This issue was raised in one of the threads on the South Carolina shooting. I posted links that show that 20% of residents in Canada were foreign born as of the 2011 census. As well, our largest city, Toronto, hovers around 50% foreign born, one of the most diverse cities on the world.
The equivalent stat for the US was 14% foreign born, as of the 2010 census.
A poster from Ireland indicated that the foreign born stat there was 17%.
(Posting from my phone so can’t link to that thread, but it’s still active for anyone who wants to see the links.)
I’d need to see the actual breakdown. I’ve lived in Canada, and while I haven’t met every Canadian my own take is that ‘white’ people in Canada are mainly from Northern Europe, France and the UK, with most self identifying their ethnicity from France and the UK. ‘asian’ people in Canada were mainly self identified with China and parts of South East Asia, but mostly from China in my own experience. And the native tribes were mainly those tribes native to the area when European explorers arrived. To me, saying that 20% of Canadian’s is ‘foreign born’ doesn’t really say much about the actual diversity, nor do broad categories like ‘white’, ‘black’ and ‘asian’ or ‘hispanic’, since within those broad categories there can be a ton of diversity…or not that much, depending.
Yeah, this is my ‘gut’ feeling, having been to other countries and lived in the US. Maybe, when living in Canada I just didn’t get out enough to see the large eastern European population hiding under the ‘white’ label, or the equally large Italian or Spanish population. Maybe I just missed the large Indian or Middle Eastern population in Canada hiding under the generic ‘asian’ lable, or see the large diverse population from all over central and south America, the Caribbean, Cuba etc hiding under the ‘hispanic’ label. I guess I would be shocked if Canada was actually more diverse except when you look broadly at categories of people and not at the specifics that hide under those labels. Same with the other countries in your article there. Canada, of course, IS larger than Norway and also larger than the largest US city population wise…around as large as, say, California.
Ok, that’s a cool link and I’ll need to rethink what I thought I knew. I tried to do the same thing for the US but Wiki only has a page with a bunch of sublinks and doesn’t break it down the same way. I mainly lived in and around Ottawa when I was there, but I traveled a lot in Canada at least to the larger cities.
I would say you did miss them. Living in Ottawa, as I do, it should have been impossible to miss the large Lebanese, Somalian and Eastern European contingents.
Eta: though the Somalian immigration has been more of a phenomenon of the last 20 years, if you lived here before that.
Also, when we’re talking about diversity, in Canada there’s the significant fact that just under one quarter of the native born population speaks French as their native tongue; English and French are both official languages at the federal level; and the population of our second largest province is francophone, by a large majority, with constitutional guarantees.
As well, our First Nations and aboriginal populations have significant constitutional guarantees.
Diversity is part of Canada’s social, political and constitutional system in a way that does not exist in the US.
That excerpt in post #7 suggests a certain incoherence in this report’s methodology. The US is faulted on the one hand for being a duopoly but also faulted on the other hand for political participation by radical perspectives like OWS and the Tea Party.
Moreover, the report’s suggestions that “partisanship” (i.e., strong political views) and “popular disaffection with government” (i.e., dissent) are anti-democratic are – well, not everyone is going to share those views.
But this illustrates the point that divisions in society are contextual. In the United States, there’s no serious divide between people of French ancestry and people of English or German ancestry - they probably all consider themselves European-Americans. But in Canada, the divide between French-Canadians and Anglo-Canadians is a major issue.
Largely because a great number of Canadians of French ancestry speak French as their mother tongue, and that difference is foundational to Canada’s existence, in a way that people in the US who have a non-English mother tongue is not.
Well, yes, that was what I meant. Canada’s Senate’s de jure powers differ from its de facto powers, so in reality it’s mainly a delaying and amending chamber.
One can quiblle with the criteria, but the study does provide useful comparisons. It seems interesting that Iran and Saudi Arabia both rank very close to the bottom.
Comparing 2012 with 2014, Fiji was by far the biggest winner, with several other countries improving a lot, including Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Mali, Belarus, Tunisia. There were three huge losers over the same two-year period: Egypt, Libya, Thailand. Thailand, understandably, sunk from Flawed Democracy to Hybrid Regime. (I think, however, that there’s widespread sentiment here that governance has improved and corruption is waning.)
Over the 8-year period 2006-2014 the biggest winners are Tunisia, Bhutan, Libya; big losers include Russia, Ukraine, Madagascar, Gambia, Palestine.
Debate over the criteria, or the definition of “democracy,” would be interesting, but I find comments in the thread … odd. Although it may not be Webster’s definition, I think democracy implies equal access to justice, etc., things which are certainly not guaranteed by “majority rule.” Nitpicking things like electoral college versus popular vote is odd, but even worse is the claim that “popular disaffection with government” does not suggest poor democracy. An expected outcome of democracy is satisfaction with government; to assume the opposite is to take the upside-down Reaganite view … a view which, IMHO, has led America downward to increasingly bad (and “undemocratic”) governance.
I was looking for observations and comments such as yours, why some countries are ranked where they are rather than if the U.S is a real democracy and how it compares. Which is fine, people take away from this report based on their perspective.
Plus the U.S is among the small list of 24 countries with strong democracies, out of 170 nations. So it is doing well, can improve.
Of the Arab Spring nations, Tunisia has consistently been the strongest performer, it is now a Flawed Democracy, whereas four years ago it was an authoritarian regime.
Libya saddens me, overall it’s score has improved vastly since Muammar Gaddafi’s death. It had been a hybrid regime last report, but has slide down to the authoritarian regime section.
I blame this on the chaotic political situation, the country has two competing governments, an internationally recognized one based in Tobruk and other non recognized one in the capital Tripoli.
Hopefully a deal will be struck and political situation improves and the militias are reigned in. Libya did very well after Gaddafi’s demise.
Egypt I can understand, since the last ranking there was a coup against a democratically elected government.
Iraq seems to be doing not bad regionally, considering how violent a place it is and despite the ISIS onslaught. But the elections were good and it’s ranking has been consistent in the Hybrid section since 2006, with a slight increase in score. Hey it’s the only credit I will give to Bush, Iraq has not returned to Saddam Hussein style dictatorship despite all else going wrong.
I would have expected Nigeria to at least score in the Hybrid, but no it is still authoritarian. Who knows maybe next time with the recent successful elections for president, it will reflect on it’s future rankings.
