I read that one issue in Canada that gets discussed is the control of the western oil reserves and how Alberta (for example) doesn’t want to subsidize the rest of the nation. Americans bitterly argue about stuff that simply isn’t an issue in many western countries (muscular foreign policy, gun control, health care, etc.) and I realized this: I don’t even know what they get upset about in Canada… or in other countries. What are the contentious issues that spark endless debate in Canada/France/The U.K, and so on?
Well, often times, in Canada it’s about taking direction from, or appearing to be in lockstep with, American policy. For instance, many people believe the marijuana laws would have been changed by now without pressure from the US.
Basically anything our government agrees to, with the US, some segment of Canada sees as selling out!
Also language laws here draw a lot of fire, people complain about special status for Quebec. ( at the same time their kids are enrolled in French immersion schools! Which were unheard of when I was young and now seem to be in every town!)
I’m sure there are many others, of course. And the greatest hits, of course, government regulations, government spending etc, etc.
I would say the divisive issues in Canada are the Alberta oil sands, Quebec vs. the ROC (Rest of Canada), and Ontario as the Centre of the Universe (the ROC doesn’t believe they are).
I don’t know if Mexico counts as “western” or not (that is a major cultural and politicaldebate in itself!).
But aside from the ones that may seem obvious to foreigners - the drug war/legalization, emigration, weapons laws, and police corruption…there are some issues that tend to perennially dominate politics:
Pemex = The extent to which the national state oil monopoly (Pemex) should be open to foreign investment. Privatization has been a taboo subject until recently.
Whether to maintain a very strict neutralist foreign policy (the Estrada Doctrine), or to be more engaged in international military operations or defensive alliances.
Indigenous autonomy, especially in the southern states.
States rights vs. federal authority (not an issue in any other North American nation, of course!). This is especially true of taxation and fee collection.
Abortion laws vary widely, from virtual bans in the conservative Catholic states of the north-center (Mexico has a definite “bible belt” from Jalisco through Querétaro) to legalization in Mexico City. Gay rights have a similar pattern: from legal same sex marriage in Mexico City to semi-official harassment of gays in the “bible belt.”
In the UK, it’s probably the EU - should we be in or out. The right hate the perception that EU laws override our sovereignty. Plus it has meant a huge influx of East European immigrants, which creates many arguments around ‘foreigners taking our jobs’ and ‘helping themselves to our free healthcare’.
Currently, the main rows are probably around the economy - the Tory government pressing ahead with cuts with the opposition arguing we need investment to create growth.
No major rows on anything socially controversial, sad to report. SSM currently flying through parliament despite a noisy minority of traditionalists.
In my native Spain, it’s mostly identity issues: what do we do with the crazy Basques? Should the Catalans be allowed to have an independence referendum? What should the status of minority languages be? Since Spain’s sense of identity has always been rather divided (and divisive), I don’t see any way that this issue will be sorted out in the next decades.
In my host country of Sweden, political debate tends to be much more pragmatic - and boring, if you ask me. I wouldn’t say there is one dominating issue here, but the big ones include:
- free schools (schools that are privately run) and whether they should be financed by the state
- the role that private health care providers should have within our universal health care system
- refugees from the latest war/humanitarian crisis, how many we should take in and how they should be treated
So yeah, I guess here it’s a lot about what shape our enormous welfare state should take, and how it should interact with private companies and individuals. But I wouldn’t really call these issues divisive, as Swedes are incapable of disagreeing openly for long periods of time
In Norway right now, the issues seem to be:
- Immigration, specifically how to deal with integration issues.
- European Union, how to handle them.
- Surrogacy. Should it be legal? Should children born of surrogates in other countries be citizens? And so on.
The left and right also seem to to drifting further apart, which worries me. Healthcare and schooling is becoming a larger bone of contention. Should we have more private healthcare? Should private schools be legal?
Heh. Just copying Sweden there, I see 
How to handle them but not whether or not to join, right? Or do influential people in Norway openly call for entering the EU?
Heh, I was coming to post “define nation. No, really: one of the things people argue a lot about is which chunks of Spain’s real state are or should be independent countries; another is whether the autonomous regions should be rearranged, and if so, according to which criteria.” The autonomous-regions system provides a lot to talk about: from whether some politician’s accent is too heavy to which regions should be nerfed. Often the people arguing the loudest have no idea what the hell they’re talking about, but I think this is a frequent human trait.
People from Euskadi and Navarre (specially Northern Navarre) will argue as a form of indoors sport, we tend to judge unknown people by how well they do at it (hint: don’t ever, ever, grovel when someone from those places asks you a question in a fashion you find aggresive - both barking back and refusing to engage are perfectly fine responses). I’ve met people from other places who did this, but back home it’s a basic “pleasedtomeetcha”.
Sports and entertainment don’t so much provide something to argue about as something to talk loudly about. They also give us new idioms (“al-vays negatiff, nefah positiff”; “in two words, im pressive”).