Canada Country
Canada CountryForegoing the meaningless description of Canada's geography and history, Canadian media and politicians are obsessed with the UnitedStatesOfAmerica and constantly compare Canada to it (see CanadaState). So it doesn't matter that Canada's taxes are ridiculously low when compared to the OECD (ie, when compared to Western European countries) they're still "too high" because they're higher than the USA's; this is especially so if a millionaire politician's opinion is concerned. Similarly, the government wishes Canada were like the USA by not having any usable health care plan, despite the fact that a few years ago the US government was talking about how it wants the USA to be like Canada.
This is why half the provincial governments and the federal government have defunded the public health care system, with predictable hospital closings and severe drops in the quality of health care, and now politicians are calling for the privatization of health care. Coincidence? Hardly. Defunding followed by PR work followed by privatization is a well-known and often-used tactic by Corporatocrats in power.
Allegedly, this was done because health care spending was "out of control", despite the fact that the only increasing part of health care costs was pharmaceuticals. Canada pays more than three times as much for drugs as Europe despite the fact that drug prices are government imposed; the government is deliberately handing money over to pharmaceutical corporations (most of which are American corporations at that). Furthermore, France has recently completed a comprehensive review of drugs covered by its national health plan and found that upwards of 90 percent of them are completely ineffective for their purported uses.
The Montreal Children's Hospital has a list of three dozen or so drugs which are produced in-house. Doctors are forbidden to prescribe anything else. Needless to say, its drug costs are a thousandth of what they would be, and the hospital is ostracized for it.
Health care is far too important to be controlled by the government or the state.
Canada's government just got re-elected for a second time despite doing such things as getting Canada to (we should probably categorize them):
Exception has been taken to several of the following claims. Discussion of these has been moved to the bottom of the page.
Contrary to the UN's vapid rating, Canada is not the "best place to live". At least, we better hope not because it would be a sad reflection on the world otherwise. Two countries that are clearly better off are Sweden and the Netherlands, though in environmental matters any country in Western Europe is vastly superior. Canada is in an unstoppable spiral of degradation whereas many other countries are at least potentially reformable. France has many of the same problems Canada has, as well as some problems which Canada doesn't have, but it also has the necessary infrastructure (the culture of solidarity and citizen participation) in place to solve these problems. Throughout the 90s, Canada's voter participation has declined until it has now reached US levels.
Canada has a CorporateGovernment like the UnitedStatesOfAmerica. Canada is better than New Zealand (whose economy went into meltdown after the right-wingers got done with it) but if I recall correctly worse than Australia (which still has a participatory democracy).
Since comparison with the UnitedStatesOfAmerica is so important to Canada, it has to be granted that Canada:
Claims that have been challenged:
...the second biggest producer of biological and chemical agents on the planet (the first is the USA)
Please identify where biological/chemical research for destructive purposes is being performed. Development of such agents is illegal in Canada, and would be extremely difficult to cover up.
Canada makes chemical and biological agents (one step away from "weapon") on the dubious grounds that it takes expertise in manufacturing these agents in order to create counter-agents, and that such expertise is critical even though by far the biggest producer of these weapons/agents is the USA, a supposedly friendly country. Canada researches biological and chemical weapons in an Alberta research facility "for the sake of Canadian-American cooperation". -- rk
[Tangential discussion leading to conclusion that said establishment is NOT Defense Research Establishment Suffield (DRES) removed...]
In that case, I do not mean DRES. I refer to the facility which has recently (past couple of years) produced the only all-purpose antidote to many chemical agents. That seems to be a lot more involved than what you describe happens at DRES.
Does this facility have a name? Be specific. "In an Alberta research facility" cannot be verified.
...one of the biggest arms traders on the planet
Yeah, maybe, sure. I think we rank about tenth, behind the U.S., Russians, China, Britain, France, Germany, and a few others. Of course, this also depends on the criteria used to assess "biggest". Arms production is one of those areas where being tenth overall means you have next to no marketshare on a percentage basis.
