FIRST READING: How Canadian politics is (actually) different than U.S. politics

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Whenever a U.S. president comes to Canada, their advisers usually tell them to say something about how Canada is different than the United States. “We have our separate identities. We are not the same,” goes one particularly blunt example from Richard Nixon in 1972. The idea is to reassure Canadians that they are unique and special, and aren’t just cold-weather facsimiles of their hegemonic neighbour.

Nevertheless, Canada and the United States are indeed two of the most eerily similar countries on earth. We are both transcontinental former British colonies primarily populated by immigrants. Our respective national holidays are only three days apart. We use the same electrical outlets and even our currency is the same size and shape.  

But to the keen observer, there are differences much more fundamental than the fact that one country celebrates Thanksgiving in October, while the other does it in November. Below, a quick guide to how to tell the difference between U.S. and Canadian politics.

We both love guns, but in deeply different ways

Although the United States has the world’s highest rate of civilian gun ownership, Canada isn’t far behind. If you exclude microstates and failed states, Canada easily ranks as the world’s second gun-owningest nation.

But the similarities grind to a halt when it comes to gun culture. The United States is home to the unique belief that guns are an inalienable birthright that should be chiefly retained for the purpose of violently overthrowing the government if required.

In Canada, guns are a state-controlled privilege that are officially used only for two things: killing animals and putting holes in targets. With vanishingly few exceptions, Canadian law does not acknowledge firearms even as a means for self-defence. If you show up to the (mandatory) Canadian Firearms Safety Course talking about how you need a shotgun to protect your family, there’s a chance you may get your acquisition licence denied.

Indigenous issues are a much bigger deal in Canada

Canada’s institutionalized repression of Indigenous people easily ranks as one of the country’s greatest national sins. And yet, for every wrong Canada has committed against its first peoples, there’s usually an equivalent or greater wrong in the U.S. Like Canada, the U.S. even maintained a vast network of abusive, assimilationist Indian residential schools, complete with forgotten children’s graveyards.

Despite this, Indigenous issues in the United States aren’t a major part of the national conversation. It wasn’t until 2014 that a U.S. president even visited a Native American reservation.

One reason is that the Indigenous population is proportionally much smaller in the U.S. There are about three million Native Americans in the United States, as compared to 1.8 million Indigenous people in Canada.

Ironically, the reduced political visibility of Indigenous people in the United States may be to their advantage. While Canadian governments are much louder with their pro-Indigenous rhetoric, there’s a case to be made that Native Americans in the U.S. have been more successful at securing self-government and economic sustainability. “Much of Canada’s progress remains symbolic, based in government recognition as opposed to policy,” reads one recent analysis published in the Harvard Political Review.

Canada doesn’t really do free speech

Canada has “free expression,” to be sure: You’re free to tweet as many insults as you want at your least favourite journalist, and you can slap a bumper sticker on your truck reading “f—k Trudeau.” But Canada does reserve the right to throw its citizens in jail if they say something that “incites hatred.”

The United States maintains a much more uncompromising view of free speech. The U.S. Constitution bars the government from making any law “abridging the freedom of speech,” and multiple court challenges have found that this includes rhetoric that would be considered “hate speech” almost anywhere else.

It’s a philosophy that trickles down to all aspects of U.S. civic life. For one, it’s much harder to win a defamation suit in the United States; the litigant has to prove malice instead of just proving that the defendant was incorrect.

Americans are also much more free-wheeling in their regulation of broadcast media. The radio dial in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal all feature U.S.-registered stations that are openly targeted at cross-border Canadian audiences.

The CRTC would have no problem shutting down a Canadian radio station operating as a front for a U.S. audience, but the Americans leave them alone on the grounds that it’s not the place of the government to decide what should be on the radio.

Canadian government is way more opaque and secretive

Bob Woodward is the U.S. journalist famous for uncovering Watergate, the 1970s-era scandal in which the administration of U.S. president Richard Nixon was found to be ordering illegal monitoring of political opponents and then using federal resources to cover it up.

Woodward has said that if Watergate happened in Canada, the perpetrators probably would have gotten away with it. The culture of official opacity is just too strong.

For example, during the Trump administration, American reporters were fed almost daily leaks from the FBI. But in Canada, the recent CSIS leaks regarding allegations of Chinese electoral interference were so unusual that they immediately led to official calls for the leakers to be hunted down and prosecuted.

Our health-care systems both suck (but in the exact opposite way)

The health-care systems in the United States and Canada both suffer from the same general problem: They’re disproportionately expensive, while still underperforming relative to all other advanced economies. The United States has the world’s highest per-capita health-care expenditure only to have huge swaths of its population unable to access health insurance. Canada has the world’s second highest per-capita health-care expenditure only to suffer chronic shortages, resulting in millions of people being denied access to primary care or placed on interminable waiting lists.

