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The Great White Waste of Time?
25 March 2005
Matt Labash recently wrote a controversial editorial piece in The Weekly Standard called Welcome to Canada. The Weekly Standard is a Washington, DC-based political publication.
A passionately anti-Canadian American, Labash dismisses Canada as
His comments are not unlike those of fellow-right-winger and Canada-basherJonah Goldberg. Goldberg is equally dismissive of Canada because it isn't a sycophant to the Bush regime and not interested in invading anyone who disagrees with the US.
No doubt Goldberg loses sleep fretting that Canadians can freely escape the winter snows to spend vacation time in Cuba, instead of supporting an illegal and immoral blockade of that tiny, impoverished nation. So along with Cuba he adds Canada to his list of nations to despise in print.
In the National Review, Goldberg sarcastically suggested. His "bomb Canada" comments made him the "target-du-jour" of the Internet's "let's bash Americans" club, a group of curmudgeonly political bloggers many of whom are here in the Great White North. In a post-9/11 world, few Canadians saw any humour in the suggestion that a friendly nation be bombed by a supposed ally.
Goldberg is also livid over Canada's support of the UN. The United Nations has become the Spawn of Satan for many American right-wingers because it doesn't automatically assume the position in deference to American foreign policy. Somehow the idea that the UN might be independent and the majority of the world's nations disagree with, say, invading another member state in the pursuit of corporate goals or oil reserves, really irritates Goldberg and his clan of militant self-righteous Republicans.
Sure, the UN is flawed, but it's what we have to work with. But Goldberg and his isolationist crowd don't want to "work with" it - they want to dominate it. Canadians want to make it succeed as a worldwide organization that benefits everyone equally and serves a greater good. Difference of style, you might say.
Most Canadians have this curious concept that if the majority votes for something, then it's merely following the basic tenets of democracy to respect the will of that majority. That's true whether it be a city, a province, a nation or even the body where every nation has a single vote. Maybe nations should have weighted votes based on GDP, or population. I don't think Goldberg's clique would be happy even then. Democracy isn't a popular ideal in his club.
Of course, the US isn't particularly enamoured with NAFTA or the WTO either. Any time these commissions rule against American trade policies that violate the terms and conditions of the agreements, the US simply ignores the rulings and continues on in its inimitable, illegal way, breaking the rules to suit themselves and ensure they get advantages in trade. What good are trade agreements if they don't give America all the breaks, all the benefits? So why should the US treat the UN any differently?
But getting back to Labash, in true pop-media investigative fashion as pioneered by the supermarket tabloids, he spent what seems a single afternoon in Vancouver to research his opinion of Canada. That trip included some time spent in a music store buying CDs, a visit to a methadone clinic and a lawyer's office. Then he skedaddled back to Washington State to talk with an American who wants to live in Canada. In his confusingly-recounted chronology, the next day Labash apparently headed back across the border to dine with some Americans who are soon-to-be Canadians, and had a few too many drinks with another ex-pat living on an island in BC.
Not a lot of contact with Canadians in this itinerary. Perhaps he couldn't find any... after all, there are only 32 million of us and we're spread throughout the second largest nation on the planet (9.98 million sq. kms). The density of Canadians per square kilometer is somewhat like the density of caribou up here: just over 3 people per sq. km., not enough for a game of bridge or a golf foursome. America has 30 people per sq. km., enough to start a marching band or at least cobble together a minyan.
Compare us with California - about the same population (California has 35 million), but California has a density of more than 84 people per sq. km in a space 23 times smaller than Canada. Unfortunately, we have another comparison with California: Judging Canada through a visit to BC is like judging the entire USA by visiting San Francisco for an afternoon.
My point here is that Canada's smaller population is spread out in distant communities. Americans are used to a more compact population and so have a difficult time understanding Canada's diversity and cultural isolation - or how it shapes our national character. Maybe Labash arrived in Canada the day when all three people in his square kilometer were behind a tree. Or we were all in Florida when he came up...
Labash's brief visit, combined with a few hours online looking for as many anti-Canadian quotes and statistics as he could use without being charged with plagiarism, Labash believes is sufficient for him to launch into considerable vitriol about Canada. He joins the ranks of American political hacks who see themselves as an authority on Canada, thanks to a brief visit or perhaps merely an encounter with a Canadian-made beer. Labash avoids even that, drinking only American spirits even when in another nation.
Had Labash bothered to look at source figures for crime statistics - say Stats Canadaand the FBI - he would not have chosen a secondhand quote from the Edmonton Sun to crow about Canada's "higher crime rate."
