The Economist: A survey of Canada

Stunt

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Jul 17, 2002
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Many Americans I have met all have their different perceptions of who Canadians are, what they stand for and how our country works. This is a feature "The Economist" has published with many interesting articles explaining these themes from an economic and unbaised point of view. This is one of many features they will have in the next few months. I intend to post the article on the US when it comes, last month was Italy.

Here are the articles, I'd perfer those interested in the conversation read the articles before commenting. Misperceptions are just going to make you look like an idiot, so do yourself a favour and invest a little time.

A Survey of Canada - Overview
Peace, order and rocky government
Dec 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition

Canada's economy is booming, says Peter David (interviewed here). Its politics, as it heads for a second general election in under two years, is a mess

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?A CAUTIOUS case can be made that Canada is now rather cool,? this newspaper ventured in September 2003. And it still can. At a ceremony in Ottawa in September this year, Canada invested a new governor-general, the queen's representative in Canada and therefore its de facto head of state. She is Michaëlle Jean, a glamorous black television journalist and former refugee from Haiti. In her investiture speech Mrs Jean declared that the old story of Canada being separated into the ?two solitudes? of English-speakers and French-speakers was at last over. Newspapers gushed. A banner headline in the Globe and Mail greeted a ?remarkable new governor-general who personifies the free and open country Canada wants to be?.

In the House of Commons this week, a no-confidence vote felled the ruling Liberal government, paving the way for a general election in January?a mere 19 months after the previous one. Nonetheless Canada has many good reasons to feel pleased with itself. Its constitutional motto of ?peace, order and good government? may not set the pulse racing in the manner of America's ?life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?. Most Americans probably think of it as a dull old neighbour, when they think of it at all. But peace, order and good government are solid virtues, and still rare enough not only to make Canadians count these blessings but also for millions of people from less orderly places to flock to Canada to enjoy them too.

Uniquely in the rich world, a large majority of Canadians welcome immigration, now running at nearly a quarter of a million a year, and most nowadays from East and South Asia, with only a murmur of dissent (see chart 1, left). Canadians have happily allowed the inflow to transform the ethnic mix and therefore the colours, flavours and rhythms of its cities. More than half of the residents of Vancouver and Toronto are now said to be foreign-born. In Vancouver, Canada's Pacific gateway to China, Martha Piper, president of the University of British Columbia, reckons that half of her university's Canadian?not foreign?students speak a language other than English at home.

Comfort ye

Wealth lubricates the upbeat mood. Fifteen years ago, ballooning deficits and a prostrate economy made Canada look like a candidate for an IMF rescue. That would have been a bitter humiliation to a member of the G7 rich-country club. Against expectations, a Liberal government elected in 1993 under Jean Chrétien turned the public finances around, so much so that Canada is now the only big industrialised country to notch up consistent surpluses both in its federal budgets and in its trade and current accounts. For five years it has had the G8's fastest growth, driving unemployment to its lowest levels for three decades and producing big gains in incomes, profits and tax revenues. In December 2003 Mr Chrétien's finance minister, Paul Martin, won his reward for presiding over all this by pushing out his boss and taking over as prime minister himself.

The present good times are not the product of fiscal discipline alone. Canada has reaped advantages from the free-trade agreement with the United States that came into force in 1989, and the later North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). More recently, the economy has been supercharged by booming prices for energy and commodities, of which Canada has an abundance. China in particular has a growing appetite for Canada's energy, metals and chemicals. Such exports helped to lift Canada's trade surplus to a near-record C$66 billion last year. Better still, energy prices have been rising just as some vast Canadian energy investments, such as the Hibernia development in Newfoundland, and the so-called oil sands of northern Alberta, have started to come on stream. Although Canada is already the biggest supplier of oil and natural gas to the United States, these new unconventional sources in Alberta mean that dull old Canada now has the world's second-biggest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Three troubling weather systems

Peaceful, diverse, tolerant (in June gay marriage became legal throughout the country)?and with long-term riches to boot. If this isn't ?cool?, what is? However, Canada is a massive country by area, the second-biggest in the world after Russia, which means that it has room for many kinds of weather. Look more closely, and you see three weather systems where turbulence and storms are possible.

The first is in the west, the part of the country that benefits disproportionately from the resource boom. Canada is one of the few countries that has seen exports to China soar, by 40% in the past year. In the next few years, economic growth in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and especially Alberta is expected to sprint ahead. But central Canada's manufacturing base is not part of this bonanza. Over time, the country's centre of gravity will begin to tip westward as the west forges closer links with a rising Asia.

A complication here is that the western provinces, and especially Alberta, have also for many years felt remote from and neglected by the federal government. British Columbia, cut off behind the Rockies, is oriented towards the Pacific, with a diminishing interest in what happens across the prairies in distant Ottawa. Alberta-based firms are investing heavily in oil and gas projects in China. Polls by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada found that whereas 70% of people in British Columbia and 39% of Albertans think that Canada is part of the Asia Pacific region, only 28% of Ontarians and 20% of Quebeckers agree. Although the resource boom is only just starting, the west's new wealth may place new strains on Ottawa's ability to hold far-flung Canada together.


The second troubling weather system is in Quebec. When the new governor-general says that the ?two solitudes? are a thing of the past, she must be expressing an aspiration rather than describing things as they are. As a Quebecker herself since emigrating from Haiti, she knows better than most that separatist sentiment is burning brightly in the province.

Why it still does so is something of a mystery, given how well the French-speaking province has fared within the federation. After a referendum in 1995, in which Quebeckers voted by the narrowest of margins to remain part of Canada, passions seemed to subside. Nonetheless, in opinion polls this past summer, more than half of Quebeckers questioned said they favoured sovereignty for Quebec. Cool or not, Canada could still break up?a prospect that has haunted its federal government ever since Charles de Gaulle's mischievous speech 37 years ago when he called for a free Quebec.

The third weather system coils along the 5,500 mile (8,900km) border with the United States. Although relations with America have survived many ups and downs, the past few years have seen too many downs. Since September 11th 2001, the Americans have grown twitchier about border security. Trade with the United States makes up around a quarter of Canada's GDP, so the border's closure would be an economic catastrophe. However, managing the unequal relationship with the superpower has lately become more complicated, aggravated not only by a perennial trade dispute over lumber but also by what may be an underlying estrangement in values and politics.

Whether these weather systems will develop into storms, and how much damage they would do, is a matter of conjecture. Canada is a country of ferocious northern winters, whose stoical people are used to battening down their hatches. Besides, some Canadians love nothing better than a storm: every winter tourists flock to the beaches of Vancouver Island expressly to watch them lashing in across the Pacific. But managing the turbulence will require both luck and political skills of a high order. This survey will describe the three systems in turn, and then ask whether Canada has agile enough politics, and a robust enough economy, to weather them unscathed.