As for Canada's brisk trade on the international arms market, it's a good thing I didn't remember exact numbers because I can't find them now. But exact numbers are hardly necessary:
Project Censored Canada: 1995, #8 'Family Entertainment' at Canada's Arms Bazaar http://newswatch.cprost.sfu.ca/pcc/95-8.html
[main objection in this section (timber) has been resolved. A couple of quick notes are left. Feel free to delete, as they're off the cuff and not important. I just know you'll have a counteropinion, and I'm eager to hear it... I'm largely ignorant of economic theory, regardless of its left wing or right wing source. My specialty is aircraft wings...]
I don't know of any prosperous country that got that way through raw exports.
Kuwait, Brunei???
Isn't Canada a prime example of a country that became relatively prosperous due to its raw exports? We haven't always had Nortel Networks and the like to pump up the economy. Grain, lumber, and minerals have always been the backbone of the economy.
I'd forgotten about this point. The reply is rather involved. To begin with, I did consider Canada as a counter-example but I'd have to know a lot more about Canadian conditions in the past in order to contradict a general rule of economic history. Aside from the countries under the auspices of the IMF who are assured that exporting their resources is the way to go, and bankrupt themselves following that advice, there is the history of Merchantilism and industrial development.
Merchantilism was the practice of colonial powers of restricting (through patents and other monopolies) their colonies' economies to producing raw resources only, which they would export to the home country so that they could manufacture goods to ship back to the colony. Through the application of power, the raw resources were made cheap while the manufactured goods stayed expensive, leading to extreme profits. Adam Smith wrote The Wealth Of Nations as an attack on merchantilism, not as support of capitalism (The Wealth Of Nations is favourably quoted by Marx in Das Kapital), and argued that if the use of force were not in the equation then a vastly more equitable arrangement would follow. One of the most famous examples of merchantilism at work is Calcutta, once the foremost textile manufacturing centre on the planet, destroyed through deliberate policy decisions made by Britain. There is an inverse relation between the length of the British occupation and the impoverishment of Indian regions.
The countries that have developed in the past half-millennium, have done so by radically violating the dictates of the rich nations. The Asian countries all did it by being authoritarian and corrupt. Russia did it under the Bolsheviks and Stalin. It's easy to forget how badly off Russia was under the Czars but it had no industrialization (Russian royalty had learned very well from the fate of their French cousins) and still had serfhood (which was only officially illegal); keeping Russia medieval was a deliberate policy decision. And the UnitedStatesOfAmerica itself did it by completely ignoring all patents which Britain tried to impose (which explains the original Copyright Act).
This makes total sense, as the foreign policy of rich nations is always directed towards keeping them rich, which means keeping the rest of the nations poor.
In modern times, Canada has been prosperous, but until recently it also had an explicit industrial policy. So we have to look further back, at least as far back as WWII and ask to what extent Canada has depended on export of natural resources and was it prosperous? I don't know and I'll have to research it or leave it to someone who knows better. Another possibility suggests itself: could we have been spared the nefarious effects of merchantilism by a benevolent colonial power? It is undoubtable that Canada and Australia fared better than India at least partly because we're white. Bigotry has always been, and still remains, an important factor in political economics. -- rk
So is the entire lumber industry for that matter. Timber companies do not create "jobs", they create profits. If we want to create jobs in the timber industry then ban the use of heavy machinery entirely. This has the effect of changing it from a capital intensive to a labour intensive industry (so more human beings and fewer capitalists benefit)...
My company sells diagnostic software - primarily for aerospace, but also for heavy industry and medical. Just this week, I had a meeting with a potential client who manufactures construction and farming equipment. I can easily point you to thousands of equipment sales reps, mechanics and operators who would lose their livelihood if such a thing happened. Very few of them will wish to pick up an axe in exchange.
I can also point you to many Canadians who would be unhappy with the skyrocketing price of their houses, cereal boxes, and newspapers once the paycheques of the large and inefficient (compared to machinery) timber workforce gets factored into the cost of forestry products.
You can't get something for nothing. If you employ more people, you have to pay them. Prices will go up. And if you employ them inefficiently, prices will go up even further.
That's right, there is always a trade-off. In the current situation, the trade-off we're making is the environment and the economy. The manufacturing of timber cutting equipment doesn't make up for the lack of timber-related jobs. And people in heavy industry are more movable (to other parts of heavy industry) than people in the raw timber industry.
