Is Canada a Utopian Escape from American Politics & Conservatism? What One Canadian Says.

By MOMocrats Guest Writer, Ann Bibby

It’s been a difficult week for Democrats and centrist minded Independents in the United States. Martha Coakley lost Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown. The Supreme Court overturned rules established by Congress to regulate campaign financing. 

Democrats are telling the Health Care Reform Bill that “we need to take a break,” and the President’s call for a return to common sense banking regulation was greeted on Wall Street by a collective panic attack.

 

Has Canada ever looked so inviting?

 

Whenever life in the land of the free and home of the brave seems constricting and scary, many of my Democratic and Independent friends remind me of how lucky I am to have achieved the dream. Canadian Permanent Residency.

 

“Look at you,” they say. “Basking in the last frontier in northern Alberta with your provincial health care and your government that has a firm exit date from Afghanistan.”

 

“I need to find me a Canadian boyfriend,” a single friend has remarked. “Escape from the Teabag mentality and the Sarah Palin worship.”

 

Normally, I have nothing to say. I read. I know. I am glad that I am here and that my daughter will grow up in a country that prizes individual liberties in a way that my native land never really seemed to. It would surprise people in the lower 48 a great deal to know that the provinces are fiercely independent and resent any attempt of over-reach from the central government in Ottawa. They run their own health care systems. They set school curriculums for the students residing within their borders. And though they like the fact that our popular vote gives us a say in choosing our President, whereas they have only indirect influence on who becomes Prime Minister, they find our presidential election process an endless nightmare from which nothing much good ever comes.

 

But my American friends who harbor dreams of emigrating to a Canadian Utopia need to stop and consider a few facts.

With the exception of British Columbia, we are a conservative nation. The Conservative Party has been in control of the province of Alberta, where I live, for decades. Alberta is no welfare state. We all have equal and mostly free access to health care, but we pay for our own medications, dentist visits, optometry and any alternative health care like chiropractic or naturopaths for example. Our school system is rated as one of the best in the world, if test scores are the only measure, but our Native population drops out of school at alarming rates, kindergarten is not mandatory and only half day, and pre-school is hard to come by. Which brings me to childcare, daycare centers aren’t the reality although they exist in small numbers. Day homes (private sitters who take children into their own homes) are the norm and they are hard to come by. It is fortunate then that we have maternity leave of up to a year, but the government stipend will not make up for lost income, and Canadians need two incomes to survive, just like American families do.

Our health care system is something that Canadians fight fiercely to preserve, but our provincial governments wage war on it via budget cuts that in Alberta, for example, have decimated our nursing population, closed entire wings of hospitals and in Ontario recently resulted in death because of ER’s closed due to lack of funding. Indeed, Ontario is teetering dangerously on a two-tiered system that would allow insurance companies more power than they have had in Canada in a very long time and could lead us to a system frighteningly similar to the U.S. hodge-podge of unequal access.

 

Schools here are under the budget gun this year just as public education is in the U.S. because of the recession. The fact that we boast a world-class education system is not preventing the Alberta provincial government from undermining it via under-funding. Politicians here pay as much lip service to the importance of our children’s future as they do down south.

 

Canada did stand up to the Bush Administration by refusing to invade Iraq, but we’ve paid quite the price for it. Our troops became the main combat force in Afghanistan while the Americans shifted their attention south. Small in number, they have been exhausted and stretched thin by eight years of war while leaving Canada virtually unprotected. Families of Canadian soldiers sacrifice as well for a cause that few Canadians support anymore. In addition, by declaring our intent to pull out in 2011, Canada has been deemed “soft” on terrorism, and the conditions on our mutual border have eroded. America’s Homeland Security officials publicly question the Canadian commitment to securing the border as our commerce is strangled, livelihoods are jeopardized, and ordinary Canadians are regularly harassed.

 

But here is a sobering thought for my American liberal counterparts longing for government that is less autocratic and more idealistic, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has prorogued Parliament twice in the last year - once to save his own skin and a second time to prevent a human rights violation investigation.

 

Prorogation is a left over ministerial power akin to that of the English kings of old and allows for the temporary suspension of Parliament. The first incident came in December of 2008 when Harper’s minority government was in danger of losing control of Parliament. The Liberal Party cobbled together a coalition of parties and called for a confidence vote that would have gone against Harper and his Conservatives. By suspending, or proroguing, Parliament the vote couldn’t take place, and the coalition fell apart. More recently, Harper prorogued Parliament until this coming March to avoid inquiries into accusations that Canadian troops in Afghanistan have been turning detainees over to the authorities there knowing that these detainees are likely to be tortured as part of their interrogation. Ottawa is no more Camelot than Washington D.C., dark shadows lurk here too.

 

I wouldn’t make a good real estate agent, would I?

About the writer: Ann Bibby is a writer/blogger. An English teacher for twenty years, she retired in 2007 to pursue her true passion - writing. She maintains her own blog, Anniegirl1138, writes mainly short science fiction and is working on her memoir. Ann also writes about education at Care2.com. She is a permanent resident in Canada where she lives with her husband and young daughter. 

Comments

[OM]

That's interesting. Of course, we complain here because, well, things are bad. But after 8 years of Bush, we can take it.

[amy cross]

Bibby makes a lot of good points....

As an American who has lived here 20 years, I find the society itself is more equitable than our country and less extreme. Society's problems don't strike Canadians very intensely or seem to affect fewer people makes citizens more apathetic. They are more complacent.

The current parliamentary crisis, hopefully will change this, and involve more canadians politically.

Overall, it feels like a more fair society--with less to rail against. The conceptof equalization--sharing resources is entrenched. Provinces get topped up by the Fed Govt. --each school in the province gets the same amount of money per pupil. (middle class people fundraise on top, but that's another issue). That's said, I've found there's growing disparity in income, creating greater class gaps, which is troubling.

[Cynematic]

Ann, I've been following the proroguing of Canadian parliament unexpectedly closely--for work I monitor peace activists around the world and their attempts to bring the Afghanistan war to an end. So the issue of abuse of Afghan detainees and its investigation by part of the Canadian government has definitely been on my radar.

I'm betting the upcoming winter Olympics and international eye on Vancouver/Canada factors into Harper's attempt to hit the snooze button on the government's business. It's shocking to think of the equivalent happening here in the U.S.--Congress suspended by an obscure political maneuver...or maybe democracy distorted by a Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited campaign contributions by "corporate persons."

[chiropractor vancouver]

I m absolutely agree with OM's view.