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Alienating the west - "Canada gets its very own Texas"
Alienating the west
Dec 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition


Canada gets its very own Texas
CP
CP

Once there was a forest

TO HAVE a full day in Fort McMurray, it is best to fly up from Calgary early. That way you don't have to stay overnight in the place itself. And whereas Calgary is a pleasant metropolis with a brand-new downtown, a view of the Rockies and some wonderful restaurants (if you like steak), Fort McMurray is a drab little settlement in the middle of the nowhere that is Alberta's north. Another reason to catch this flight is to meet the early birds flocking to cash in on the oil sands. When the price of crude is high, they arrive in strength and the little Air Canada Jazz jet fills up. Your bleary-eyed correspondent was crammed next to a team of wide-awake Norwegian oil geologists. Poring over maps, they were trying to work out whether there was any ?interesting? acreage left to lease in Alberta's oil sands. Oilmen from Texas, France and China are frequent flyers too.

Fort McMurray is the logistics centre from which the Athabasca oil-sand deposits, the biggest anywhere in the world, are being exploited. The little town is busting at the seams, and the sheer scale of the mining operations around it makes jaws drop. From horizon to horizon, diggers and dumpers, on wheels or tracks, are clawing away topsoil and carting off the black, bitumen-enriched deposits beneath. A spaghetti of pipelines and processing plants straggles over the gouged-out pine forests. In these plants, the viscous bitumen is separated from the sand, converted into crude oil and pumped away to distant refineries. This being environment-conscious Canada, the ripped-up forests are replanted behind them as the diggers and processors move slowly on. One consortium, Syncrude, has imported a herd of bison to graze on reclaimed pasture?in deference, it says, to the customs of the aboriginal peoples who live nearby.

Canada has a reported 180 billion barrels or so of proven oil reserves, of which some 95% are in the oil sands. This is hardly cheap or clean oil, of the sort that gushes obligingly out of the Saudi desert. Separating oil from the sands requires expensive technology and consumes a lot of energy and fresh water. Some techniques require burning copious amounts of natural gas. A few companies are exploring the possibility of using nuclear power instead. All the same, most economists reckon that the oil sands are commercially viable at a world price of around $30 or even less. And the commercially viable price could fall: having invested more than C$30 billion in the oil sands since the 1960s, the industry keeps on finding cheaper and cleaner methods with which to extract and process the oil. In November a Calgary-based firm, Canadian Natural Resources, unveiled plans to spend close to C$30 billion over the next 15 years on the oil sands.

The existence of these reserves in a stable democracy on America's doorstep is good news all round. Top Americans have been trekking to Alberta just to make sure they really exist. America's Treasury secretary, John Snow, was especially interested. ?To have our closest ally, Canada, with these resources available, with a natural market in the United States, it's a huge contributor to energy security for North America,? he enthused. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, was due in September until Hurricane Katrina disrupted his plans. Access to the oil sands was also on the agenda of China's president, Hu Jintao, when he visited Canada the same month.

The dark side

And yet although Canadians are not exactly complaining about this new-found wealth, they worry about one aspect of it. Canada's provinces own the natural resources on their territory, and most of the oil happens to be in Alberta, where only just over 3m of Canada's 32m or so people live. Albertans have already grown richer than most other Canadians on the royalties from conventional oil, and exploiting the oil sands threatens to enlarge the gap. This imbalance would be disruptive in any federal system, but for Canada, which tries harder than most to reduce regional disparities, the problem is acute. And a history of bad blood between Alberta and the federal government makes matters worse.

Like its neighbour, Saskatchewan, Alberta did not become a full province until 1905. The federation it joined then was dominated by the English and the French. But many of those who had settled the western prairies?Ukrainians, Russians, Swedes and Poles?belonged to neither of these founding nations. Life on the prairies was hard. The west's grain economy suffered disproportionately in the 1930s depression and did not enjoy the post-war industrial revival that lifted Toronto and Montreal. These people were looked upon as foreigners by the then un-cool rest of Canada. The westerners in turn did not take to Canada's established parties, and formed a habit of creating their own.

As luck would have it, before anyone knew that Alberta was perched on a reservoir of oil, the new provinces were the only ones not given control of their own natural resources. This created resentment from the outset. Albertans already felt that all the big banking and political decisions were made in the east, and to be denied control of natural resources was a blow, not rectified until 1930. And yet natural resources changed the history of the province. When the oil shock of the 1970s drove prices upwards, Alberta's oilfields became competitive. Vast gas reserves were also discovered along with the oil sands.

However, oil also bred new resentment between Alberta and the rest of Canada. In 1980, with the world price soaring, the federal government of Pierre Trudeau introduced a national energy programme, forcing Alberta to sell its oil to Canadians at below market prices. The upshot was that Albertans experienced a recession at a time when other oil-producers did well. The federal government dismantled the hated policy in 1984, but by then the damage had been done. Small places have long memories: nowadays, Alberta has control of its own resources, but its people remain bitter at how the benefits of their oil were denied to them a quarter of a century ago.

Today the boot is on the other foot. The west is thriving, the rest of Canada is falling behind and Canadians have been moving westward. Alberta's share of the population grew from 7.6% to 9.9% between 1971 and 2001, at a time when Quebec's shrank from 27.9% to 24.1%. Taken together with British Columbia, this means that the ?Deep West?, as it is called by Angus Reid, a pollster in Vancouver, now has roughly the same population (about 7.5m) as Quebec?which in the eyes of many westerners has long enjoyed an unfair share of the federal government's attention and largesse.

The rise of the west troubles Ontario, too. This is the most populous of Canada's provinces, the home of its capital and the country's traditional economic hub. Until recently, its carmakers and high-technology firms looked like the key to future prosperity. But North America's carmakers are in trouble and the information and telecoms sector has sagged. Employment in manufacturing, concentrated in central Canada, has been falling since 1990, and factory jobs are likely to be hit further as the rising Canadian dollar hurts exports. To the consternation of urban Ontarians, Canada once again finds itself earning most of its living by hewing wood and drawing water. The commodity boom of the past two years has pushed up the share of exports earned by raw materials to more than 50%.

How much does this shift in the economic balance matter? The oil sands will spread growth and add to the federal government's tax revenues. Nonetheless, the west will benefit most, and its good fortune will have some negative consequences for the rest of the country. If it pays far more than other provinces to public-sector workers, won't all the best doctors, nurses and teachers migrate there? Newspapers in central Canada run anxious stories about an exodus of doctors. Not all are lured by money: Albertan officials say that doctors are drawn to the province by the less hidebound western spirit. The innovative Capital Health Authority in Edmonton, Alberta's wintry capital, has become a model of excellence throughout North America.

Alberta may also use its windfall to cut taxes. And Ontario, in the wry words of Finn Poschmann of the C.D. Howe Institute, a pro-business think-tank in Toronto, has a great fear of Alberta's tax regime becoming ?intolerably attractive?.

Ontario is in deficit. Alberta has no public debt and is heading for a C$6 billion surplus this year. Oil wealth has already enabled it to avoid retail sales taxes, levy a flat provincial income tax of only 10% and slash corporate taxes. Last year's decision by Imperial Oil to move its headquarters from Toronto to Calgary disquieted Ontario. It feared that more firms would decamp, and wondered if Alberta would need to levy any income tax at all if the surpluses continue to roll in. If Alberta cut taxes in what was already the lowest-taxed jurisdiction in Canada, wailed an editorial in the Toronto Star, this would ?feed the politics of envy and create huge tensions within the Canadian federation?.

Whose bonanza?

