my daily ritual of reading them in the morning at school in the library. Unfortunately as other commenters have noted the quality of journalism has gone way down hill since then.
Honestly due to the deluge of news I feel people today are more opinionated, less informed, easier to manipulate/deceive via controlled narratives, and have way shorter attention spans. The quality of journalism is so far gone it is laughable, so having more of a bad thing doesn't make it better imho.
Arguably, that just means they're just the illusion of "more sources" because really they're just one.
I've found ground.news to be a good tool for finding different angles on stories. Sadly it only split sources based on American left/center/right which certainly is different from where I am (South/West Europe), but better than nothing.
Do you think the old media was actually better? Or was there just no platform for dissenting voices?
If there are no dissenting voices heard, then the media seems like “the truth”.
This is exactly why authoritarian governments and religions are very concerned about counter narrative publications. They want the people to believe that the official sources are the truth.
The problem with reality is it's way more complex than binary, things are not black and white. If you can't have and control a single news station, then make thousands of them that take small pieces of truth and stir them in a bucket of shit. Pump countless dollars of petro money into these sources so they have extreme reach into societies. Use the latest targeting tools to pull these people into their own little reality tunnels they'll have a hard time getting out of. Watch and laugh as the nation collapses in its own civil war.
How much does a country allow foreign actors to dictate what their citizens hear?
Now that tech took all the advertising cash, there is no army of highly trained/skilled journalists any more. Those folks went to other industries.
I used Google News regularly for years, but I've had to abandon it. It has so many sources, and 9/10 of them are pure garbage. I mean absolute dreck.
More perspectives are better, except you have to rank the perspectives by descending popularity and then pick the top X, where there's a strongly diminishing return on every source after that.
It is surprising to me that this is not common knowledge and we have people disputing a basic fact.
Many sources, just an example: https://patch.com/ohio/miamiuniversity-oxford/journalism-maj...
Local politics get very little consideration unless something really controversial happens. I think the reverse should be true -- state, county, and city laws have way more effect on my daily life than federal.
With extra emphasis on who the President is, and none at all on what they do!
Maybe what the US really needs is a Prime Minister. Subordinate the executive branch to the legislative branch, as is the norm in the Commonwealth, the majority of Western European nations, Japan, among others
And a figurehead/symbolic/apolitical President with little real power – like the Presidents of Austria, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Malta, etc
If the US adopted a parliamentary system, then Congress would have to nominate a Prime Minister – and if it failed to do so within a reasonable period, it would be dissolved and a new election would be held for it. Fear of having to face the voters again is a great motivator for legislators to get their act together – especially since voters rarely take kindly to being called upon to vote again so soon.
“He presides over the executive branch.”
It’s supposed to be the most boring name, to contrast with the idea of having a king-like leader.
It turns out human anthropology resists such ideal concepts. But the government does function without the need of a highly competent president -The current president’s dementia is a case in point (recall the special counsel said he wasn’t mentally fit enough to be guilty of any wrongdoing).
But just the opposite has happened.
Which is funny because half the country would vote for a lamp post if it was running against Trump, and vice versa.
I mean this just isn't the case. A certain president was very responsible for our current Supreme Court and there are real consequences for everyday Americans.
The south has went bonkers with anti-abortion legislation, there was an attempted coup, and also the President is now ultimately and completely immune from consequences. Did we all just collectively forget this happened?
This doesn't even touch on the right's future plans for America. Like, for example, abolishing the department of education. Again - what do you think will happen in the South if that comes to fruition?
People who are disconnected from this are so from a place of privilege. It's easy to say "everything is fine" when, because of life circumstances, you will never be the target of anything ever.
I have young women in my life and I've seen firsthand how this has affected them. I know drag queens and I've seen how much more hate they get. I know a teacher and she is terrified about the future (or lack thereof) of public education.
Do you really think Trump had even heard of the judge names he picked? Also, do you think Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have picked "good" justices? I think you're giving Trump too much personal credit here.
Same for most of the other issues you highlighted, which I don't disagree with, but at the same time I don't think Ron DeSantis or any other candidate would have been a stark difference from Trump.
