The simplest is: Canada, like America but with healthcare.
You can’t change lines if you’re called for icing … and don’t even think of wearing number 99 on your jersey …
I remember watching an international game between Canada and some country that had little hope of winning; one of the players was wearing 99. The announcers were somewhere between bemused and offended.
A quote like that says it all when Americas ask typically purblind questions like the OP’s. There are countless Canadian studies programs at U.S. campuses ranging from UA Anchorage to Harvard to UC Berkeley.
Canadians are long used to the fact that Americans are literally the most insular people on earth, with vanishingly little understanding of or perspective on the wider world, other nations’ place in it, and the U.S.'s diminishing role. As Canadians we’re used to responding with a polite eyeroll.
Purblind is assuming I’m American. I’m English and actually have a great fondness for both Canada and the US.
C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?
aww…dammit…why did ya have to ruin my joke? 
I really, really wanted to believe that it was true–because, ya know,it just seems so plausible.
Because, you’re right: Americans really are
That’s a common joke, and it contains a grain of truth because it tries to express the idea of very similar cultures but with this one big difference that seems so alien to the American sociopolitical zeitgeist.
But I think it’s a trivialization that hides deeper if somewhat nuanced truths. Public universal health care in Canada isn’t a random anomaly but an outgrowth of subtle but important underlying sociopolitical differences: a greater faith in government, and a social cohesiveness that places greater value on a peaceful and just society than on individualism. Compared to the US, Canada is, for the most part, unabashedly liberal with elements of traditional conservatism, while the US is a blend of liberalism, both economic and social conservatism, and strong libertarianism. Those differences may in a sense be nuanced but they run deep and through long history, resulting in big differences today in things like gun culture and general attitudes to government, taxation, and regulation.
To say that aboriginal people in Canada have received short end of the stick would be a gross understatement. A better analogy would be call it a colonial club with which they have been beaten for generations. Last week the Algonquins of Ontario erected and occupied a tipi on Parliament Hill (the front lawn of our Houses of Parliament) to protest the Indian Act and assert their sovereignty.
Here’s a news vid of what took place: CTV News Channel: 'We need to have space for you' | CTV News .
This short news video illustrates both the best and the worst of Canada. When you learn of the Canadian horrors of residential schools, missing and murdered indigenous women, disproportionate poverty, disproportionate health, disproportionate education, and cultural assimilation, it is all true. Every tragic piece of it.
But when you hear of such Canadian touchstones as founding peoples, regionalism, multi-cultural mosaic, identity, toleration, compromise, and our constitutionally entrenched peace order and good government, these too are all true, and are why we are both willing and able to move forward in removing inequities.
Despite our complex social and economic problems, we want all of us to live to our fullest, so we continue to build our living tree constitution with the tools of progressive interpretation, accommodation and the addressing of the realities of modern life, and we govern ourselves accordingly.
That’s what being nice is about. That is what being a Canadian is aboot.
Not a debate.
I’ll send it to IMHO, although I suspect it would be as appropriate in MPSIMS.
Too bad you didn’t put it in The Pit, so I could say what I really wanna say.
So I’ll go with Smug and Pretentious.
And poutine.
So Mexico’s America’s necktie?
If they’re lucky…
It’s their native land in the True North that is glorious and free. I carries the sword and cross, and defends their rights and home. And so they will stand guard and protect it.
O Canada.
And better beer.
Someone unfriended me on Facebook when I joked that Canada day entailed people going around, saying “hey… hey… hey…” to each other. Just sharing.
I’m sorry you feel that way.
Sure we’ve heard it, but that’s not the “meaning” of the U.S. And as Nava said above, I don’t expect “nations to have meanings, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
Now, I realize you don’t speak English quite right, being from England, 
but surely you can come with a more accurate term for what you’re getting at. In this context, “meaning” is — well, meaningless.
True, Canadian mass-produced shitty beer is still arguably better than American mass-produced shitty beer, but craft and microbreweries have set us free. Hallelujah!
Canada: It’s where I say I’m from when I’m traveling in places unfriendly to the US. That’s aboot it, and I can “eh” with the best of them when need be!