In Alberta itself, opinion is divided about what to do with the windfall. One argument for prudence is that most royalties at present come from conventional oilfields, which will soon be depleted. Since the oil sands will be more expensive to exploit, future royalties will be smaller. Many Albertans therefore urge their government to invest in physical and social infrastructure, not squander its bonanza on tax cuts. In the 1970s the premier of the day, Peter Lougheed, created the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, which now has assets of more than C$12.2 billion. The fund won Alberta friends by lending on favourable terms to other provinces. However, Alberta stopped topping up the fund in 1987, and the province is nowadays under very different political management.

Like the patrician Mr Lougheed, Alberta's current premier, Ralph Klein, is a Conservative. But he is a different sort of politician?an ideological cousin of America's Newt Gingrich?and has decided that one way to use the oil windfall is to pay a prosperity dividend of C$400 to every Albertan this year. That has raised hackles far and wide. A survey in September by the Strategic Counsel, a polling firm, found that only 26% of Albertans thought their province's oil windfall should be shared to help other Canadians harmed by rising energy prices, whereas 61% of the rest of Canada thought it should. If federal and provincial politicians start to argue seriously about this, ?we're going to have a big conflict,? says Allan Gregg, the polling firm's chairman.
LFI
LFI

The Calgary effect

Even in Alberta, however, Mr Klein has his critics. ?Had [Mr Klein] meant to tell the rest of Canada that Alberta had no idea what to do with all its money, he would have done no different,? complains the Calgary Herald. And among those least happy about the premier's antics are the oilmen. ?This merely aggravates an already sensitive situation,? says Michael Stewart, principal of Calgary's Ballinacurra Group. Thanks to NAFTA, the federal government no longer has the power it used in the 1980s to tell Alberta how much to sell its oil for. But the oilmen fear that if times got hard, or Ottawa was sufficiently provoked, the ?feds? could still find some way to take a bigger cut.

Canada's prime minister, Paul Martin, is adamant that he will do no such thing. He claims to be relaxed about Alberta's boom, arguing that the whole country stands to benefit. ?Yes, Alberta is going to do well,? he said in an interview for this survey. ?But are you going to slow down Alberta's growth so that the rest of the country can catch up? No. What we want to do is see Alberta grow as fast as it possibly can, and at the same time we want to see British Columbia growing like gangbusters, we want to see Ontario growing like gangbusters.? The prime minister envisages a Canada of many poles: Alberta rich in oil and high-tech industries; British Columbia as a gateway to Asia; Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador well-endowed with sources of untapped hydropower; and Quebec rich not only in hydropower but also in high-tech sectors such as biotechnology. ?We can do that,? he says. ?We have a continent here.?

It is an uplifting vision, and some Canadians will buy it. But not all of the politicians in Ottawa are so sanguine about Alberta. Bill Blaikie, an MP from Winnipeg and a prominent member of the opposition New Democratic Party, speaks for many when he snorts at Alberta's claim that its oil wealth should be Albertans' alone, just because they have won a game of ?geological roulette?. Buzz Hargrove, boss of the Canadian Autoworkers Union, says Mr Klein could make himself a national hero if he could find it within himself to share his province's bounty with the country as a whole. But ?political leaders in Alberta have never come to grips with the idea that they are Canadians.?

Out west, such talk stokes indignation. Was it not the west that gave birth in 1987 to the Reform Party of Preston Manning, whose chief slogan was ?The west wants in?? The party was created to address concerns that the western voice was not being heard on the federal stage. One idea the party had was to create an elected Senate (the existing one is appointed) to give regions with smaller populations a bigger say in the working of the federation.

It was not to be. Unluckily for Reform, when the west wanted in, the French-speakers in Quebec were saying that they wanted out. Since the rise of Quebec separatism, the federal government has therefore strained every sinew to prevent the Quebeckers from bolting. It is no coincidence, westerners ruefully note, that since 1968, Canada has spent 36 years under prime ministers from or representing Quebec?and a grand total of 15 months under prime ministers from the west.

Just to complicate matters, people in the west have somewhat different politics from the rest. They are a bit further to the right, with a tendency to produce their own political parties instead of voting for the centrist Liberal Party that has governed Canada for a dozen years. In Calgary?a cow-town, complete with an annual ?stampede? and men in Stetson hats?people say their part of Canada is more religious, more individualist and less elitist than central Canada. Alberta contains a concentration of Americans who came to build the railways and then the oil patch. Roger Gibbins, director of the Canada West Foundation, a think-tank in Calgary, says that in a Canada that is largely contemptuous of George Bush and where he comes from, Alberta is sometimes looked down on from Ontario as if it were a Canadian Texas.

Leave us alone

The danger this mutual disenchantment poses to the unity of Canada should not be exaggerated. Western alienation waxes and wanes: it was stronger in the 1930s and 1990s than it is now. With so much money in their pockets, Albertans are no longer demanding ?in? to a federation they feel has shunned them. But there is little appetite for secession either. ?You can take that word separation and kick it out of the window,? says Mr Lougheed. Right now the west wants neither in nor out, but to be left alone by a federal government it doesn't much like. Five years ago, fear of central intrusion persuaded some Albertans to talk of erecting a ?firewall? against the rest of Canada. For the moment, prosperity has banished such ideas.

If there is a danger now, it is a different one. As Albertans continue to ship ever more money eastward under Canada's elaborate redistribution mechanisms, they are bound to ask just how they benefit in return. The questions will become all the sharper if the federal government stops them from pursuing the social model they feel befits an increasingly affluent province. Health is one example. Although this is a provincial responsibility, the Canada Health Act makes it difficult for provinces receiving federal transfers to expand private medicine. The publicly funded health system is seen in much of English Canada as a bulwark of national identity. But why shouldn't Albertans be free to buy health insurance if they can afford it?

To manage the western weather system, the federal government will have to stop itself from interfering with western success and western experimentation?even if some of the decisions a successful west takes seem to threaten broader Canadian norms. The key, argues Gordon Gibson, a scholar with the Fraser Institute, a think-tank in Vancouver, will be ?the thorough application of the principle of subsidiarity?. In other words, the federal government must allow the provinces maximum freedom to manage their affairs. The trouble, he acknowledges, is that this rubs against every federal instinct: ?Ottawa believes that in order to be relevant it must be deeply involved in the ordinary lives of Canadians.? That is no surprise, given how precarious the federal hold over Quebec has now become.
A dream that does not fade - "Quebec might yet quit Canada"
A dream that does not fade
Dec 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition


Quebec might yet quit Canada

Corbis
Corbis

How far will they go?

FOR the past decade, English-speaking Canadians have been hoping that Quebec's appetite for quitting the federation was on the wane. Quebeckers voted no to separation in 1980 and again?though by the narrowest of squeaks (50.6% to 49.4%)?in 1995. To make separation harder, the federal government introduced a ?Clarity Act? in 2000. This stipulates that the government would negotiate secession with Quebec only if the question posed in a referendum was clear, and only if a ?clear majority? (not defined in the bill) supported secession.

And yet the hope of independence is burning strongly again in Quebec. In recent months, more than half of Quebeckers asked have been telling pollsters that they would vote in favour of sovereignty in a new referendum, thus reversing a long decline in support that started after the failed referendum of 1995 and reached its low point in 2003 (see chart 2).

