IMHO, what Canada means by being bilingual is that they are officially bilingual – that any government service is or can be made available in either language, that you may complete any duty you may owe to the government (e.g., jury duty, witness at trial, swearing out of complaint, etc.) in either language.
Other than New Mexico and Puerto Rico, Spanish is not official in the U.S. Because of our rather large Spanish-speaking minority many services are in fact made available in it in many areas – but nobody has a right to use it or to expect anyone to provide them with services in it. (This may vary according to what specific states have legislated to ensure public services are available to those people. But English is the standard language of the U.S., and IIRC the only one you have the right to expect service in, in most places.
…and that’s “officially bilingual” in affairs ruled by the Federal government. Many things (defense and monetary policy, for example) are the responsibility only of the federal government. Other things (education, health care, and roads, for example) are the responsibility of provincial governments.
Provinces may be officially bilingual or not in their affairs as they choose. The Quebec government is officially unilingual French, but offers some services in English; New Brunswick is officially bilingual (all provincial services are available everywhere in the provice in both languages),and Ontario is officially unilingual English, but offers many services in French ‘where numbers warrant’.
One of Canada’s greatest leaders?! WT_?! Maybe to you sheep out East as you got the billions of dollars pillaged from the West during his tenure. It put his life entirely in perspective when a communist dictator was one of his best friends and a pall bearer. So, the difference between the US and Canada? In the US this particular LIEberal probably would have been shot instead of being hailed as '…one of our greatest leaders…"!
I don’t believe Castro was a pallbearer at Trudeau’s funeral, and the closeness of their friendship is popularly exaggerrated by about a hundred orders of magnitude.
Somehow I doubt a country that elected Bill Clinton twice AND George W. Bush, two men not known for their honesty, ethics, or firm commitment to any particular principles, would have minded Trudeau all that much. I suspect they would have liked him as much as Canadians did.
For all Trudeau’s faults - and God knows he had a lot of them - you cannot deny that he DID have his positive impacts. Prior to his administration it was illegal for Canadians to engage in a variety of consensual sex acts in their own homes, a horrifying state of affairs Trudeau rightly corrected almost immediately after becoming Prime Minister. He torpedoed the separatist movement in Quebec through the 1980 referendum defeat and the brilliantly executed 1982 repatriation. When he resigned in 1984 Quebec separatism as a political force was as dead as fried chicken; it’s not his fault Mulroney’s government resurrected separatism. He brought in federal bilingualism, which I feel was a necessary and fair process, with a minimum of fuss and virtually no violence (and I challenge you to name another country that could do that.) The modern Canadian notion of civic patriotism, rather than cultural patriotism, is one Trudeau’s government helped to create, and I for one think it’s a good thing.
MY feeling on the issue of bilingualism is that Canada IS A BILINGUAL COUNTRY, in fact, that official bilingualism is simply a practical recognition of an indisputable truth. This has always been a bilingual country, at least since the 1780s. It would be folly for the federal government to pretend otherwise. The situation, IMHO, is precisely what it should be; the feds conduct their business in both languages and the provinces have the option of being unilingual in their business. I cannot think of a better solution.
Yeah, Trudeau screwed up in a lot of areas, but you have to consider what the opportunity cost would have been. Let’s be honest; if Robert Stanfield had been PM, there’s a damned good chance Canada would be a lot worse off now, if it existed at all.
Trudeau is considered a great prime minister because he was a statesmen, beyond being a politician. Love him or hate him, he was a world class figure inside and outside of Canada.
Though the picture of Chretien choking a protester nearly replaced Trudeau in my heart…
There’s a great book on Canadian prime ministers called “Bastards & Boneheads” that really makes clear why guys like Trudeau and Diefenbaker were so memorable, and guys like Clark and Turner weren’t.
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Canadians don’t include most westerners it seems. Such has it always been.
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Civic Patriotism? We now have people who think that it is the governments job to protect their particular culture. What is civic about that?
Which is the point of this thread. There is little, to no, difference between Americans and Canadians. Is it government that makes us different? Well, our government is run from back east by a marble-mouthed moron. What difference would it be to me if it was run from Washington by different moron? Not a bit EXCEPT I’d get paid in real dollars and I’d probably pay less of them in taxes.
