Canadians! Americans! Convince me why I should/shouldn't become a citizen of Canada

In My Humble Opinion
1

Like many, I, too am disillusioned since our recent presidential election. I have already been thinking of leaving my country prior to the elections, but they certainly made my feelings stronger. Being an atheist and someone who thinks sex and naked bodies are a beautiful thing, I am feeling persecuted - my feedoms being infringed upon. I am a liberal and somewhat of a socialist, and I think I am like-minded to the Canadian way of thinking.

I think I would like to move to and become a citizen of Canada. I will be graduating with my PhD in geology in 2 years. Tell me, will I like Canada? I think I will like Canada (apart from the temperature), but perhaps I am just seeing the grass in Canada through green-colored glasses. Will I find a job? Will people accept me? Will I be happy with the government?

I ask you, the Canadian or American citizen, to tell me why you like your country and/or why you do not.

Thanks.

2
  1. It’s cold up there.
  2. They put cheese and gravy on french fries.
  3. Canadians can be just as intolerant, narrowminded and parochial as people in the US. They’re just more polite about it.
3

Will that Geology PhD allow you to do oil and gas work, 'cus if so, you could move to Alberta, make bazillions of dollars, pay lower taxes (than in the rest of the country), marry your girlfriend (it will happen soon folks), and be close enough to the Rockys to ski on weekends.

Of course, you’re not allowed to back heat, you’ll be force-fed poutine, maple syrup and back bacon and you must watch hockey, and like it, or you’ll get the boot.

Also, a fondness for mucklucks wouldn’t hurt.

4

Uh, pack heat. Pack heat folks.

That other thing sounds sort of dirty…

5

I have lots of reasons to like my country, but I’ll answer the OP title directly; You shouldn’t leave your country over the result of the election because you’d end up having to leave any democracy you lived in.

Canada is a great country. It’s wealthy, peaceful, and there’s lots to do. It’s impossible to say for sure what you’d find here because this is a very big country with a lot of diversity; living in Vancouver is not the same as living in Toronto, and living in Riviere-du-Loup is not the same as living in Brandon. It’s akin to saying “what’s it like to live in the USA?” - it’s different depending on whether you live in Manhattan, San Diego, or Brainerd. Canada is not perfect, it is not 100% liberal, it’s very conservative in some ways and very progressive in others, just like most places.

Whatever your politics, I think you should bear in mind that like most people, 99.5% of your life ISN’T about politics, it’s about going to work and shopping for groceries and spending time with your friends and family and watching TV and paying the electric bill. You might find that all liberal politics in the world (and bear in mind you would be living in a country in which you had no say in its governance for at least a number of years) will be outweighed by the irritation of not being close to any members of your family, or finding that you picked the wrong city to live in and can’t find a job, or you hate your new neighborhood. If you move to a province like Quebec or B.C. you might find the high taxes drive you insane. Moving to another country is every bit a pain in the ass as moving cross-the-same-country, except twice as much.

By the way, if you’re thinking we have more sex and naked bodies, think again.

6

I would have thought, given the average temperature around these parts, this would have been a no-brainer…

:smiley:

7

Dammit Rick, I was going to post something about perspective. It would have been very clever, I swear. But you come along and post everything that needs to be said.

8

It’s a well known secret that everyone who lives in Canada is eventually eaten by a moose.

9

Posting a thread like this gives ammunition to those who might say: “The Democrats are ill-equipped to govern, because look at their reaction when they lose an election!”

Actually moving to Canada in response to an election would, of course, give even more ammunition to that viewpoint. And it also would deprive the Democrats of a vote they may badly need in 2006.

10

Those who might say that might be very stupid, since the Democrats who are even considering governing aren’t the ones talking about moving to Canada, and so this is an irrelevant attack on the Democratic party.

Of course, those who might say that might just be looking for yet another way to snipe at the party, and might not be concerned with whether their statements are remotely reasonable.

If only we know who those people might be.

Daniel

11

You shouldn’t move to Canada because it’s better to go down fighting.

That said, I’m sure Canada is a fine country to live in. The reasons I wouldn’t want to live there include hate-speech laws, monarchy, and more socialism than we have down here. You may be fine with those things. But still, I think you should stay and fight, because there are still ways to make a difference here.

12

Everyone is assuming the the OP is an “American”. Perhaps she’s just someone who happens to live in America, not really identifying with the country, and disheartened by the direction the country is going in. If this is the case, then moving away is a perfectly acceptable response.