For example, from https://www.aei.org/op-eds/what-it-would-mean-to-abolish-the...:
"eliminating the Department [of Education] is hardly a new notion. Republicans have been calling for its abolition pretty much since its inception in 1979. In 1980, the year after Jimmy Carter fulfilled a campaign pledge to the National Education Association by creating the Department, Ronald Reagan pledged to dismantle it"
"National figures’ promising to abolish the Department (and then not doing so) has been a staple of GOP politics and party platforms for four decades. In 1994, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” advocated eliminating the Department. In 1996, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole did the same. In 2011, the GOP presidential debates featured an infamous moment when ED was one of three cabinet departments that Rick Perry promised to eliminate—and one of the two he could recall"
In my opinion, we're not going to fix much by electing a "good" president. We've built a tower of shit and putting a ribbon on top isn't going to make it smell good. We spend so much time and energy arguing about the color of the next ribbon, and all that does is distract us from the shit pile.
Yeah I think you're right - it's more so his party.
> I don't think Ron DeSantis or any other candidate would have been a stark difference from Trump
Yeah probably not (and maybe worse even).
> we're not going to fix much by electing a "good" president
Probably not, but a blue president won't abolish the department of education. Nor would they instate a requirement that all government employees must pass an exam proving they're conservative (yes, real).
The problem is we have two right-leaning party. The moderate one, the dems, who do almost nothing. And the far-right one, which is dangerous. Like... actively looking to make everyone's lives worse at the behest of corporations and the ultra-wealthy, and then to top it off, enforce religious values and good morals.
It's a shitty situation, but in my opinion an easy choice. At least currently. The repubs have gotten much more radical in the past decade IMO.
Still, at least it means the Tory party completely forgot about wanting to bring back the hunting of foxes on horseback.
Much better examples are US Southwest/Californian concerns around water scarcity being imported to places where water is not scarce, or similar concerns around emissions from electricity generation being imported to places that use high amounts of renewables/nuclear energy. Another example is civilian disarmament fear mongering switching from being about cheap handguns to "assault weapons" after DC v Heller.
Around the mid-2010s, two events occurred in close succession: the Conservative government of the time proposed a policy of gender self-identification, and trans-identifying male prisoner Karen White was charged with sexually assaulting female prisoners while he was incarcerated in a women's prison. He was later convicted and it was uncovered that he'd been sent to the women's prison due to his "female" identity, despite having previous convictions of sexually assaulting and raping women.
The reaction from women was immense, organised on Mumsnet and other forums, mostly by left-wing feminists. After a lot of protest and publicity, the Tories dropped this policy. It was only later on they changed tack with policy proposals that shifted the balance away from trans activism, mostly to draw a line between them and Labour.
- https://metro.co.uk/2024/07/02/inmate-filmed-sex-wandsworth-...
It should be no surprise to anyone that such a policy is very unpopular. Prisons are separated by sex for good reason.
Trying to pretend that some of these male criminals are women just because they said they are is not a particularly convincing argument.
And physiologically, someone whose outie was surgically modified into an innie is going to have just as many difficulties topping as a natural born woman.
The Cass report is certainly not a "US talking point".
https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-r...
At least Brazil has had a significant amount of levantine immigration and a few refugees recently, so it's not out of place to sympathize with the Palestines wrt the incursion
Another part of it is that the "international" section of our media is just about regurgitating whatever they say at CNN, FOX or whatever they have there, so the information almost always is arriving already biased (for example, they made here a big deal about the mishap of Biden's mental block at that debate, but they have never mentioned all the links between Trump and Epstein). Though I'd concede the phenomenon has aggravated due to social media, our hiperconnected reality and the increased amount of people moving there, legally or not.
Communist and socialist (by name) regimes in South America have caused more trouble for their own citizens than any leftist (by name) regime has caused for the world of capital. I don't think those posters necessarily absorbed that opinion from the US, in fact I think the US absorbed a lot of its own anticommunism from refugees. Historically it has been the business community advocating for détente and trade.
Tell me, who grew up in socialism, under communists rule, why this hatred is "stupid and weird"
“let’s try it one more time!”
Of course, what we need to acknowledge is that this shit is complicated and there's nobody that's one thing. There're no purely free market Capitalist nations because that would lead to crimes against humanity beyond our comprehension. There're also no fully communist nations anymore - when there were, they lead to crimes against humanity beyond our comprehension.