The U.S. differs from every other advanced economy in the belief that health care should be provided almost exclusively by private actors. Canada, meanwhile, also differs from every other advanced economy in the belief that health care should be covered exclusively by the public option. They’re both uncompromising positions resulting in massive inefficiencies that don’t exist to the same extent in more nuanced systems.

Abortion law is … different

After the repeal of Roe v. Wade last year, the United States has witnessed the virtual criminalization of abortion in some of its more conservative states.

The situation couldn’t be more different in Canada. Not only is Canada more liberal on abortion than the U.S., it’s home to the most liberalized abortion regime in the world. There are no laws whatsoever governing abortion in Canada. While Canadian hospitals do maintain ethics guidelines curbing practices such as elective late-stage abortion and sex-selective abortion, neither is subject to state penalties. You won’t find this even in the most pro-abortion corners of Europe, where the practice is typically cut off after 12 weeks’ gestation.

What’s more, there is basically nobody in Canadian politics who has any interest in changing this. Even the People’s Party of Canada — the usual home for fringe right-wingers — has announced that it doesn’t want to touch the abortion issue with a 10-foot pole.

Americans are weirdly more deferential to their political class

The United States takes a lot of pride in the fact that they fought a war to break away from the British monarchy. In the words of one frequent refrain among American political pundits, “we fought a war so we wouldn’t have to listen to royals.”

So it’s somewhat odd that the Americans maintain a level of etiquette with their political class that borders on the crypto-monarchist. For one, elected politicians retain their titles for life. More than 20 years after he last served in elected office, Al Gore is still officially referred to as “Mr. Vice President.” Even Hillary Clinton is known as “Madam Secretary” — a reference to the four years she spent as an appointed member of the U.S. cabinet.

1. Biden apologizes for his French, promises strong ongoing ties, and disses Toronto's Maple Leafs

2. Full video and transcript: Read or watch Joe Biden's speech to Parliament

JOE BIDEN VISIT

Probably the biggest policy takeaway from the visit is that Canada and the U.S. rejigged the Safe Third Country Agreement to now include illegal border-crossers. Under the prior version, Canada could turn away asylum-seekers from U.S./Canadian border crossings on the grounds that they were already in a safe country and thus didn’t need the protection of the Canadian refugee system. But the measures didn’t apply if the asylum-seeker crossed the border illegally and made an “inland” claim. Naturally, there are some cynics out there who will claim that Canada doesn’t need permission from the United States to close a giant, brazenly exploited hole in its border – particularly when Canada very easily did just that at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canada made sure to gently remind the U.S. delegation that two Canadians did hard time in a Chinese prison because the RCMP answered a U.S. request to arrest Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the two Canadians detained by Beijing in retaliation for the Wanzhou arrest, were guests of honour at Biden’s speech to parliament – and they even got a standing ovation.

Former prime minister Jean Chrétien was seen wandering the halls of parliament before Friday’s address by Biden. When reporters asked him how U.S.-Canadian relations were doing, he replied “good.”

It was the considered opinion of First Reading that if Biden misspoke at any point during the visit, it would probably be to refer to the prime minister as “Pierre Trudeau.” Biden knew Pierre Trudeau when he was a U.S. senator, and the word “Pierre” would have been on his mind after a private meeting with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. But Biden’s most notable gaffe was instead to refer to Canada as “China” during his speech to Parliament.

To watch the whole speech (it’s only 30 minutes) or read a transcript, click here. We also called up a bunch of politicos (including Brian Mulroney’s former speechwriter) to get their take on the speech.

IN OTHER NEWS

The House of Commons just passed a motion calling for an official inquiry into allegations that the Trudeau government ignored warnings of Chinese electoral interference. It’s just a motion; it doesn’t do anything other than signal to the government that most of the House of Commons disagrees with them. But it’s interesting to parse who voted for it. Han Dong – the former Liberal MP accused of personally benefiting from Chinese electoral interference — voted in favour. And the Liberal caucus voted against. Although some notable abstentions include Joel Lightbound and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, two Liberal MPs with a bit of a history of speaking out publicly against the actions of their party leader.

Meanwhile, the NDP and Conservatives couldn’t even pass a non-binding inquiry motion without getting into a fight. The Conservatives stonewalled an initial NDP motion on the grounds that it left the door open to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau simply picking a Liberal crony to head it up. While the NDP ultimately supported a rejigged Conservative version, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh still accused the Tories of trying “to block it.” “Your spin is pathetic, Jagmeet,” reads a reply by Conservative Michael Cooper.

As the Chinese electoral interference scandal wends its way towards a conclusion, disaffected former Liberal cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has weighed in with a chilling portent that carries just a touch of schadenfreude. In a tweet, she noted that she ended her book Indian in the Cabinet with the line “isn’t that the way of change—the unseen becoming seen?” Added Wilson-Raybould, “are things becoming more seen?”

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