As for prices rising; if Canada wants to continue to subsidize the usage of wood products (as it currently does) then it can do so explicitly.
...have worse environmental regulations than the USA; and getting worse all the time since the right-wingers in power have defunded all social services, including pollution monitoring and control.
Hey! We agree on something!
support (then-)President Suharto of Indonesia despite his atrocious human rights record.
Yeah, that's pretty shameful. Look at the big picture, though, Canada's squeaky clean compared to most. Contrast with
A nation will always put the interests of its own citizens over all others, to the extent that they can do so without causing moral outrage. It's called Realpolitik, and nations of all political persuasions play that game.
Realpolitik is more than that; it's also the doctrine that such a thing is rational and justifiable. I've argued "are people selfish?" many times before and it's a waste of time. However, where selfish/selfless is hard to maintain, empathy/projection (two basic psychological categories) is very easy to defend. If you view Realpolitik as saying "all nations are selfish" then because selfish/selfless is so ambiguous, it would be hard for me to argue against it. But if you view Realpolitik as saying "all nations are unempathic/projective then that's pretty easy to disprove.''
Canada's actions on the international stage are not based on any empathy but projection. The land mines may be an exception, an action denoting genuine empathy, but consider the difference between Canada's aggressive stance on arctic pollutants versus its sabotaging of climate control efforts. Support of the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia and the massacre of Iraq also qualify as projection at best (there are much worse things than projection).
You compare Canada to other world powers but as you note yourself, Canada is not a world power. A much better comparison pits Canada against other medium-sized countries like Sweden and the Netherlands. When you compare Canada with the Scandinavian nations, it looks like Canada took a trip through a sewer. Almost all other medium-sized countries are underdeveloped and so uncomparable. Israel is arguably comparable and Canada comes out favourably. Switzerland; favourably. Italy; I don't think you can compare since the CIA has supported the Fascists in Italy since the end of World War II. Greece; I don't know and I don't know that it's comparable. Australia and New Zealand are also comparable but since they're both also Anglo-American nations they're pretty much like Canada. -- rk
These comparisons sound a lot like a political spectrum (and that underdeveloped countries are immediately incomparable doesn't help). If all we're going by is the immediate consequences of that, then shouldn't it suffice to say "Canada is on the left for the US, center for itself, and the right in general"?
have more than half its milk supply tainted with growth hormones; happy drinking kids!
How much influence does chemical farming, genetic engineering, etc. have on the Canadian food supply, relative to other industrialized nations? I honestly don't know and would be interested in learning more.
Western Europe's food supply and environmental protection laws are in a class by themselves. They are as squeaky clean as possible. Western Europe is the only entity which has accepted the "precautionary principle" which says that chemicals have no rights and that they are guilty until proven innocent.
The Canadian meat supply is probably still better than the USA's. I remember that Canada basically eliminated all poultry inspections as a consequence of NAFTA.
(details in this paragraph undoubtedly wrong) And the people who claimed that bovine growth hormones don't raise human hormone levels much beyond human normal were wrong; they overestimated normal human hormone levels by a factor of ten.
Canada is better than New Zealand... worse than Australia (which still has a participatory democracy).
[discussion of minimum wage deleted. I have it saved if you want it back.]
When did we repeal democracy in Canada?
To the extent that any Anglo-American country is democratic, Australia is a lot more democratic than Canada. They have 80, 90% voter participation. We have ~50%. Granted, that's a new development.
(I feel I should mention here the relevant fact that Australia employs mandatory voting, thus apathy is kept in a kind of check by a big stick.. -mma)
Ok, I get it. You're not actually claiming that Canada is not a democratic country. You're really claiming that Canada is a democratic country populated by apathetic voters. There's a world of difference between those two statements!! I wholeheartedly agree with you that Canadians should show more interest in the activities of their government. If you want to clarify the original statement, we can remove this entire "democratic/undemocratic" debate. Woohoo!