The actual numbers (something some writers appear loathe to examine since data might negatively colour their perspective), show Canada's rate for crimes per 100,000 population - admittedly higher than the US ratio (962 versus 475), but that's in part due to the way crimes are reported for data purposes. Canadian data includes all three levels of assault, for example, while American data only includes aggravated assault. We're a bit more anal about our statistics. But maybe in Canada common assault is still enough of a moral outrage we insist on listing it as a crime.
Look at violent crimes instead. In Canada, the ratio of homicides per 100,000 is 1.7; in the USA, according to the FBI, the rate is 5.7 - more than three times greater per 100,000. In 2003, Canada had 548 homicides (161 by firearms). That same year, the USA had 14,408 (9,638 by firearms).The ratio of murders by guns in the USA is 59 times greater than in Canada, on a per-capita basis. If the United States was only as violent as Canada, it would have 1,610 deaths by firearms nationwide. Instead it has 9,638.
Robbery is 142.6 per 100,000 in the USA and 89.6 in Canada. Maybe that's because we have less to steal. After all, how many hockey pucks and maple syrup bottles can anyone accumulate? You have to be really disingenuous to say Canada has more crime than the US. But maybe now the Cold War is ended, writers like Labash need a new place to use a little disinformation so it doesn't get out of style.
Sure, Canada sometimes deserves to be poked in its collective eye for its often morose, self-pitying whining about its fragile identity. We're pretty good at doing it to ourselves - the most popular Canadian TV shows are those that poke fun at ourselves and our politicians (This Hour has 22 Minutes, Royal Canadian Air Farce and anything Rick Mercer is involved with). We can laugh at ourselves. And we can laugh with others who make fun of us as well.
Labash, however, has none of the wit, verve or talent that, for example, P.J. O'Rouke brings to his writing. Labash just seems caustic, miserable and unfriendly. Perhaps a little jealous, too. After all, there are few memorable quotes in Labash's tirade, while O'Rourke has been immortalized by writing several quotable quips, including "Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen."
O'Rourke, at least, makes us laugh at ourselves, even when he is trouncing our most sacred icons. Like health care. O'Rourke once quipped, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free." Canadians laugh while nodding understanding heads. Health care is serious business up here, but that doesn't mean we don't have a certain black humour about it. And some of us thought the Conan O'Brien quip about doughnuts was funny, too (some Quebecois don't find any humour in jokes about their earnest secessionist politics, while even the word poutine can send other Canucks into unstoppable giggles...).
We're trying to improve our healthcare without giving up our beacon of universal care - and without becoming bankrupt in its preservation. We're a caring people and this is important to us. No, it isn't perfect, yes it has flaws. But most Canadians would rather have our medical system than the fee-for-service system in the US where quality medical care depends more on your bank account than on your need. Simply put, Canadians care about the welfare of other Canadians.
What Labash, Goldberg and other critics of Canada really don't understand is that Canada is another nation, wholly independent and different. We're not merely North Wisconsin, or Southern Alaska, or any other elongated extension of some border state. Americans often see Canada dimly displayed in the light of their own world, a fault they apply to Mexico too - and the rest of Latin America. Europe, too. Yeah, Asia, too. Middle East, too, of course...
Canadians are defensive about not being Americans because America is, most of the time, an overwhelming presence. It floods across the borders on TV, radio, the Internet, through magazines, newspapers, books, music, movies... sometimes being a Canadian is like swimming upstream against a raging torrent of American culture. So we're prone to be a bit snippy about it. Maybe unduly so, but we can also make fun of ourselves in the process - the Molson's "I am Canadian" ad that Labash called a "rant" was actually a clever lampoon of our national identity crisis. Even those of us Canadians who would never let that fermented cardboard taste pass our lips found the ad amusing. Of course, it was a TV commercial aimed at selling beer to young adults, not an official statement of cultural policy, a tiny fact Labash missed.
Labash makes a valid point that Canada's military is underfunded: True. And that's been somewhat addressed in the latest federal budget. But what does Canada's military actually do? We're renowned for being peacekeepers. We're the folks who get in between hostile sides and try to keep the peace. We're the people who go into harm's way once the glorious invasion forces have pulled out. We spent 30-plus years keeping peace in Cyprus, we went into the Sinai and Kosovo, and we still have troops in Afghanistan.
We don't need a really big, strong military force because we usually don't invade anywhere or anyone (except Florida, but we do that in convoys of RVs and armies of grey-haired retirees). We need a better military; better equipped, better trained, and better funded, but not necessarily a bigger, stronger and more aggressive military. We're not going to pump up our military iron in order to help invade the next state that Bush thinks is thumbing its nose at him.
