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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watcgl!pptanner
From: pptanner@watcgl.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: definitions of culture
Message-ID: <638@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Feb-87 10:56:56 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.638
Posted: Mon Feb 23 10:56:56 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Feb-87 01:21:07 EST
References: <192@fornax.uucp>
Reply-To: pptanner@watcgl.UUCP (Peter P. Tanner)
Distribution: can
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 92


While John Chapman writes about Canadian Characteristics, many of
his items only illustrate differences with the US.  We are very
poorly informed about European day-to-day life in this country,
and do not realize how similar they are to us.

>1. Canada is one of the few (perhaps only) countries which has had
>   the ability to become a major nuclear power and yet we have
>   resisted the temptation to stockpile or even manufacture nuclear
>   weapons.

Several EEC countries are in this group.

>2. Health care is of good quality and access is almost universal (you
>   still have to have some money).  It is unlikely you would have
>   your dialisys (sp?) machine turned off because you are broke.

Again the same holds in the EEC

>3. Canada has not (recently anyway) attempted to force it way of
>   life (or advance it's economic and political interests) on other
>   countries through military force - covert or otherwise.
>

Nor has Sweeden, Switzerland, etc.

> 
>   Canada does not directly support violent dictatorships, notorious
>   for human rights violations, merely because they are economic or
>   military allies.

But we take little action to condemn such countries. Again there
are some European countries that are ahead of us here.

> 
>4. Canadians are not egotistical enough to think they know what is 
>   "best" for the rest of the world.

Typical for small countries.

>5. Canada lets itself be pushed around a fair bit by other countries.
>   We seem to have a foreign policy of being "nice guys".

Typical for small countries.

>6. We apparently have a reasonably high regard for the worth of human
>   life in general as evidenced by our broad system of "safety nets"
>   in the social services area.

Typical for EEC countries and other Western countries.

>9. We have quite a low murder rate compared to some countries.

Twice as high as Germany and France

>10. There seems to be a smaller distance, economically, between the
>    rich and poor than is the case of a lot of other countries.

Holland has a rule that no one should earn more than 5 times the
minimum wage.

>12. Education through to post secondary is generally available to
>    all who desire it at relatively low cost (however this has been
>    changing -particularily in BC).  You do not have to be upper
>    middle class or above to be able to attend university.

In most EEC countries, university education is cheaper than
here.

>13. We seem fairly federally oriented - the balance of decision
>    making and enforcement powers between the federal and provincial
>    governments is in the federal government's favour.

Much less so than the heavily centralized European Governments
such as France and the UK.

>14. We send quite a bit of money and other aid to third world
>    countries.

We are quite low on this list as well by a factor of two or
three in terms of percentage of GNP) - the US is lower.

My point here is that Canadians, when comparing themselves to
other countries, always think only of the US.  We think that our
dollar is currently doing well when in acutal fact, if you look
at currencies other than the US$, it is just going down more
slowly than its American counterpart.  We think we are doing well
in all the items listed above, well in fact we are in the same
league as many other countries.  It is not just the abundance of
American media in this country that contributes to this problem,
but our own is woefully inadequate in its dealings with the rest
of the world.