Oh yeah. Another difference between the two countries. Americans have a higher standard of living on average and pay lower taxes on average.
That may be your opinion, but the UN disagrees. Canada is ranked 3rd for quality of life while the US is 6th.
Maybe where you’re from Canadians are indistinguishable from Americans. However, where I grew up you could hardly make such a statement. I don’t think that as a whole you can reasonably argue that they are the same.
Well my opinion on Standard of Living is correct. This is different than what I think is a somewhat more subjective rating such as Quality of Life. http://www.csls.ca/ipm/letourneau-un-en.pdf
Please keep in mind that this assumes that it takes $1.23 to buy an American dollar. Actual exchange rate now is $1.60 which makes the gap even wider now.
Some more info: http://www.td.com/economics/standard/standard.html
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Again as stated similarily earlier in this thread: The difference between a Texan and a New Yorker is no different than the difference between a Newfie and an Albertan. Both countries have a wide gap between subgroups. Adding them together wouldn’t increase that gap much more than it is now. So, what is the real difference between the two countries considering both encompass such diversity?
Allow me to weigh in - I moved to the US in May, after living my entire life in Canada. My perspectives are those from growing up in Southern Alberta, living in the Arctic and Ontario, then coming to live in Maryland.
Politeness. Canada seems to have it. America seems to not.
Racism. It is rampant here. Not ten miles away from my house, there is a regional chapter of the KKK. I believe that Maryland having been a slave state has coloured the perceptions of the long-timers here. It may be that their families owned slaves, or that their ancestors were poor and needed people to scapegoat. Either way, the racism here is unlike anything I have ever seen in my entire life. That would include the way that the Natives are treated in rural Southern Alberta.
Friendliness. Advantage Canada, even in metro areas.
Hyper Patriotism. Lord, I’m tired of seeing the flag everywhere. Everywhere. It’s stickers on car windows and bumpers, it’s flags on approximately half of the houses in the area, flags on the cars, logo on t-shirts and baseball caps. I am fiercely proud to be Canadian, but you don’t see me bleeding maple leaves everywhere. Canadians don’t display in the way Americans do. We also don’t go around saying things like “We’re Number One” - whether or not you may feel this is a wrong assessment.
America is a melting pot. I see very few instances of distinct heritage in my daily life - although special holidays will bring out people showing pride in their lineage, like St. Patrick’s day for the Irish descendants. In Canada, there is still very much a cultural mosaic which was visible to me often.
Accents. Hoo boy. The only really distinct accents in Canada seem to be those from the Maritimes, and of course Quebec. All throughout the US, they’ve got different accents. You can tell a person is from Georgia or Kentucky based on their accent; you can tell someone is from Cecil County as opposed to Harford County based on the way they say “ma’am”.
Military. US are aggressors, Canadians are peacekeepers - now.
Food. I can’t find things here that we had in Canada. Nobody’s heard of butter tarts, for example. That makes it very difficult for me to find a tart pan. However, if I were from Alberta (I am) and moved to Ontario (I did) and looked for the same brands of things that I had at home, I would be out of luck. I don’t see that this is such a difficult thing - but when I realized that there is no way I will ever be able to buy a Coffee Crisp or Shreddies, Smarties or Dare Maple Creams, it hits pretty hard. I think it’s more a regional difference than an International one, foods’ availability differs from state to state just as from province to province.
Police. I feel as though I live in a Police state. They’re everywhere. There are city and county police, the sherriff’s office, the state troopers. In Canada we will have RCMP and city cops, and they aren’t anywhere as visible as the police are here. They also don’t come across as the belligerent rent-a-cops that I’ve had the displeasure of encountering here, and I have never come even close to breaking a law.
Consumerism. While I will not say that Canadians don’t buy, buy, buy, I was shocked to go to Wal-Mart on “Black Friday” and find out that before 6:30 in the morning, a woman had been beaten up in the store. I also found out later that this is the norm for the day after Thanksgiving. People had camped out in front of the local-ish Wal-Mart from 2 and 3:00 in the morning so that they could rush in to spend, spend, spend. I was in a mild state of shock for days.