Nobody can be sure whether this resurgence will last. Some of the reasons for it may be transient. One is that the separatist Parti Québécois (PQ) is now in opposition in the province, and a Liberal government there has grown unpopular since being elected in 2003. At such times, Quebeckers tend to feel more warmly about both the separatists and their ideas. Free from the responsibility of having actually to run Quebec, the Péquistes can devote more of their energy to arguing for its independence. The separatists have also been helped by Quebec's anger at the so-called ?sponsorship scandal??a series of revelations showing that after the 1995 referendum a federal programme to promote Canada in Quebec was riddled with sleaze.

The separatist tide could therefore recede again. The sponsorship scandal has damaged the Liberals, but the next provincial election in Quebec is two years away. Moreover, the Liberals have been in office for only one term, and the province's voters have a habit of giving parties two. The PQ does not at present have a strong, established leader. André Boisclair, who became leader last month, is a clever fellow who is famous mainly for being young, gay and a former cocaine user. So far he has shown none of the charisma of the party's founder and hero, René Lévesque.

To detach Quebec from Canada will be a Herculean task. The PQ must first recapture the province from the Liberals. Even then, holding and winning a referendum will be hard. For although a majority of Quebeckers say they would vote yes if such a referendum were held, many also say, paradoxically, that they are not at present in favour of holding one.

This puzzle highlights the quandary of the Péquistes. A lot of Quebeckers who see the PQ as a desirable government for their province, and may support independence in some abstract way, have little appetite for another bout of angst and turmoil of the sort that convulsed Quebec and divided families and friends in the referendums of 1980 and 1995. ?The sovereigntists always get at least 40% or so in polls,? says Jean-Marc Léger, president of Léger marketing in Montreal; but this support is ?as soft as jello?. What they really want, he thinks, is something neither the Péquistes nor the federalists are offering them: a new relationship with Canada that falls short of independence.

Look closer at the polls and you can almost see the jelly quiver. When asked two years ago by the Centre for Research and Information for Canada, 55% of Quebeckers asked refused to describe themselves as either sovereigntists or federalists, with 29% claiming to be somewhere between the two and 26% claiming to be neither. Three months ago, a survey published in the Globe and Mail by the Strategic Counsel found that despite the recent surge of pro-sovereignty sentiment, 58% of Quebeckers thought of themselves either equally as Quebeckers and Canadians or as Canadians first, while 40% said they thought of themselves as Quebeckers first.

Moreover, almost all polls show that Quebec's support for independence is tempered by a desire for separation to be amicable. In reality, of course, the federal government would have every reason to signal to voters that it would not be amicable. Indeed, the Clarity Act makes conflict more certain. By failing to specify what is meant by a ?clear majority?, the act leaves it to Parliament to decide, thus opening the way to a ferocious constitutional battle in the House of Commons.

So the threat of a referendum is a bluff and the federation is safe? Not so fast. For the resurgence in separatism may not be driven only by the unpopularity of the Liberals or the fallout from the sponsorship scandal. It may be a sign that the cause remains durable, but took a decade to recover from the narrow loss of 1995. Moreover, the polls take no account of the vicissitudes of politics. Many supporters of the Péquistes want the PQ to run the provincial government but not necessarily to push the province out of Canada. The problem is that the PQ's leaders don't see things that way.

For Mr Boisclair, Quebec is ?a lion in a cage?. The party leaders dream of the province taking its place as a near-Sweden-sized nation among nations, and will make no bones about this in the next provincial election. Mr Boisclair promises to put sovereignty at the heart of the campaign. François Rebello, the party's vice-president, says he would rather lose than fight an election that failed to make it clear that a referendum would swiftly follow. And just to make sure, the Péquiste militants?the so-called purs et durs?have tied the leadership's hands. The PQ programme stipulates that a Péquiste government must hold a referendum as soon as possible within its first term of office.

Add all of this up. The timing is uncertain, but at some point the PQ will return to power in Quebec. And at some point after that, Quebec's voters will almost certainly face another independence referendum, whether they want one or not. Once a referendum campaign is under way, and the passions of 1995 are unleashed again on all sides, the outcome will be impossible to predict. Last time round, remember, a mere 54,000 votes stood between Canada staying together and breaking apart.

To non-Canadians, the continuing appeal of the separatist cause looks baffling. In 1967, when de Gaulle made his ?Quebec libre? speech in Montreal, French-speaking Quebeckers were a disadvantaged majority in a province whose English-speaking minority dominated business and much else. Francophones had reason to fear for the survival of their culture, language and identity. Two of them?Pierre Trudeau and René Lévesque?developed two theories about how to respond that looked like opposites. Trudeau believed in seizing the federal institutions and giving francophone Quebec its just place at the centre of the Canadian system. Lévesque wanted independence?but in the meantime also to build Quebec statehood from within, via the ?Quiet Revolution?.

But were these theories opposites? Three decades on, both have delivered success. As Canada's prime minister, Trudeau created a federation in which French is ensconced as an official language equal with English (even though it is the mother tongue of only 22% of the population), and in which most Canadian prime ministers have hailed from Quebec. In Quebec itself, the Péquistes have meanwhile delivered the cultural and economic emancipation francophones craved. Draconian language laws have demoted English: since the 1970s, perhaps half a million anglophones have simply decamped, leaving behind a province with a dynamic new French-speaking business class and few reasons to worry about cultural submersion. If sovereignty was a means to an end, most of those ends have been brilliantly achieved. So why does the cause endure?

Rebels without a cause

The Péquistes talk about ?getting their taxes back?, as if federation were giving Quebec a raw fiscal deal. It isn't. The federal government spends more in Quebec (C$43.1 billion in 2003) than it collects from it in revenues (C$39.8 billion). Indeed, the feds collect more than they spend in only three provinces: Ontario (C$18.1 billion more), Alberta (C$7.7 billion) and British Columbia (C$1.4 billion).

Furthermore, all these numbers will soon change, to Quebec's advantage. A study from the Canadian Energy Research Institute predicted that the federal government would collect C$51 billion in revenues from the Alberta oil sands over the next decade. Why should Quebec separate just as this windfall was about to arrive, especially as its own share, reckons one federal official, would be some C$10 billion?
Corbis
Corbis

Montreal, 1967: the stirrer and the stirred

It is a puzzle, to which the simplest answer may be this: Quebec wants to be treated as an independent nation because it feels like one?more so, perhaps, than it did when it had bigger grievances. To visit Montreal is to see at once that Quebec is indeed the ?distinct society? it claims to be. This is, after all, the world's third-largest French-speaking city (after Paris and Kinshasa), not much farther from Europe than it is from Vancouver, and a good deal closer in spirit. As Jean-François Lisée, an academic at the University of Montreal and a former PQ adviser, puts it, ?There exists a nation here that is conscious of its existence and does not quite understand why it is living in its neighbour's nation.?

If only grievances drove nationalism, Quebec's might have faded by now. But self-confidence can drive nationalism too. In 1980, the costs and uncertainties of going it alone in a big world frightened a lot of Quebeckers. Now that they are meshed into a global economy and a free-trading North America, they feel surer that an independent Quebec could prosper. Quebeckers are no admirers of George Bush, but their trade with the United States has burgeoned. They are probably right to assume that in the event of separation, neither the United States nor the rest of Canada would have an interest in pushing them out of NAFTA.