If someone left Detroit because of rising street crime, do you criticize them for giving up on the city?

The monarchy has never ever, not once in my life, come down here, and told me to turn the music down. It’s a non-issue.

I love living in Canada, the politics here are going down hill a bit, but still, IMO, far better than you’ve got there. The public health care, from everything myself and my extended family has experienced, is in good shape. And the land is beautiful, and there is lots of it. I can go on a 10 day canoe trip, and not see a single other person the whole time.

13

Well, I think its kind of silly to leave the US just because your candidate lost an election. But thats your choice not mine.

FWIW, here’s my perspective on Canada as a US citizen who lived there for 2 years. I lived in Ottawa btw.

I loved it up there. The people were nice and friendly…and I like the snow since I was never exposed to it that much having been born in Mexico and living most of my youth in the South West. The prices on things when I lived there were high for the Canadian’s, though I got a break because of the exchange rate. You can buy Cuba cigars and really good beer too (and some very good single malt Scotches as well imported from the UK or even locally made). The food was less varied but probably healthier. THere are still McDonalds and Taco Bells though if you feel you must. :slight_smile:

Some of the downsides were…it was fricking cold. If the cold doesn’t bother you though this won’t be an issue. The prices on everything were quite a bit higher than in the US (again, this might have changed by now). The appartment my company rented for me, while expensive, was quite a bit smaller than I was used too in the states.

Also, once you get to really make friends among the Canadians you’ll learn that they bitch and complain about THIER government and each other nearly as much as we do…albiet with a really cool accent. Especially keep your eyes pealed for the French/English endless wrangle (though this might have changed since I was there)…it was a constant bitch point.

All in all you will probably like it fine up there (if you can actually get in that is…with your degree though you shouldn’t have much trouble). But then again there are plenty of places you’d fit in just as well in the US. Have you looked into the North Western states for instance? Or the North Eastern ones? Plenty of folks with your same political philosophy who also get naked together (unlike the red states where folks sleep in separate single beds and only scrump for procreation)…assuming that being near people of opposing political philosophy makes you ill or something. You are in for a shock going to Canada though…I met plent of folks I found conservative. And not a few who actually talked about becoming American’s. :wink:

-XT

14

That’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

Not wanting to live in Canada because of “hate speech laws” is precisely like not wanting to live in the United States because the FCC fined someone over the Janet Jackson thing, or because of the law in Washington that says you can’t buy a mattress on Sunday.

The so-called “hate speech” law, if anything, has substantially LESS aggregate impact on the freedom of Canadians than the FCC does on Americans. (The “monarchy,” such as it is since it’s not actually the sort of monarchy where the monarch is actually in charge of anything, is even less important.) It’s simply an issue of no importance whatsoever, like complaining that you don’t like the colors on Finland’s flag. What would impact your life if you were to live in a specific country (or another place in your own country) are things like:

  • Jobs
  • Taxes
  • Public order
  • Safe roads
  • The appearance of the place you were to live in
  • Language
  • Weather
  • Shopping
  • Food
  • Cost of living
  • If you have kids, public education
  • Proximity to relatives

In other words, stuff that actually impacts you every day. Why people rate a place to live based on something that will never, ever affect them, like a law that’s maybe been enforced ten times in history and is quite specifically used to prohibit behaviour by real nutjobs that would be illegal almost anywhere anyway, baffles me. What does it matter? You’re worrying about 0.01% of the human experience in defiance of the other 99.99%.

What DOES matter is if you can find a paying job or if you can’t stand heat or can’t stand snow, or if you hate congestion or hate the country, or if being a thousand miles from any family or friends would be too much of a burden on you.

15

Because then you’d be kind of a hoser, eh?

:smiley:

16

Before you give too much consideration for leaving the US you ought to find out if Canada would want you. AFAIK they won’t grant permenent citizenship to anyone who wants it; there’s some sort of check list that helps you calculate your chances for acceptance. I believe those can be found on this page under skilled workers and business class.

17

You sounded like a future Canadian citizen until your last sentence. If elections affect you to this degree than moving won’t fix your problem.

If you find the Canadian life style more to your liking then move. They got rocks in Canada too. If it makes you happy then those of us stuck in the lower 48 will be happy for you.

18

I think RickJay has done a superb job of summing things up and answering your second question in the quote.

