Canada and the USA: A Quick Comparison

 

An American friend sends a clip suggesting that Canadian government corruption is verging on Third World levels.

Sadly, this is not news. It occurs to me that this is a recurring theme in Canadian politics. Canadian governments almost always fall due to corruption. Whoever is the opposition vows to come in and clean things up. Ten years on or so, they too are thrown out for corruption. 

This goes back not just to our first government, under Sir John A. Macdonald, which fell over the Canadian Pacific scandal. It really goes back further, to the days of the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique. These operated as a kind of oligarchy, monopolizing government positions and government largesse: cronyism. Despite “responsible government,” this seems cemented in by long tradition as the Canadian way. People speak these das of the “Laurentian elite.” You see the same attitude percolate through Canadian voluntary associations, which seem invariably cliquish. In government, it is seen in the many subsidies given out to industry under the guise of “regional economic expansion”; the bribes to First Nations, Quebec, feminists, multicultural groups. The untendered contracts. More recently the subsidization of preferred news media.

American politics does not seem to be like this. There have been scandals, certainly, but not such generalized corruption, and never taken for granted as standard operating procedure the way it seems to be in Canada.

This may be partly because in the US there is a better system of checks and balances. A rogue executive can be called out by the legislative, and either by the judiciary, and vice versa.

In Canada, the legislature is controlled by the executive; and the executive gets to nominate the judges. 

But American media also traditionally delight in muckraking; and individual Americans rarely have a good word to say about Washington.

 Under this, and causing this, is a different attitude to government. Canadians are spontaneously deferential to authority, and trust their leaders. Americans are spontaneously suspicious of leaders. And this traces back to our different histories: America formed by rebelling against established authority. Canade was formed by those who insisted on deference to it.

Both attitudes have their advantages. Canada is more orderly; there is more peace in the streets. The greasy wheels turn more smoothly. America is more prosperous and innovative; and there is more freedom. I have lived in both countries. In America, there is freedom in the very air. 

Canada is innately conservative. The US is innately liberal. In the proper meanings of those words.