Canada is not, of course, going to break asunder tomorrow: this battle is being fought in slow motion. After all, the PQ is still two years from the first hurdle of winning the next provincial election. If it fails, the Péquistes will have to sit out a further term in opposition before they have another chance. And if in the end they do bring about a referendum, only to lose it for a third time, it is acknowledged even by party members that the damage to their cause might be terminal.

The longer run

In the intervening period, however, two elements in the independence equation will change. First, Quebec's economic health may decline. For reasons that are not well understood, though perhaps because the Quiet Revolution liberated Quebeckers from Catholicism as well as from English domination, the birth rate in the province has been declining for years. By 2012 the active workforce will start to shrink. As in the rest of Canada, immigration is seen as a way to counter this trend, but few immigrants?especially the dynamic Asians?want their children to learn French rather than English. Many of those who arrive in Quebec move on to Toronto or Vancouver.

Adapting to this demographic change will be made harder by the attachment of francophones to the things that delivered prosperity in the past but will hamper reform: dirigisme, co-operative savings institutions, powerful trade unions, subsidised electric power, generous public services and the high taxes to pay for them. Efforts by the Liberal provincial government of Jean Charest to cut income taxes by C$1 billion a year have been thwarted by demands for continued high spending.

The second big change in the equation is that Quebec's weight in the rest of Canada will diminish. Mr Lisée argues that the numbers make nonsense of the idea that the federation has solved the Quebec problem via its Canada-wide policy of bilingualism. In spite of three decades of this policy, he reckons, each generation of French-speakers in Canada outside Quebec and Acadia (the francophone region in New Brunswick) will be half the size of the previous one.

Among the quarter of Canadians outside Quebec whose mother tongue is not English, Chinese-speakers are close to overtaking French-speakers if they have not done so already. In British Columbia, French-speakers are outnumbered 15 times by speakers of other minority languages. For how long, Mr Lisée asks, will the government in Ottawa be able to sustain policies whereby a French-speaker, or an English-speaker who has French, will get preference in hiring in the federal government, or where a French-speaker can get a criminal trial in his language, and a Chinese-speaker cannot?

Out west, where Canadians say they have been neglected while Ottawa has been dancing to Quebec's tune, the prospect of the arrogant province losing some of its power is a cause of quiet satisfaction. In Ottawa, too, some federalists like to think that a poorer and weaker Quebec will drop its mad dream of separation and see the sense of huddling for safety within the federation. But will it? Péquistes such as Mr Lisée argue that the present bargain between Quebec and Canada, under which the province is placated by special treatment, is doomed by the inexorable pressure of demography. As the bargain unravels, people in Quebec may find the case for independence ever stronger.
Living with number one - "Relations with the United States are fraying"
Living with number one
Dec 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition


Relations with the United States are fraying

THEIR country, Canadians sometimes say, is 5,500 miles long and one inch thick?by which they mean that most Canadians live in a scattered archipelago of cities huddled along the 49th parallel, the border with the United States. Having a friendly superpower on your doorstep confers great advantages. Uncle Sam can be relied upon to defend the whole of North America. He also has a handy habit of buying your stuff: at least 70% or so of Canada's exports go to its voracious neighbour. So why do so many Canadians believe that the United States is ?Too Close for Comfort?, in the title of a recent book by Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians and a fervent critic of both globalisation and George Bush?
AP
AP

September 12th 2001

Canadians, you might say, are the original anti-Americans, the people who rejected the American revolution, stayed loyal to Britain and inherited what Desmond Morton, a Canadian historian, has called ?the cold, unprofitable remains of the continent?. But the chief cause of the friction is simply the great disparity between the neighbours. The United States has 300m people and a GDP of $12 trillion; Canada has 32m people and a GDP of $1 trillion. California alone is richer and more populous than Canada. As a sovereign country, however, Canada insists on being treated as America's equal. Such a relationship is bound to be fraught.

Counter-intuitively, relations have become harder to handle the more intimate they have become. Since NAFTA, the volume of cross-border trade has trebled. Nearly $700 billion-worth of goods and services cross the border every year, making it the world's largest bilateral trading relationship. But if you trade across an open border with a country that has ten times as many people, and if those people speak the same language, the fear of cultural and economic absorption grows intense. All Canadian governments have worked to strengthen the east-west muscles of federation, the better to counteract the north-south pull of the superpower.

When Paul Martin became Canada's prime minister in 2003, he was expected to rescue relations with the United States from the rough patch they had passed through under his predecessor. Jean Chrétien had decided that in the absence of authorisation from the UN Security Council, Canada would not fight in Iraq (though it did help America in Afghanistan, and continues to do so). Mr Chrétien's decision was wildly popular at home, and nobody expected Mr Martin to change it, but he was expected to smooth things over. And he certainly had a good reason to try.

September 12th 2001

The reason is terrorism. In 1999, a terrorist with a fake Canadian passport was caught trying to enter the United States with a car full of explosives, en route to blow up Los Angeles airport. After September 11th 2001 the Americans virtually stopped traffic across the border, for fear that this might be a way in for terrorists. To some thoughtful Canadians, this closure, though brief, was traumatic. The bulk of Canada's manufacturing output is traded, not consumed domestically, and the bulk of it heads south. The just-in-time factories of Ontario and Quebec are joined at the hip with their American suppliers and markets. If September 11th has meant that security now trumps trade, the possibility of some combination of events closing the border, with devastating consequences for Canada, can no longer be discounted.

One person especially alarmed by all this was Thomas d'Aquino, head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the club of big business. For him, September 11th was the second time round. In the 1980s he feared that low productivity in the United States, coupled with the import threat from Japan, might make the Americans pull up the drawbridge, leaving Canada in the cold. Now America faces another economic challenge, from China and India, as well as the threat of jihadist terrorism. As Mr d'Aquino and his camp see it, Canada has a vital interest in making sure that it continues to have access to the United States whatever happens. The economic integration of the two countries needs to be made irreversible, he says, and their security indivisible. But how?

Greater America

Canadians are divided. One school favours a ?grand bargain? with America. The chief component of this would be a common security perimeter. If the neighbours operated the same controls on their external borders, the ?internal? border would dwindle in significance. Together with Mexico, Canada and America might also harmonise more of their safety, health and environmental regulation. Some Canadians go further: why not aim for an integrated labour market, or even a single currency? In March, a task-force of Canadians, Mexicans and Americans, set up by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, proposed establishing a North American economic and security community by 2010, defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter.

The trouble with a grand bargain is that, even if America could be persuaded to go along, it is anathema to many Canadians. In their task-force report, the advocates of a North American economic and security community argued that the separate approaches to regulation in Canada, Mexico and the United States often boiled down to a ?tyranny of small differences?, imposing unnecessary economic costs. But for many Canadians, these small differences are a vital bulwark in the unending struggle to fend off absorption by the superpower.

In the view of those for whom America will probably always be too close for comfort, NAFTA has already narrowed Canada's choices in social and energy policy. Harmonised regulation would make matters worse. Free trade with America, say the naysayers, has whittled away welfare protection and increased income inequalities, sacrificing the Canadian social model on the altar of ?competitiveness?.

