How is Canada comparable to the U.S.?

Allan:

Canada looks like the US: same infrastructure, the same road signals, same basic standards. … and of course the same language.

But there are many differences.

1. Canada is truly practicing universal suffrage. The US is not and would need a major amendment to adopt it.
2. Canada is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The US is not.
3. Canada abolished slavery in 1833 through a simple Governor’s Act. In the US you needed 500,000 deaths, a five-year war… and segregation is still floating around, especially when you cannot afford a good lawyer. But there is no shortage of lawyers… One for 300 Americans!.
4. Canada has strictly separated religion and politics. Not the US (One Nation, UNDER GOD, with liberty, etc.)
5. In Canada, abortion is legal and free. In the US too, but you better have a good lawyer, and shop around to make sure a doctor agrees to do it.
6. Canada practices a welfare state without the need for passionate partisanship in which the welfare state promoters would be insulted by ugly words like: socialist; soviet; atheist; Frenchy; European; commie; papist; totalitarian, pinko, etc., all synonyms.
7. Canada gave quasi-independence to the Inuit who are now as good as a sovereign state. The US created reservations.
8. In Canada, you do not have the right to bear arms. In the US the life of a modest schoolboy is dangerous. You risk death by Kalashnikov or Glock. But you may have the privilege of death in style, by state-of-the-art weaponry with all the bells and whistles instead of by a vulgar shotgun: a $15,000 gear instead of $150… And the consolation that you are not alone in dying in your classroom at that time.
9. The death penalty was abolished in Canada in 1972. In the US the debate makes little progress, and you may spend a lifetime waiting on death rows, especially if your skin is on the darker side….

If Americans are looking for serious progress they only need, as a first step, to look up north for ideas…

If one of them, after visiting Canada, asks me what else I could show him, I will ask him how he votes.

If he votes Democrat, I will take him to Norway.

If he votes Republican, to Singapore.

If he votes Libertarian, to Switzerland.

If he doesn’t know for sure, is rather contrarian, for everything against and against everything that is for, but always ready for a good argument around a glass of a decent drink (or two), I will invite him to France.

Andre Teissier du Cross