Everyone, everywhere, has a mixed system. Whereby the public sector exists, operates, and owns some stuff. Some public sectors own more than others. Those that own, say, education and healthcare SEEM to be doing better than those that don't. Their citizens are healthier, more educated, and seem to be doing better overall.
Fact is, as a middle power country next to a super power, american politics has an inordinate impact on us, and we can't even complain to our local congresman, since obviously we dont have one.
It seems like the worst thing that happens is a bunch of people threatening to move to Canada every 4 years.
When Trump was elected the first time, super genius Canadians vowed to fight his trade policy by targeting American politicians in states that trade with Canada, threatening to cut them off. The only problem with that is that Canada is far more dependent on trade with the US than US states are with Canada. <https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/8q9h8i/canadaus_tra...>
I think this is the wrong question, because U.S policy has many interactions with Canada (whether they're tangible or not is a valid question), but the point in my mind is how much of that is 1) Impactful enough for arbitrary Canadians, such that knowing about it would allow them to make different decisions or avoid negative outcomes 2) how many of what passes the first test makes it into news that people should be watching. Policy that impacts Canada is usually nuanced, detailed, esoteric, and you have to deliberately seek out fact-based documentation on it. If you're an importer/exporter, remote contractor, dual citizen, ya you should be doing that, but it's not likely coming from CNN or w/e.
It's not like the US sending billions to Ukraine or the security of the southern border affect Canadians. No politician is proposing any sort of dramatic shift in the US' relationship with Canada. There's no need for an average Canadian to have an opinion on Trump vs. Harris aside from being dragged into a culture war by consuming US centric media.
Canada and the US are close military allies. They share the world's only binational military command (NORAD) which is responsible for air defense of both countries. Canada has joined many US led military operations including Korea, Afghanistan, and both Gulf Wars. The US strongly influences military procurement in Canada, with Canadian units designed to be seamlessly interoperable with US forces.
The US and Canada share the world's longest border, which is rather porous. Large numbers of citizens of each nation travel to the other frequently, and many people have family on the opposite side of the border. Many Canadians live for an extended period of time in the US for education or employment.
Basically any economic, military, or immigration policy change in the US is going to have a huge impact on Canada.
Canada has great schools but you don't have brand recognition/massive alumni networks/endowments like the US nor do you get visa access.
Context for others: If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance <https://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_...> that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too.
By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.
>Even I studied at two elite US schools, which put me on a path to H-1B like my peers in grad school一 but I didn't pursue that for personal reasons.
And you, of course, know that not doing so made you unusual.
Context for others: The probable successor to Trudeau as Liberal party leader went to Harvard. Not for grad school, for undergrad. Put another way, she has never attended higher education in her home country. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrystia_Freeland> Trudeau's pedecessor as Liberal leader spent 30 years outside Canada, mostly in the US, before being lured back to lead the party. After failing to become PM he immediately left Canada again for the US. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ignatieff>
Then they just layer on a "aren't you glad you aren't American?" narrative on top, which keeps Canadians voters distracted from the problems in their own country.
Rampant immigration? A few token articles a year. Superficial analysis using government talking points.
Can you point to an example? I dont get this vibe.
> The CBC basically parrots the US mainstream media like MSNBC and CNN.
On what issues? On American politics issues, I do find CBC to use less inflammatory language than MSNBC and certain anchors on CNN.
> Rampant immigration?
Are you referring to immigration to Canada? You say 'rampant immigration' as if it is implicit that 'immigration' itself is bad. You didnt feel the need to specify or qualify anything other than 'immigration'. This is such a severe oversight to me that it discredits your opinion on these types of topics in my eyes. There is so much to unpack in Canadas immigration policy that to categorize it away as 'rampant immigration' is telling of a lack of understanding of the details of the topic of immigration in Canada.
By far the thing I remembered most was the animation from the National Film Board (NFB) which gave me a few early lessons in Canadiana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZyDsF-Gp3o (Any Habs fans out there?)
But when I talk to Canadian friends / co-workers these days, the younger ones are completely unaware of the older cultural ephemera. Even saying I was really into Gordon Lightfoot doesn't seem to have the same resonance that it used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmGBna0JJ_U
Local news is dying.