Labash also criticizes Canadians for being less religious than the US. Yes, he's right: the fastest-growing group in the census data is "atheist-agnostic-secular" (16% at last count). So what? Isn't that better than belonging to the growing and militant fundamentalist Christian movement with its monocular vision of the world according to TV evangelism? How many atheists bomb abortion clinics or murder doctors for performing abortions? How many atheists burn books on evolution because they want to cast the education system back to the scientific stone age? Give me atheists over fundamentalists any day.
But what Labash didn't see - and wouldn't in his short shopping-spree-visit - is that many Canadians are actively searching for spiritual answers, contemplating their personal philosophies and looking for answers outside traditional sources. The growth in spiritual groups, meditation groups, Buddhist and Hindu groups, Tai Chi and yoga shows we haven't lost our faith - merely transferred it to areas outside the limited census check boxes.
While Labash lambastes us for being faithless, he simultaneously criticizes us for maintaining tradition - faith, in other words - in our links to Britain through having the Queen as head of state. He's right that we didn't have a separate constitution until 1982, but he overlooks the British North America Act that sufficed for a century before that. Small oversight. He may be unaware that Canada did not become a nation through revolution but rather through consensus (and a little backroom politicking).
Canadians and Americans are cousins. We share a lot more in common than we have in differences. But that doesn't mean we have to agree with the US in every aspect of its foreign policy. And we do not under any circumstances have to laugh at Seinfeld or the Simpsons (even if the latter is written by a Canadian). And we understand America's need to misspell words like labour and colour just to prove it's not still a colony of Britain and thus requires its own dictionary.
Sure, Canadians can be too sombre, too serious too damn earnestly sincere in our analysis of our identity. So what? Call it cultural masturbation or simply navel-gazing. It's a harmless pastime, especially compared with, say, taking a rifle into the local high school to shoot your classmates.
In my experience, most Canadians don't think they're better than Americans, merely different. Very different, true, but that doesn't imply better. In the main, we like Americans, respect America and would rather have America as our neighbour than, say, Syria or Yemen (neither nation is particularly open to RVs filled with snowbirds traipsing across their roads, such as they are).
But that doesn't mean we have to be slavishly supportive, dedicated to American ideals and never critical of American culture or foreign policy. You're family, sure, and you have a bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger gun and a louder stereo than we do - but we still like our own little house and our own eccentric ways, and our cozy self-satisfaction, thank you anyway, Mr. Labash. But the next time you feel the urge to write about Canadians, feel free to give me a call... or any one of the 32 million of us up here.
A passionately anti-Canadian American, Labash dismisses Canada as
Quote
"... North America's attic, a mildewy recess that adds little value to the house, but serves as an excellent dead space for stashing Nazi war criminals, drawing-room socialists, and hockey goons.
His comments are not unlike those of fellow-right-winger and Canada-basherJonah Goldberg. Goldberg is equally dismissive of Canada because it isn't a sycophant to the Bush regime and not interested in invading anyone who disagrees with the US.
No doubt Goldberg loses sleep fretting that Canadians can freely escape the winter snows to spend vacation time in Cuba, instead of supporting an illegal and immoral blockade of that tiny, impoverished nation. So along with Cuba he adds Canada to his list of nations to despise in print.
In the National Review, Goldberg sarcastically suggested
Quote
"If the U.S. were to launch a quick raid, blow up some symbolic but unoccupied structure — Toronto's CN Tower, or an empty hockey stadium — Canada would rearm overnight."
Goldberg is also livid over Canada's support of the UN. The United Nations has become the Spawn of Satan for many American right-wingers because it doesn't automatically assume the position in deference to American foreign policy. Somehow the idea that the UN might be independent and the majority of the world's nations disagree with, say, invading another member state in the pursuit of corporate goals or oil reserves, really irritates Goldberg and his clan of militant self-righteous Republicans.
Sure, the UN is flawed, but it's what we have to work with. But Goldberg and his isolationist crowd don't want to "work with" it - they want to dominate it. Canadians want to make it succeed as a worldwide organization that benefits everyone equally and serves a greater good. Difference of style, you might say.
Most Canadians have this curious concept that if the majority votes for something, then it's merely following the basic tenets of democracy to respect the will of that majority. That's true whether it be a city, a province, a nation or even the body where every nation has a single vote. Maybe nations should have weighted votes based on GDP, or population. I don't think Goldberg's clique would be happy even then. Democracy isn't a popular ideal in his club.
