Canadians Do It Better

Robert,
That was not a knock on our northern neighbors. And I did not say that Canada has no troops deployed outside of Canada. The sheer numbers of U.S. men and women and the logistics attached to them (only the ones out of the country) do have a hefty price tag.

Canada is an interesting mix of liberal health care and conservative fiscal policies. From what I hear, clean cities and great skiing. And, let's not forget, they don't have armed forces deployed around the world. We are invited to intervene by the countries in trouble, criticized for intervening by everyone else. In fact, we can't win. Have we done stupid things? Yep! But somehow, we are always putting our lives and (big time) money into other countries situations. Imagine if these monies and resources were used for the good of our own country?
As far as using immigrant talent (referenced in the Newsweek article), we surely have many immigrants in this country. Many are getting PHD's and Medical degrees at our best universities.
I'm not sure what talent Bill Gates was lacking when he went to Canada for it, but my guess is he saved money on a variety of levels.

It's not strictly true to say that Canada doesn't "have armed forces deployed around the world." While we certainly don't have as much around the world as the United States, we're intimately involved in Afghanistan.

here goeth .... Canada's arts (Film mostly) is the province of the government, that is to say, if you want funding for a motion picture you go to the gubment. This is so entrenched that it has largely crowded out independent venture capital for films and has made the state the de facto funding apparatus for movies. Now that's all well and good ... until recently socially conservative politicians took control of federal coffers and demanded new prerequisites for state cash ... nothing qualifies which is morally questionable, sexually deviant, excessively violent, and so forth. That pretty much rules out David Cronenberg (a personal favorite), who ironically raves about Canadian-style government arts funding. Now this isn't to say that a nascent private sector won't emerge to compensate, but it just shows, I would say, that relying on a group of pious, populist scolds for your budget for so long puts a serious cramp in one's style and integrity, not to mention making for one hell of a game of industry catch-up.

The Canadian film industry is also very small because of Hollywood, though not in the "evil cultural takeover" way. Canadian culture is really similar to american culture, and a movie which works in the US will almost surely work in Canada, even the ones that make fun of Canada. Texas for example has about as many people and as big an economy as Canada, but the Texas film industry is pretty small.

So if there were no govt subsidy, we wouldn't see a film industry sprouting up in Vancouver, we'd just see fewer arty "Canadian culture" films which frankly can't even pick up much audience at the small independent theater down the street from me (in Montreal.

Canada imports stuff, including TV and movies. Big deal.

Errr umm..what about the First Amendment? Canada has a giant FAIL in that category, at least by the standards of the 1st Amendment.

In practical terms, there isn't much difference -- at least so far as legal regulation goes. People who think that the First Amendment is more "absolute" than s. 2(b) of the Charter just aren't that up on the case law. Canadian social norms may be more speech-restrictive than those in the USA, or may just be more speech restrictive about some things -- it would be hard to say.

Admittedly, this is rather nitpicky, but, uhm, according to the Wikipedia entry (spoiler alert, FYI other commenters) the climax of the film occurs when the main character inspires all the other gymnasts to select among themselves the winner of each competition, while throwing their individual chances at winning in order to protest capricious and biased decisions on the part of the judges. Wouldn't such an action be exactly the opposite of ruthlessness, competitiveness and self-indulgence? Just sayin'...

Will,

I've heard this refrain from you before, and while I understand an admiration of the fiscal policies like abstention from subsidizing homeownership and the "common-sense regulations" governing financial institutions, you seem to ignore the elephant in the room of Canada's habit of government intrusion in areas where it is most certainly not welcome, nor helpful, and indeed destructive. Are you not aware of these problems, or do you just feel that the cons of Canada's political system are less iniquitous than the cons of the USA's? Surely our affection for Labatt and Poutaine is not negated by our criticism of an overbearing state.

It problem comes from the fact that American's make too much of the supposed problems in Canada. Of course there are issues with people who want to censor speech, but many American's make it sound as if gangs roam the streets censoring as they go. This just isn't true.

I think the issue is that while Canada has some specific problems and an overactive government it is often balanced out by a little something I like to call Iraq.

The weather aint bad up here. I'd rather have -40 than +40.

And yes, the metric system is better too.