We have wealth management to thank for all of it
Personally speaking being German, my father (60) was in the West Germany army, stationed in Canada and the US for a while, you can tell he was deeply influenced by how Americans live, what cars they drive, how their houses and kitchens look, what their aspirations are, etc. For my generation, already not the case having come of age during the 2000s, seemingly less so for people who are even younger.
I think it's tempting to think America still has a big cultural influence because of how prevalent English is and the media, memes and mannerisms that come with it, but at a deep level I think people have become much less influenced by it. It's the kind of error people made on China, were they thought the internet and media would just turn all the young Chinese into de facto Americans. People today are more fluent in American news and culture but they're also much more capable of just ditching it.
That makes sense to me but I also don't actually see that happening in practice. Disclaimer, I'm American so I really don't know but, whenever I hear/read a foreign politician talking about a President (elect), they aren't talking about policy.
It leads to some unusual cross currents. A few years back following the Canadian trucker protests, some of the defendants cited their "First Amendment rights":
Tamara Lich, the Alberta woman whose GoFundMe campaign raised over $10 million for the convoy, and her husband had their day in court—and Dwayne Lich said he was innocent, because: “Honestly? I thought it was a peaceful protest and based on my First Amendment, I thought that was part of our rights.”
The judge then asked, “What do you mean, First Amendment? What’s that?”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tamara-lich-bail-heari...
(The First Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution, not the Canadian Charter)
[1]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_Asset_Management
site:oilprice.com canada | canadian
Try it with ft.com or nytimes.com too. And then try it with rt.com and globaltimes.cn to get the Russian and Chinese spin. Somewhere in there you might get an accurate picture of reality - unless they're all on the same page about something they want to hide from public view. Don't forget to look at the negative space in the image.
> what is happening in the US right now will have a dramatic effect
So... what is that and why would it have a dramatic effect? How do you define dramatic effect? We have our own issues that people are surprisingly uninformed about (to be fair, it's just an impression I get, I'm also only as informed as I am, there's only so much one can devote to it compared to the result), and yet deeply affected by. For example, a huge portion of people are affected by being priced out of having a home or even a stable life, yet they most likely couldn't name which level of government has authority over which (high level) facets of policy that might be related to that, or who any of the housing ministers are, and won't get off their ass to vote.
I'm not convinced that for an average Canadian, other than getting something to talk about, it is or has been in recent memory at all useful to pay attention to American news, to such an extent that functionally zero aspect of most people's lives would have even a marginally different outcome having been completely ignorant.
That's not to say that aren't _at_all_ useful things to keep up with depending on who you are, but it's wildly unlikely in my opinion that's going to come general news media.
It was a crazy foolish law that hurt those news orgs that thought they were the reason Canadians used social media. It reminded everyone their are plenty of ways to get news outside of the mainstream Canadian news cartel. Canadians are not seeking out these news orgs shows what their value really is to the average person
I agree it’s a foolish law, but there’s rampant misinformation being spread about it.
When things are repeated often enough with a certain slant (e.g. "Facebook is ..." rather than "Canadian news companies via the Canadian government are ..."), it affects both people's thinking on an issue and what people less connected to the issue are aware of.
You want to be allowed to take insurance money? Then you must report procedure costs for everything.
This was pushed last administration but i dont believe theres any enforcement on it
You want nuance? An amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor. <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too, and am hearing more reports of the same in Ontario.
The quality level of the discourse is as you'd expect, very low!
I don't find talking politics much polite, especially because I believe you should first be politically active, with practical things, in your neighborhood and city first and worry about local problems that impact directly your life and those of your family.
Then make the scope larger.
But talking about politics of another country?
I have my personal opinion that the death of newspapers, which were generally local in favor of internet media, which tends to talk about topics with the highest reach completely inverted the political priorities around the world.
I swear in Italy more people can argue more about US politicians agendas and programs but can't name their mayor.
Some people argue that the decisions taken at federal, global level matter more, yet many are unaware that the beautiful house they bought for the view is being discussed to be sold by the city to build houses or a waste dump or many other things that impact your life directly and on which you have yourself more impact than following a US presidential election. And I have endless examples, because in a small village like mine, with 4000 souls, most decisions impact your life. Waste management, funding for the school buses for kids, safety on local roads, etc. This is literally your every day life.