Of course, the US isn't particularly enamoured with NAFTA or the WTO either. Any time these commissions rule against American trade policies that violate the terms and conditions of the agreements, the US simply ignores the rulings and continues on in its inimitable, illegal way, breaking the rules to suit themselves and ensure they get advantages in trade. What good are trade agreements if they don't give America all the breaks, all the benefits? So why should the US treat the UN any differently?
But getting back to Labash, in true pop-media investigative fashion as pioneered by the supermarket tabloids, he spent what seems a single afternoon in Vancouver to research his opinion of Canada. That trip included some time spent in a music store buying CDs, a visit to a methadone clinic and a lawyer's office. Then he skedaddled back to Washington State to talk with an American who wants to live in Canada. In his confusingly-recounted chronology, the next day Labash apparently headed back across the border to dine with some Americans who are soon-to-be Canadians, and had a few too many drinks with another ex-pat living on an island in BC.
Not a lot of contact with Canadians in this itinerary. Perhaps he couldn't find any... after all, there are only 32 million of us and we're spread throughout the second largest nation on the planet (9.98 million sq. kms). The density of Canadians per square kilometer is somewhat like the density of caribou up here: just over 3 people per sq. km., not enough for a game of bridge or a golf foursome. America has 30 people per sq. km., enough to start a marching band or at least cobble together a minyan.
Compare us with California - about the same population (California has 35 million), but California has a density of more than 84 people per sq. km in a space 23 times smaller than Canada. Unfortunately, we have another comparison with California: Judging Canada through a visit to BC is like judging the entire USA by visiting San Francisco for an afternoon.
My point here is that Canada's smaller population is spread out in distant communities. Americans are used to a more compact population and so have a difficult time understanding Canada's diversity and cultural isolation - or how it shapes our national character. Maybe Labash arrived in Canada the day when all three people in his square kilometer were behind a tree. Or we were all in Florida when he came up...
Labash's brief visit, combined with a few hours online looking for as many anti-Canadian quotes and statistics as he could use without being charged with plagiarism, Labash believes is sufficient for him to launch into considerable vitriol about Canada. He joins the ranks of American political hacks who see themselves as an authority on Canada, thanks to a brief visit or perhaps merely an encounter with a Canadian-made beer. Labash avoids even that, drinking only American spirits even when in another nation.
Had Labash bothered to look at source figures for crime statistics - say Stats Canadaand the FBI - he would not have chosen a secondhand quote from the Edmonton Sun to crow about Canada's "higher crime rate."
The actual numbers (something some writers appear loathe to examine since data might negatively colour their perspective), show Canada's rate for crimes per 100,000 population - admittedly higher than the US ratio (962 versus 475), but that's in part due to the way crimes are reported for data purposes. Canadian data includes all three levels of assault, for example, while American data only includes aggravated assault. We're a bit more anal about our statistics. But maybe in Canada common assault is still enough of a moral outrage we insist on listing it as a crime.
Look at violent crimes instead. In Canada, the ratio of homicides per 100,000 is 1.7; in the USA, according to the FBI, the rate is 5.7 - more than three times greater per 100,000. In 2003, Canada had 548 homicides (161 by firearms). That same year, the USA had 14,408 (9,638 by firearms).The ratio of murders by guns in the USA is 59 times greater than in Canada, on a per-capita basis. If the United States was only as violent as Canada, it would have 1,610 deaths by firearms nationwide. Instead it has 9,638.
Robbery is 142.6 per 100,000 in the USA and 89.6 in Canada. Maybe that's because we have less to steal. After all, how many hockey pucks and maple syrup bottles can anyone accumulate? You have to be really disingenuous to say Canada has more crime than the US. But maybe now the Cold War is ended, writers like Labash need a new place to use a little disinformation so it doesn't get out of style.
Sure, Canada sometimes deserves to be poked in its collective eye for its often morose, self-pitying whining about its fragile identity. We're pretty good at doing it to ourselves - the most popular Canadian TV shows are those that poke fun at ourselves and our politicians (This Hour has 22 Minutes, Royal Canadian Air Farce and anything Rick Mercer is involved with). We can laugh at ourselves. And we can laugh with others who make fun of us as well.
Labash, however, has none of the wit, verve or talent that, for example, P.J. O'Rouke brings to his writing. Labash just seems caustic, miserable and unfriendly. Perhaps a little jealous, too. After all, there are few memorable quotes in Labash's tirade, while O'Rourke has been immortalized by writing several quotable quips, including "Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen."