Nor is it just opponents of globalisation who are queasy. Roy MacLaren, a former trade minister, says that as America's economy is much bigger than Canada's and Mexico's combined, harmonising trade, security or defence practices would in the end require Canada and Mexico to adopt American standards. Opponents of the grand bargain think it better to shore up a rules-based trading system within the World Trade Organisation than to make an unequal deal with the United States.

For Mr Martin, as for any prime minister of Canada, threading a passage between dependence on the superpower on the one hand and Canadians' widespread suspicion of their neighbour on the other was always going to be difficult. This is a weather system that never goes away. Mr Martin has set up a cabinet committee to deal with the problem. But the clouds have, if anything, darkened on his watch.

Canadians blame Mr Bush. Much of the sympathy they felt for America after September 11th has been cancelled out by what they see as a warmongering foreign policy pursued by a president who ignores the rules and takes dictation from God. Apart from being immensely popular, Mr Chrétien's decision to stay out of Iraq crystallised these feelings and so reduced Mr Martin's room for manoeuvre. Then bad luck reduced it even more. Last August, NAFTA arbitrators looking into an interminable trade dispute between Canada and the United States on softwood lumber ruled in Canada's favour. The bad luck for Mr Martin was that the Americans paid almost no attention.

The gist of this arcane dispute is as follows. The Americans accuse the Canadians of charging low stumpage fees to forestry companies that use crown lands. This, they say, enables Canadian exporters to sell lumber at below-market prices. The arbitrators, finding that Canadian lumber exports had not injured American producers, instructed the United States to drop import duties it started to impose three years ago, and to return those it had already collected. But most Americans hardly noticed this ruling, and the Bush administration, under pressure from its own lumber lobby, did nothing to implement it.

America's insouciance has caused apoplexy north of the border. ?Unacceptable,? thundered Mr Martin. A union leader said Ottawa should ?turn the taps off on oil and gas exports?. Thomas Axworthy, a former aide to Trudeau, caught the mood in a newspaper article asking whether America's signature on a treaty meant anything at all. He went on to propose ferocious retaliation: reviewing any American takeovers of Canadian energy companies, stopping work on the Alaska gas pipeline and making exploitation of the oil sands conditional on America ending its ?harassment?. When Condoleezza Rice, America's secretary of state, on a visit to Ottawa in October insisted that America's record on honouring treaties was ?as good as gold?, Canadians reacted with scorn.

In his interview with The Economist, Mr Martin's own anger was palpable. Though ruling out the use of oil as a lever, he called America's decision to ignore a ruling by NAFTA's highest dispute-settlement body a violation of both the spirit and the letter of the accord, and he gave warning that America's behaviour would affect other decisions Canada might take. Canadians had talked about alternatives for a long time, he said, and the rise of China and India was now providing them. ?We shouldn't kid ourselves,? he added. ?The American market is always going to be our most important market. But there certainly are other options.?

Does Canada really have a ?China card? to play against the United States? Probably not. When President Hu visited Ottawa in September, Mr Martin pressed the Chinese to buy more Canadian softwood lumber. In principle, Mr Hu also favours more trade. But the plain fact is that the United States, connected to its neighbour by language, custom and business practice as well as geography, is always likely to be Canada's biggest market. To put matters in perspective, note that the value of the softwood lumber British Columbia sells to China is only 1% of what it sells to the United States.

The anger of Canadians is understandable: the whole point of NAFTA, as sold to them, was that it would set out binding rules for trade disputes. Yet it is troubling that a single dispute should enrage them quite so much. The economic consequences of the argument are minor. Despite the contested duties imposed by the United States, Canadian lumber has 34% of the American market, and lumber anyway represents less than 3% of Canada's total exports.

But, as with a quarrel over cattle, when American ranchers used the discovery of a single case of BSE in a Canadian herd as a reason to suspend trade, Canadians are exquisitely sensitive to any behaviour that smacks of bullying, high-handedness or being taken for granted by the superpower. When Canadians at large feel this way about the United States, a prime minister ignores public opinion at his peril.

That may be why, last February, Mr Martin felt he had to tell the United States that Canada would not help to develop its anti-ballistic missile defence system. Again, the practical implications of the decision may be slight. For the moment, a workable system of this sort is not much more than a gleam in the Pentagon's eye, and Canada is continuing to co-operate with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command. But the manner of the decision?a last-minute announcement at a time when Mr Martin was being criticised at home for general indecision?surprised and upset the Americans.

Just business as usual?

Is the present scratchiness (see chart 4) just one more down in a history of ups and downs? Canadians are not the only people who have found Mr Bush's America an uncomfortable partner. But there is more to it than the usual gaffes and spats over trade and diplomacy. To find a similar depth of anti-American sentiment, says Michael Adams, president of Environics, a market-research group in Toronto, you would have to go back to the federal election of 1911, when Wilfrid Laurier's espousal of trade reciprocity with the United States cost him re-election. A case can be made that the values of the two countries are drifting inexorably apart.

By and large, Canadians appear to be becoming more liberal and secular at a time when Americans are becoming more conservative and religious. Canadians may decriminalise the use of marijuana and have sanctioned gay marriage. They abhor the death penalty and have invested in a generous welfare state and a system of socialised medicine for all. Foreign-policy differences also run deep. Canada is an enthusiastic proponent of multilateralism, at a time when America has found it convenient to bypass the United Nations. Canada was an architect of the International Criminal Court, which the United States works hard to obstruct, and a ban on landmines, which the Americans oppose.

Whether these signs of estrangement are a passing phenomenon is hard to say. Railing against America's ?cavalier and imperial? attitudes, Lloyd Axworthy, a former foreign minister, argues that the shift of political power to the south and west of the United States brings ?less understanding or interest in our country?. Joe Clark, a former Conservative prime minister, worries about generational change. The leaders of Canada and America are no longer tied by the common experience of the second world war, and the failure of Canada to fight in Vietnam or Iraq means that a network of personal connections has fallen apart. Indeed, the main thing Americans notice about Canadian foreign policy is its habit of denouncing the warlike things America gets up to in the world?while spending rather little on its own defence.

Demography is also distancing the neighbours. Both are lands of immigration?in 2001 about 11% of Americans and 18% of Canadians were foreign-born?but whereas Canada is importing skilled Asians, the United States is importing unskilled Latin Americans.

Even if the values of the two countries continue to drift apart, geography dictates that they must co-operate. Canada will continue to have an overriding interest in good relations. America will have a growing interest in Canadian energy?and possibly also its plentiful fresh water (with lots of scope for future arguments), to replenish America's parched south-west.

In March, when Mr Martin met Mr Bush and Vicente Fox, the president of Mexico, in Waco, Texas, the three leaders inaugurated a ?Security and Prosperity Partnership?, or SPP. This looks far less ambitious than the North American economic and security community proposed by New York's Council on Foreign Relations. Canadian opinion, it seems, is not yet ready for a common security perimeter or customs union. The SPP is little more than a forum for officials from the three countries to discuss a range of technocratic subjects, such as border security and health co-operation.