As for your questions about “will I like the government,” why not judge for yourself? Many Canadian newspapers and media sources are online; why not read them daily and see what the Canadian political news is? Find out what columnists of all political stripes are saying, and discover the views of the average Canadian in the media sources’ online forums or Letters-to-the Editor. In the spirit of RickJay’s post about daily life, you can check the classifieds, find out about jobs, see what housing prices are like, and notice how the monarchy isn’t involved in our daily affairs. :slight_smile: We have all kinds of media, on both sides of the political spectrum, so you should be able to get a taste of “who thinks what” and see for yourself whether you’d be happy with life here.

True, you may not get much if any Canadian news in your local paper; and certainly, events here are rarely reported by any American TV network, but if you can access the Internet, you can certainly access the Canadian media to learn more about us and the issues that concern us. Then, you can decide for yourself.

19

According to Ebert’s recent “Movie Answer Man” article, crime is double in Canada.

Here’s the full quote:

20

With my bona fides out of the way, I would reiterate what others have said: don’t move to Canada over the election. Canada, shockingly enough, has elections, too. Sometimes, I am given to understand, the Conservatives win. Hell, apparently sometimes the NDP wins, so anything can happen.

The reason to move to Canada, as far as I was concerned, was that it is full of Canadians. Granted, I moved to Toronto, which is not, technically speaking, full of Canadians by birth per se, but there are lots of Canadians here.

The difference is real, but it’s hard to quantify. A friend said this about Canadians: “In America, things are ‘as American as apple pie and baseball’. In Canada, things are ‘as Canadian as possible under the circumstances.” America has lots of resounding mottoes; the best I’ve ever heard for Canada is “We will fight to the death for our right to remain irrelevant”. David Sedaris said that no country’s motto is “We’re number two”; he’s never been to Canada, apparently.

The point isn’t that Canadians aren’t proud of being Canadian. It is that they all, to a greater or lesser degree, come across the way RickJay does: forthright and reasonable while neither self-deprecating nor self-aggrandizing. In a message where I asked about moving to Toronto (before it became trendy, I might add), he pointed out that it was not an urban paradise. He said this about one of the cities the UN frequently recognizes as one of the top in the world in which to live (although it has recently slipped a little). That sort of attitude is, in my experience, typical of Canadians. It is jarring and strange after listening to the shrill jingoism and patriotism of Americans.

That doesn’t mean that Canadians aren’t proud of their country. Books in the library written by Canadian authors have maple leafs on their spines. One gets tired of hearing “He’s Canadian, eh?” when a writer or actor comes up (one quickly learns to respond “So’s William Shatner”). Canadians are generally proud of their country as opposed to what it could be; Americans are proud of their country as compared to the rest of the world.

One of America’s world views, if you will, is the somewhat nebulous idea of “Freedom”. America is, or seeks to be, the Land of the Free. Canada, by contrast, has as a motto “…and good government”. I want to stress that RickJay is correct, that 99.9% of the time, politics really aren’t going to have that much of an impact in your life. That said, the underlying philosophy is an important distinction. As an example, consider the firearms ownership debate. In the US, the issue is whether or not one has the deity given right to own a gun. In Canada, the question itself seems to be phrased differently; something more along the lines of “would it be good public policy for people to have less or more restricted access to firearms?” I’m using that as an example: Canada’s public policy is more dictated by utilitarian, rather than purely idealistic, goals. The hate speech debate alluded to in this thread is another example. In the US, hate speech runs up against First Amendment restrictions. Here, no part of the Charter is considered more important than any other, and as a result, hate speech is forbidden without violating the Charter, on public policy grounds. That doesn’t mean that Canada’s system is better, or that they don’t make boneheaded decisions; it means that the world view is different in a subtle but important way.

There are BIG and, to me, completely incomprehensible regional animosities. I have been told by residents of Toronto that Vancouver is a dangerous, drug-infested hell hole (it is not, just for the record). I have been told that residents of Quebec will simply refuse to speak to you. Alberta seems to be considered part of the US. Nova Scotia is currently under a lot of snow, so I’ll ignore them at the moment.

Canadians are, generally, friendly, out going and accepting people. I find I fit in here (although I am none of those things). If that works for you, cool, but that’s the reason to move, not because of the election. It is a good place, but far from perfect.

I would point out that the ability to equivocate as I do here is apparently extremely Canadian. Must be the water or something. Anyway, I’m missing “This Hour…” so I’ll post this and get ripped apart by the real Canadians around here.