So, reading various Americans who think annexing Canada would be a good idea, it’s clear most of them know nothing about Canada. Let’s educate them. The basic principles here are “Canadians are not Americans and Canada is not just America with fewer people.”
Canada Has Universal Healthcare
If you’re American you don’t know what this really means. Let me start with myself: if I had been born in America, I’d be dead the past thirty-one years. I needed millions of dollars of healthcare in my 20s at a time when I would have had no insurance if American. Since then I’ve needed serious care twice, in both cases when I’d have no insurance as an American.
I am not alone. There are a lot of Canadians who know they’d be dead, or unable to get healthcare if they were American. So, irrespective of any resistance, American annexing Canada means a lot of people will die.
I imagine some of them will decide that if they’re going to die anyway, strapping on a vest and saying an explosive hello to unwelcome American guests would be a good way to go.
Income Numbers are Deceptive
If you’re American you probably make more money than the equivalent Canadian. Great. Now subtract all hospital and doctor costs from that. I’ve never seen a hospital bill. I walked out after 3 months and no one asked me for one red cent. Your drugs cost way more than ours do, so subtract half the cost of any drugs your taking from your income. Americans have to pay for a lot of things that people in other countries get from government or for lower cost because government allows less gouging.
Canada’s History Is Based On the Idea “We Don’t Want to Be American”
America had its revolution. The people who lost and were most bitter about it? They were called the “United Empire Loyalists” and they fled to what was then called “Upper Canada”. When our founding fathers drew up our constitution, they looked at the US Constitution and said “they made some big mistakes.” They created a very different constitution. As one example, though it’s almost never used, the Federal government has the ability to override ANY decision made by the States. (Our founders were around during your civil war. They took a lesson.)
We raced West so that America wouldn’t claim all of North America. We stretched as far as we could to establish our borders opposition to, and in a race with America.
Canada’s founding principle is “We Are Not Americans.”
Canadian Identity
Not American. That’s what we all agree on. Americans see Canadians as more polite and wimpier Americans, and think everyone wants to be American, because gosh, America is the best. Canada always compares itself to American and asks “are we doing better?” I think that’s often a bad thing, the American bar is on the ground, trying to be better than America is often choosing a very low standard. Still, that’s how it is.
Canadians don’t bluster, but we have more wilderness and rural area than America. Canadians have a lot of guns, and rural and wilderness Canadians are tough and used to roughing it. There are places in Canada where there’s no one, no one, around for fifty miles. You take care of your own problems, or you die. The idea that Canadians are wimps is based on America being a superpower and Canadians being polite. It has little basis in reality outside the major cities, and Canadians in cities aren’t any more effete than Americans in cities (and while fat, less fat than Americans.)
Canada is BIG
Canada has more land than any country but Russia. Most of that land is sparsely inhabited. But, and this is important, so pay attention at the back of the class, almost everything America would want from Canada is out in the boons: oil, minerals, timber, etc…
People say Afghanistan was made for guerilla warfare but those people never thought what it’d be like to fight an insurgency in Canada. Thousands and thousands of miles of roads, railways and pipelines. Widely spread mines and farms and oil wells. Absolutely impossible to defend against some guy with an IED.
Canadians Don’t Want to Be Americans
There won’t be a voluntary annexation. A poll found 82% of Canadians opposed to joining the US and 13% for. If there’s a violent one America will conquer the cities in a couple weeks, then spend thirty years fighting a guerilla war which makes Afghanistan look like the picnic it was because, again, it’s a big country, often very rough and everything worth having is out in the country.
Canadians often like Americans, but most of us don’t want to be Americans and those who do simply emigrate to the US. And, in truth, just as many Americans look down on Canadians, Canadians think Americans are barbarians. Understand that when Canadians were polled on who the greatest Canadian is, the number one choice was Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian Universal Healthcare.
We aren’t nearly as nice as we like to think we are, and we have plenty of flaws. But one thing the majority of us agree on, “Thank God We’re Not Americans.”
This is perfectly natural. For our entire history and even before Confederation the number one fact of Canadian political life has been the four hundred pound gorilla on the southern border. We’ve always been aware that many Americans wanted to take over Canada or take a big chunk of it. Fifty-four fourty was the slogan. The Canadian border is at the 49th parallel, but many Americans wanted it up at 54.4. Canada is the “not America” nation.
So, once again, for the slow folks:
Canada is not America. Canadians are not embarrassed Americans. Most Canadians don’t want to be Americans and like folks pretty much everywhere, figure that our country, whatever its flaws, is better than our neighbour’s country and that being us is better than being someone else.