:-) I'll have to disappoint you since I don't see any difference. Democracy doesn't mean a country has elections, nor even that everybody participates wisely and knowledgeably in the election process. It means the country follows the will of the people. And that's not achieved by elections, it's achieved by the people going out into the streets by the millions, shutting down the economy and burning the leader in effigy. France is democratic. Britain is not. They both elected the exact same politician (Tony Blair and Lionel Jospin are "third way" clones) but only one of them ever tried to deliver on his campaign promises. The last time Canada performed a democratic action was probably the formation of the CCF(?) and public health care. Reform's emergence is astroturf, not grass-roots.
Careful, your anarchism is showing... my dictionary defines democracy as "Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives". Heck, I've tried to elect a representative twice in the last month (only had a 50% success rate, but hey, that's democracy for you).
People shutting down the economy and burning the leader in effigy is not democracy. It's hooliganism and an attempt to exert influence through intimidation rather than rational debate and persuasion.
Intimidation of whom exactly? I think you have the wrong impression of mass demonstrations. The purpose of mass demonstration, general strikes and burning of effigies isn't to blackmail the country into doing what some special group wants. The purpose of these actions is to blackmail the government into doing what the people want; what a small group wants desperately and what almost everyone else is quite willing to go along with (if they weren't so willing, you'd have a riot, not a demonstration; see http://www.visa2003.com/ins-uscis.htm). And since in a representative democracy the government is supposed to represent the people, "influence through intimidation" is perfectly legitimate (as long as it gets the job done).
Politics isn't a game of the progressives versus the regressives, it's a game of the government versus the people. "rational debate and persuasion" is something that should take place among the people, it has no place in the government-public relationship. Democracy means that relationship is delimited by "we command and they obey". If the only way to achieve the proper command-obey relationship is through intimidation, veiled or open death threats, then so be it.
The problem, both semantically and in Canadian politics, is that Canadians just assume that government represents them and they confuse parts of society with parts of government. Well, the government doesn't represent the people and parts of government are wholly alien to society; any part of government that represents the corporations represents /no/ part of society.
My best guess is that most of the Canadian population is leftist (ie, concerned with justice and caring neither for capitalism nor the free market) even if they don't explicitly identify themselves as such; where are the major left wing parties? There aren't any in Canada. There is exactly one major party in Canada that aims to represent the people (not left-wing, just dedicated to democracy, to the political centre), and that's the NDP. The NDP is only social-democratic (ie, democratic) and not actually socialist.
I think most Canadians are average guys who lead modest but comfortable lives and are content to go with the status quo. They want to preserve the social safety net, but also keep taxes as low as possible. They aren't politically aware. They vote for middle-of-the-road parties like the Liberals or the Conservatives.
The average Canadian isn't politically savvy enough to equate leftism with justice, as you do. He equates leftism with "more taxes". End of story.
And that makes no sense. The NDP is for less taxes, for the poor and middle class. It's for "a lot more taxes" on the rich only. And somehow, I doubt most Canadians care how much taxes the rich pay.
I read a nice article on Trudeau a while back and the central theme was that Trudeau constantly spoke about "a just nation". I think that's why Canadians think the Liberals are left-wing; Trudeau was.
Consider that if the Canadian government represented the people then half the seats in Parliament would currently be sitting vacant. And if voter apathy increased much more then it wouldn't be able to get a quorum and Parliament would have to shut down.
The current government is distorted due to the vote-splitting influence of the Reform Alliance, resulting in a disproportionate number of seats for the Liberals. The popular vote tells the tale.
If you include the distorting influence of the media, the majority of Canadians who did not vote at all, and the absence of any left-wing parties. :-)
And you're right that my Anarchism is showing but Anarchism has a long and close relationship with democratic ideas. And I think that's a lot more politics than you wanted to get into.
Yep.
And unfortunately, none of this can be expressed in a bullet point since the ideas are complex and unfamiliar to most people. -- rk
Yep. I'm definitely over my head. But it's interesting. Despite considering myself to be slightly right-of-center, I find myself agreeing with you more than I thought I would. I'm glad that you turned down the volume and that I didn't flip the bozo bit.
Most people are left-wing, even those who think they're right-wing. :-) A central idea of Anarchism (there are no Anarchist political parties) is direct action (starting cooperatives, getting rent controls, et cetera) so that questions of left and right never come up in the first place.