Knowledge about the other. People here have no idea about Canada. When I meet someone who does have a clue, or has been there, I’ll talk their ear off. When I was in school, I learned all about the US, and the state capitals, etc. Here, most people have the vague idea that Canada is the ‘big cold state near Alaska’.
My impressions of this general area are that it is economically repressed, and a large number of the people here quit school before they had a chance to learn anything. I will see women with 6 and 7 children, living off of the dole. I see honest-to-God crack whores on an almost daily basis. Five minutes’ drive from my house, I will not walk alone at night. Never, in my entire life, have I been afraid to walk alone in Canada. I have to wonder if the people here think it’s normal to be afraid of the police, yet more afraid of the people around them.
Sorry that this is disjointed, and maybe not the in-depth sort of answer that was requested, but this is what I’ve got for now.
So what’s yer point. Our standard of living is not as good but our Quality of life is better. Come to think of it we seemed to have avoided the recession the US economy went through since last September. So I wonder if those numbers have since changed.
I know something else we have that the US doesn’t. Bitching Westerners. Lord almighty you get the luck of having oil in your provence and you think you should become the centre of the country.
Oh Yes and I’m sure the United States would never tolerate a Seperatist party in their federal Government. I’d bet the members of the Bloc Quebecois would have been arrested as traitors.
This is very, very OT but I am blessed by the gods: even though I live in semi-rural Japan, a nearby 100-yen store (the Japanese version of the dollar store) has Dare Maple Creams. Bilingual packaging and all. (Unfortunately not for Y100.)
kingpengvin, that’s what I didn’t write, like I said, all disjointed. I believe that the Canadian quality of life is better than what I see around here. And, FWIW, I’m not a bitching westerner unless I’m in the horrifically humid east during the summer.
jovan, something I noticed while working in tourist areas that have a lot of Asians (Yellowknife NT, Banff AB) is that maple products are very, very popular. I’m not at all surprised that they’re available in Japan.
We bitch because we pretty much support the rest of the country and we don’t have a say in said country. And as we spend so much of our time supporting the rest of you so you can have such a high quality of life, I’d like my standard of living to reflect it. Thank you very much.
I knew this thread would be pit worthy soon enough…
OK, Mr. Albertan, just because the land that you happen to be settled on has oil within a few hundred miles does not entitle you to jack squat more than the rest of us. You are already lucky enough not to pay sales taxes, though, now that I think about it, if Ralphie boy would give up the hooch and realize that maybe a 2% tax would pay for Kyoto, restore health care and education in your province, as well as help to revaitalize your oil based economy by using the $$$ for better R&D to advance and enhance it, then maybe you wouldnt have a reason to bitch. Yes, Canada has high taxes. But they paid to keep my (still high) tuition levels below the $20K USD you pay to go to a decent university in the States. If I get hit by a car I know that I can get medical attention without worrying about insurance. There are SO many more example of why I do not mind paying the taxes. The problem with people in Albetra is that you think you get shafted on everything. The way I see it, by fortune of you having oil in your province you get a hell of alot more than the rest of us dollar for dollar. Not that I begrudge you that. But man, dont you dare say that you are getting shafted. Talk to people in Newfoundland about what they have compared to what you have. Then tell me how your quality of life is. Besides, even if after reading this you feel that the States is a better place to be than here because of the value of the dollar, then by all means go. Just don’t get upset when you dont have the $50K to pay for the operation after you get shot for walking alone at night because you didnt realize that some places there arent the same as they are here.
(By the way, anything in this post that may have seemed as derogatory to Americans was unintentional. Honest.)
Also, to return this rant back to topic, as you can see, Canada “celebrates” the regional differences alot more than the US of A does. Uzi and I may not see eye to eye, but if he was stranded and hungry, he would be welcome in my house without a second thought. We may bitch more interprovincially, but if the chips are down, we are all there for eachother.
Uzi, a person earning 40k in Calgary is not subsidising poor people any more than a person who is earning 40k Halifax. We all pay the same federal taxes, but you guys have less provincial taxes so you are in fact paying less. Yet you still complain.
Ever heard of transfer payments? Billions more dollars flow out of Alberta and Ontario to the other provinces than ever come back into them. That is billions that could be spent on health care, education, whatever in the areas where the money is earned.