O'Rourke, at least, makes us laugh at ourselves, even when he is trouncing our most sacred icons. Like health care. O'Rourke once quipped, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free." Canadians laugh while nodding understanding heads. Health care is serious business up here, but that doesn't mean we don't have a certain black humour about it. And some of us thought the Conan O'Brien quip about doughnuts was funny, too (some Quebecois don't find any humour in jokes about their earnest secessionist politics, while even the word poutine can send other Canucks into unstoppable giggles...).
We're trying to improve our healthcare without giving up our beacon of universal care - and without becoming bankrupt in its preservation. We're a caring people and this is important to us. No, it isn't perfect, yes it has flaws. But most Canadians would rather have our medical system than the fee-for-service system in the US where quality medical care depends more on your bank account than on your need. Simply put, Canadians care about the welfare of other Canadians.
What Labash, Goldberg and other critics of Canada really don't understand is that Canada is another nation, wholly independent and different. We're not merely North Wisconsin, or Southern Alaska, or any other elongated extension of some border state. Americans often see Canada dimly displayed in the light of their own world, a fault they apply to Mexico too - and the rest of Latin America. Europe, too. Yeah, Asia, too. Middle East, too, of course...
Canadians are defensive about not being Americans because America is, most of the time, an overwhelming presence. It floods across the borders on TV, radio, the Internet, through magazines, newspapers, books, music, movies... sometimes being a Canadian is like swimming upstream against a raging torrent of American culture. So we're prone to be a bit snippy about it. Maybe unduly so, but we can also make fun of ourselves in the process - the Molson's "I am Canadian" ad that Labash called a "rant" was actually a clever lampoon of our national identity crisis. Even those of us Canadians who would never let that fermented cardboard taste pass our lips found the ad amusing. Of course, it was a TV commercial aimed at selling beer to young adults, not an official statement of cultural policy, a tiny fact Labash missed.
Quote
"Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced," said former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. "We're different people from you and we're different people because of you. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is effected by every twitch and grunt."
Labash makes a valid point that Canada's military is underfunded:
Quote
"...the Canadian military has become a shadow of itself."
We don't need a really big, strong military force because we usually don't invade anywhere or anyone (except Florida, but we do that in convoys of RVs and armies of grey-haired retirees). We need a better military; better equipped, better trained, and better funded, but not necessarily a bigger, stronger and more aggressive military. We're not going to pump up our military iron in order to help invade the next state that Bush thinks is thumbing its nose at him.
Labash also criticizes Canadians for being less religious than the US.
Quote
" ... theirs is a faithless country compared with America. Not just in terms of religious belief--though they are much less fervent."
But what Labash didn't see - and wouldn't in his short shopping-spree-visit - is that many Canadians are actively searching for spiritual answers, contemplating their personal philosophies and looking for answers outside traditional sources. The growth in spiritual groups, meditation groups, Buddhist and Hindu groups, Tai Chi and yoga shows we haven't lost our faith - merely transferred it to areas outside the limited census check boxes.
While Labash lambastes us for being faithless, he simultaneously criticizes us for maintaining tradition - faith, in other words - in our links to Britain through having the Queen as head of state. He's right that we didn't have a separate constitution until 1982, but he overlooks the British North America Act that sufficed for a century before that. Small oversight. He may be unaware that Canada did not become a nation through revolution but rather through consensus (and a little backroom politicking).
Canadians and Americans are cousins. We share a lot more in common than we have in differences. But that doesn't mean we have to agree with the US in every aspect of its foreign policy. And we do not under any circumstances have to laugh at Seinfeld or the Simpsons (even if the latter is written by a Canadian). And we understand America's need to misspell words like labour and colour just to prove it's not still a colony of Britain and thus requires its own dictionary.
Sure, Canadians can be too sombre, too serious too damn earnestly sincere in our analysis of our identity. So what? Call it cultural masturbation or simply navel-gazing. It's a harmless pastime, especially compared with, say, taking a rifle into the local high school to shoot your classmates.
In my experience, most Canadians don't think they're better than Americans, merely different. Very different, true, but that doesn't imply better. In the main, we like Americans, respect America and would rather have America as our neighbour than, say, Syria or Yemen (neither nation is particularly open to RVs filled with snowbirds traipsing across their roads, such as they are).
But that doesn't mean we have to be slavishly supportive, dedicated to American ideals and never critical of American culture or foreign policy. You're family, sure, and you have a bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger gun and a louder stereo than we do - but we still like our own little house and our own eccentric ways, and our cozy self-satisfaction, thank you anyway, Mr. Labash. But the next time you feel the urge to write about Canadians, feel free to give me a call... or any one of the 32 million of us up here.