However, small agreements can blossom into something much bigger: remember the European Coal and Steel Community, which gradually metamorphosed into the European Union. Mr d'Aquino and his business lobby hope for a similar evolution. From the integrators' perspective, one advantage of the SPP is the absence of any ?big bang?: the officials can operate below the political radar, without involving the American or Mexican Congress or Canada's Parliament. Nonetheless, says Mr d'Aquino, ?by 2010 the North America we know will have changed completely.? For precisely that reason, of course, many other Canadians are on guard against what they call ?integration by stealth?. As in relations with Alberta and Quebec, navigating through the shoals will require political skills of the highest order. Does Mr Martin's government have them?
A funny sort of government - "Canada's dysfunctional politics"
A funny sort of government
Dec 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition


Canada's dysfunctional politics
Reuters
Reuters

Martin has no mandate

?BEWARE of what you wish for? might be an apt motto for Paul Martin. Canada's prime minister worked long, hard and?say some rivals?deviously to wrest the party and the premiership from Jean Chrétien, his long-serving predecessor, at the end of December 2003. He was helped by a reputation as the brilliant finance minister who had rescued the country's public finances. However, Mr Martin had no sooner moved into the prime minister's residence in Ottawa's Sussex Drive when things began to go wrong.

His first mistake was to gamble on an early election. He wanted a personal mandate, but at the polls in June 2004 the voters gave him a raspberry, scything the Liberals from 168 to 135 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons and forcing them to govern as a minority. To some extent, this was less a mistake than a misfortune: the election was blighted for the Liberals by the eruption of the so-called ?sponsorship scandal? as Canadians learnt that in the late 1990s public funds intended for a campaign to promote federalism in Quebec had been secretly channelled to the Liberal Party and its cronies.

The scandal has continued to dog Mr Martin's premiership, forcing him to concentrate on survival rather than on setting out a clear direction for his administration. In the first half of this year, a series of narrow votes in Parliament threatened to force him into yet another general election. Having lost his majority, Mr Martin had to buy the support of the New Democrats by increasing public spending and postponing promised cuts in corporate taxes. This prompted the Canadian Council of Chief Executives to call Canada ?a nation adrift?. The prime minister, the bosses said, was ?frittering away? the fruits of years of sacrifice, doling out public money to rapacious local and provincial governments.

By the end of the summer, it began to look as if his luck might change for the better. When the sponsorship scandal broke, Mr Martin appointed a federal judge, John Gomery, to conduct an inquiry. He also promised to hold a general election within 30 days of receiving Mr Gomery's report. But the judge decided to issue two reports. The first of these, published last month, confirmed that the sponsorship programme had been turned into a slush fund for the Liberal Party. However, it explicitly exonerated Mr Martin himself. The second (and blander) part of the report, on how to prevent another such scandal, is not expected until February.
Reuters
Reuters

Harper has little hope

In principle, this might have let Mr Martin postpone his promised election until next spring, by when voters would have tired of the scandal. But the opposition parties chose to topple the government earlier, hoping to derive maximum benefit from the scandal's fall-out. By defeating the government in a no-confidence vote this week, they have forced Mr Martin to call a fresh election in January. Even so, the outcome is uncertain. Odd though it may seem, Canadians look fairly likely to elect a minority Liberal government yet again. Although the Conservatives have enjoyed a post-Gomery bounce in the opinion polls, it may not carry them to victory.

Stephen Harper, the Conservatives' leader, is an aloof, cerebral figure, disparaged well beyond Liberal circles as a neo-conservative importing dangerous ideas from the United States. Though hardly radical by most of the world's standards, Mr Harper has alienated many Canadians by his opposition to gay marriage and his reservations about abortion.

Locking out the Tories

So the Liberals may survive the sponsorship scandal. But the affair points to a deeper malaise in Canada's politics. It is worrying that the Conservatives are considered unable to win even when the Liberals are laid low by scandal. Long periods of domination by a single party are not good for the health of any democracy, let alone one in which power at the national level is highly centralised. Canada's prime minister enjoys remarkable powers of patronage: it was, for example, Mr Martin who appointed Canada's glamorous new governor-general. He also controls appointments to the Supreme Court and the Senate. Such a system would matter less if there were more frequent rotation in government. Why is there so little?

It is not just the person and position of their present leader that holds the Conservatives back. They are a party divided, formed by a merger in 2003 between the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance. These western roots may have tugged the merged party too far to the right to win a majority in a country where two out of three people tell pollsters that, if they could vote in American elections, they would vote Democrat rather than Republican. A party that is perceived to have strong religious influences, as the Western Alliance did, and a programme that is perceived as socially as well as economically conservative, as the Conservatives' is under Mr Harper, faces a daunting challenge.

Beyond ideology, which they could change, and a poor leader, whom they could sack, the Tories are plagued by a structural problem they may not be able to rectify. This is their chronic weakness in Quebec. The reasons for their unpopularity stretch back into history?not least to the conscription crisis of the first world war, when Quebeckers resented the Tories for trying to make them fight for the British crown. Brian Mulroney, it is true, delivered Quebec for the Conservatives in 1984 and 1988, but he enjoyed the advantage of being a Quebecker himself, who had formed a coalition with the province's nationalists. For a Quebecker to lead the Conservatives now that they depend so much on the west would be hard.

Worse still for the Tories, Mr Mulroney failed to make good on his promise to persuade the rest of Canada to recognise Quebec as a distinct society. This led to the collapse of the Conservative vote in the election of 1993 and the emergence of the Bloc Québécois, a federal counterpart of the Parti Québécois, now with 53 seats in Parliament. In federal elections, it is now the Bloc that scoops up anti-Liberal votes in Quebec. The Tories do not have a single seat in a province that contains a quarter of Canada's electorate. This puts a formidable obstacle in their path to power.

What of the other parties? The New Democratic Party is a socialist party from the old world that is ill at ease in the new one and has yet to find its Tony Blair. It appeals at most to about a fifth of the electorate, but not to the Asians and other business-friendly new Canadians in the vote-rich urban areas. The Bloc Québécois has a capable leader in Gilles Duceppe, but a party based in a single province can never win federal power?and as
 

ntdz

Diamond Member
Aug 5, 2004
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I consider Great Britain our closest ally.

Edit: I can't read the articles from the economist, requires registration.
 

Stunt

Diamond Member
Jul 17, 2002
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Ntdz: I will copy and paste the articles for those who cannot subscribe.

as for your comment; the article has this:
"To have our closest ally, Canada, with these resources available, with a natural market in the United States, it's a huge contributor to energy security for North America" -John Snow (American Treasury Secretary)
 

Stunt

Diamond Member
Jul 17, 2002
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An interesting graph shows how different countries view immigrants.

Q: "Are immigrants a good or bad influence on your country"
A: Bad/Good (%)

Canada: 18/77
US: 43/46
France: 50/44
Britain: 50/38
Germany: 60/36

Looks like Canada and the US are the only ones who see immigrants as being good for our society...US barely.
 

stratman

Senior member
Oct 19, 2004
335
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As a Canadian, I want to support these articles as very good, well-written, and accurate, and it's really interesting reading an outsiders view on our country. I only think that one point was exaggerated, which is probably the fault of the writer's sources, not the writer him/herself. Also, I will temper my response with my identity; the differences in demographics and thought between the different regions of Canada are significant, though by no means overwhelming. I am born and raised in British Columbia, the farthest west province in Canada. So, I wouldn't mind being corrected if my perception/experience is inaccurate for other areas of Canada, and would like to hear the viewpoints of the other regions of Canada. (nb: Stunt is from Ontario, a province in central Canada)

I know verrrrrry few people who would align themselves with this (below) 'school' and support a 'grand bargain' type of deal. Actually, no one I know would openly support meshing domestic policies with the states in exchange for a common security perimeter. From what to do with criminals, to vastly different beliefs/policies regarding drugs and guns, our differences are irreconcilable. And we would only stand to gain in trade, we would not stand to gain in actual protecton from the deal.