Most left-wingers just define right-wingism as belief in the free market and/or capitalism but I think that a charitable definition of right-wingism would be "belief in fair process" instead of 'fair outcome'. There are just two complications:
...is still an atheist state (despite official ties to various Christian churches) and likely to remain that way.
Which official ties to you refer to? The Durham Act that enshrines Roman Catholic schools in Upper Canada and Protestant schools in Quebec? That was enacted many decades ago to protect the rights of minority groups in each province. Local governments would have banned them outright otherwise.
Yup, that's what I'm referring to. Islamic schools did not and will not get federal funding. And that's a good thing.
The influence of the Catholic church is balanced by the United and Anglican churches. Also, nowadays, other groups have begun exerting force on the population. Consider that in ten years, the white, Christian, European population will be less than half the populace.
So the Religious Right won't rise to power in Canada like they did in the US?
Well, given the general belief that Stockwell Day had a hidden agenda based on his Fundamentalist beliefs, the general lack of the Reform Alliance to gain ground outside the West, and a definite correlation between those two facts, I'd say it's a safe bet that Canada won't be switching to the Religious Right any time soon.
...As for my claims in general, I'm making them from memory. Almost all of them are things which any Canadian even nominally plugged into alternative media should know by now. It will take quite a bit of time to research them, I couldn't even find an arms trade story that gave explicit rankings despite remembering reading one a while back, but if you insist I'll do so after New Year's. -- rk
Well, before making a controversial claim, you should be prepared either to defend it or retract it. Your choice...
I know, but until Wiki I hadn't participated in a forum where it was worth defending my claims. Having time wash away everything on Usenet is seriously discouraging. It will take some time to get a decent base of news clippings.
By the way, I kept up with the alternative media while studying at U of T. Read "The Varsity" and "Now" every week for three years. Gave up on it in fourth year due to (a) workload and (b) growing skepticism that the world was really such a conspiratorial place. Haven't missed it since...
Your choice. Some alternative media are conspiratorial and I try to stay away from those. I still believe in Chomsky's theory of the media.
I believe all points of contention below have been addressed. I have removed my own responses where they aren't instructive or the basis of other comments. -- rk
Richard, can you please now support many of your claims with references? Please try to look beyond the borders of Ontario. Hull does not count.
Your narrow viewpoint re: the States does not characterize Canada completely. We are still greatly influenced by Britain (though not France surprisingly). Once again, other countries are now beginning to have influence here. For instance, Chinese culture, which is making an impact in almost every part of the world these days. -- anon
If anything, I'm for Quebec separatism. Quebec is quite a bit more left-wing than the rest of Canada and if they separate then the right-wingers will take power and Canada's economy will collapse like every other economy where the right-wingers took power. And then the English speaking Canadians will look at the functioning leftist Quebec economy and lynch the corporatocrats. Well, I can always dream!
The difference between Quebec and English-speaking Canada is that Quebec is influenced by France where Socialism isn't a dirty word while the rest of Canada is influenced by the country that gave the world the likes of Thatcher. Keynes is still relevant today; Tax and Spend works, damnit! -- rk
You're not telling me you forgot all about that "suspicious Chinese man" who was cornered in an empty streetcar by Toronto metro police and shot dead because he was reaching for his "weapon" which turned out to be a hammer? That's a clear case of execution-style murder right there. Which side of the APEC fiasco are you on anyways?
Canada's immigration policies are somewhat more open than those in Europe, albeit mainly to those with money. However, I don't know too much about the details of these. How advanced, if at all, is Canada in this respect?
At least to get in to Canada there is a point-based system that is open for all to see and take advantage of. You have to be able to speak one of the two languages fluently. Compare this with the UK, where there is no points system and therefore no selection of the most suitable immigrants. And speaking English is not a prerequisite. Canada has a successful policy of immigration because it selects people who will benefit the country rather than the UK which accepts anyone who wants their benefits!
Last I heard, anyone willing to come to Canada and invest $500k there was essentially given a Canadian passport. The figure used to be $250k, but was increased in connection with the exodus from Hong Kong at the time of the handover to the Chinese.
Canada, home of:
EditText of this page
(last edited November 4, 2010)
or FindPage with title or text search