But what people arguing? Whether AOC is too extreme or anti capitalist?
It's all backwards. I find it sick.
Instead of dealing with their healthcare and community support problems and supporting people, it turns out to be much cheaper to just kill them. They just had to fire a bureaucrat who is recommending directly to veterans that they kill themselves.
“I do think it is odd, particularly when I contrast it to the United States, where…virtually no one in the United States is paying any attention to Canadian politics,” he said.
Not some rando political statement and then the nonsensical response and so on.
People don't know what's going on in their own country but obsess over minutae of american politics.
Legacy media is no escape as its journalists themselves are addicted to twitter and reflect that in their work. My local newspaper in germany used to have Trump on the frontpage more then any german politician.
We need local forums.
Those couple things just suck up all the attention.
Tentatively: France, Italy, China, Japan, India (?), Egypt.
Canadian media has been gutted, and nothing our government is doing actually works---or just fiddles with the knobs ever so slightly so that it appears as we're doing something, when the results are indistinguishable from the null.
That's why American news isn't about actual things that actually happen, it's not about political positions and legislation, it's instead mostly about fights between people, about who is scoring points against whom, and who is doing better in the polls, and we're all part of a team, and we hate the people who are on the other team.
It's sports, but easier to understand than football, quicker than baseball, and more violent than basketball.
Leslyn Lewis is Conservative the cbc wouldn't write an article on her.
Canadian news is shallow and doesn't allow a diversity of ideas so people ignore it.
Given that, it is normal for Canadians to consume American news, and it is only unhealthy in that it is unhealthy for Americans as well.
From a geopolitical perspective this is correct. Canada is forced to operate in lockstep with the US and is completely dependent and ultimately subservient to it. Globalization has done a great deal to homogenize us.
Culturally our differences are disappearing, due to the shared language (in Anglo-Canada) and the internet.
Yet for all that: for the people living, working, and doing business in the respective countries, the actual on-the-ground experience is nevertheless quite different. Depending on the state/province in question, sometimes markedly so.
And there's factors like the urban/rural divide to bear in mind. The Canada along the border resembles the lower 48; north of that it starts to have more and more in common with Alaska.
But everywhere you're interacting with the government the differences are quite stark. Health care, education, firearms, regulations, the social safety net, taxation, drugs, criminal justice...all of these and more are handled in a rather different fashion than in the US.
Some of it depends on where you are in your life, and who you are. If you're a single middle-class white male in his 20s who rents in a major city, you're mostly interacting with the market economy, so the biggest differences day-to-day are the products available to you, your somewhat lower purchasing power, and the fact that you don't have anywhere near as much student loan debt as you would in the US.
But as you drift further from that particular model - as you age and need to lean on health care more, if you want to start a family or buy property, if you have extreme wealth, if you move out further away from major population centres, if you try to start a business, if you're a woman/minority...the differences become more apparent. Not always in the ways you'd expect, too: open racism - against indigenous peoples rather than Blacks - is widespread in Canada, even in major urban centres.
Yes, our news sucks and is polarizing. Yes, our corporate news sources are largely captured by one side.
But the government has no business trying to suppress discussion.
I’m not claiming that the ambassador acted illegally; I am claiming that as an agent of the US Government he needs to stifle his own opinions when speaking publicly on behalf of the US government and not try to suppress legal speech.
Ever since COVID the US government, especially the executive branch, has tried. Every means they could think of to suppress dissenting opinion while trying to stay just on the legal side of the first amendment. They need to stop.
(that said: I believe he said this in Canada, where the Bill of Rights isn't applicable. We have a similar-but-not-the-same right to freedom of expression enshrined in our Charter, though.)
The notwithstanding clause is quite icky. Thankfully its rarely used outside of quebec although the recent "parent's rights" bill in saskatchewan is quite gross.
Laws (both federal & provincial) have to follow the charter (unless the notwithstanding clause is invoked). For the canadian bill of rights, basically any ambiguities in federal laws are supposed to be interpreted to be consistent with it, but it cant override anything. Which is pretty damn useless and the reason the charter was created.
“Personal opinion” only applies in personal context. If he’s wearing his ambassador hat then it’s not personal, it’s official.