Canadians are divided. One school favours a ?grand bargain? with America. The chief component of this would be a common security perimeter. If the neighbours operated the same controls on their external borders, the ?internal? border would dwindle in significance. Together with Mexico, Canada and America might also harmonise more of their safety, health and environmental regulation. Some Canadians go further: why not aim for an integrated labour market, or even a single currency? In March, a task-force of Canadians, Mexicans and Americans, set up by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, proposed establishing a North American economic and security community by 2010, defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter. "

It'd be interesting to hear other American viewpoints about Canada.
Thanks bringing these articles to our attentions, Stunt.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,095
513
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Originally posted by: Stunt
An interesting graph shows how different countries view immigrants.

Q: "Are immigrants a good or bad influence on your country"
A: Bad/Good (%)

Canada: 18/77
US: 43/46
France: 50/44
Britain: 50/38
Germany: 60/36

Looks like Canada and the US are the only ones who see immigrants as being good for our society...US barely.


I am curious how illegal immigration has tainted the views of most Americans when it comes to immigration in general.


 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,085
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Very long read, but sums up the issues quite well. Agree with Stratman about meshing with the US. Also from BC. Thanks for posting them Stunt! :)
 

Whaspe

Senior member
Jan 1, 2005
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I agree with Sandorski... long read. But, I'll put in my two cents. Coming from Alberta, I can attest that most people scoff at the $400 per person cheque, however they still all plan on spending it on wining dining and gifts. Basically the Gov. is giving a direct infuse of 1.2 billion into the economy (not sure what the portion of it will be that stays in Alberta though). What I get for my family will go into a bonus payment on the mortgage. I like the idea of the Heritage Trust fund and think similar funds should be set and managed for things like infastructure, health care... both Alberta's major cities Edmonton and Calgary are busting at the seams with estimates of ~1 billion each in needed infrastructure. I also don't have a problem with Alberta contributing to equalization payments but I think most Albertans would want to ensure the money isn't just blown by the other provinces on worthless programs. A friend of mine thinks that whatever Alberta gives out should be divided up among the other provinces and put straight into debt payments for them and I like that idea... what do you guys think?
I liked the way they summed up the Quebec issue and it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years. Quite frankly if Quebec votes to split it they have my blessing... they haven't been a "true" member of the Federation since opting to not sign the Chartre. I'm sure we could arrange to set up some nice trade agreements and the other provinces would be happy to take the payments Quebec currently receives. On the flip side of things I think it's in everyones best interests to sit down and figure this one out. The one thing the articles brushed on but never outright said is that Canada's federal government is made up of regional parties. While the Liberals have the largest base, their main interests have always been Central Canada, while the Conservatives (currently) represent the West, leaving the Bloc with Quebec. Settling the Quebec issue would make for some interesting political realignments.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,095
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Originally posted by: speg
Originally posted by: Martin
just because we sell them stuff doesn't make us their closest ally.


No, but being the US's largest supplier of oil might.

The United States is the largest supplier of oil to the United States.
 

Todd33

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 2003
7,842
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81
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: speg
Originally posted by: Martin
just because we sell them stuff doesn't make us their closest ally.


No, but being the US's largest supplier of oil might.

The United States is the largest supplier of oil to the United States.

Looks like we import almost double what we produce and production has been trending down for years. We get most of our crude from Canada, followed by our good friends in the oppressive terror sponsoring Saudi Arabia.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petr...pany_level_imports/current/import.html
 

Kibbo86

Senior member
Oct 9, 2005
347
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Why?

We're happy to sell it to you anyway. Wait 'till California runs out of water, then you can bring out poor, hungry farmers to bolster your "humanitarian" arguments.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,095
513
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Originally posted by: Todd33
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: speg
Originally posted by: Martin
just because we sell them stuff doesn't make us their closest ally.


No, but being the US's largest supplier of oil might.

The United States is the largest supplier of oil to the United States.

Looks like we import almost double what we produce and production has been trending down for years. We get most of our crude from Canada, followed by our good friends in the oppressive terror sponsoring Saudi Arabia.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petr...pany_level_imports/current/import.html


We consume 21 million barrels a day. Canada supplies us with 1.6 million a day. The United States produces 5.6 million a day.

My argument stands, the United States is the #1 supplier of oil to the United States.
 

Todd33

Diamond Member
Oct 16, 2003
7,842
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Originally posted by: Genx87
My argument stands, the United States is the #1 supplier of oil to the United States.

You never had an argument. You made a statement and it implied, at least to me, that the US uses more domestic oil than import oil. The fact is if any one of or top five importers stopped supplying oil, the US economy would hit the breaks, be proud of that.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,095
513
126
Originally posted by: Todd33
Originally posted by: Genx87
My argument stands, the United States is the #1 supplier of oil to the United States.

You never had an argument. You made a statement and it implied, at least to me, that the US uses more domestic oil than import oil. The fact is if any one of or top five importers stopped supplying oil, the US economy would hit the breaks, be proud of that.

I guess you read what you wanted from my statement that said "The US is the largest supplier of oil to the US".

About your last statement, any developed nation ends up losing a supply of oil will see the same results.
 

ntdz

Diamond Member
Aug 5, 2004
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Originally posted by: Todd33
Originally posted by: Genx87
My argument stands, the United States is the #1 supplier of oil to the United States.

You never had an argument. You made a statement and it implied, at least to me, that the US uses more domestic oil than import oil. The fact is if any one of or top five importers stopped supplying oil, the US economy would hit the breaks, be proud of that.

Good thing that won't happen, b/c the world economy would hit the breaks.
 

Stunt

Diamond Member
Jul 17, 2002
9,717
2
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Genx is correct in saying the US is the largest supplier to the US. (even though this is in decline)

Oil is a commodity, any interruption in supply affects the whole world...not just the US. And when it comes to those who can afford higher oil prices, i put the US at the top of the list. US economy would be less impacted than other developed nations I would say.
 

Cruise51

Senior member
Mar 2, 2005
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US Daily Oil Consumption By Country:
United States 3,892,000
Canada 1,679,000
Saudi Arabia 1,269,000
Mexico 1,249,000
Venezuela 1,073,000

Although the largest supplier of oil to the USA is the USA, cutting off a supplier as large a Canada would be disasterous to the US economy.

Btw... I read some of the article but it is far to large.
 

Whaspe

Senior member
Jan 1, 2005
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Anyone hear the little news snippet about Klein investing 1 billion into cancer research and facilities in Calgary and Edmonton?
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
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Originally posted by: Whaspe
Anyone hear the little news snippet about Klein investing 1 billion into cancer research and facilities in Calgary and Edmonton?

No, haven't heard that, but :thumbsup: to him. It's a good use of the Surplus that will benefit his Province, the country as a whole, and everyone else for that matter.