WASHINGTON — There are no protesters carrying rifles in Red Deer. No banks collapsing in Baie-Comeau. No Tea Party malcontents in Truro. No filibusters in Flin Flon. And immigrants can wander Whitehorse with nothing more in their pockets than a stick of gum — no documents required to avoid handcuffs.
If Canadians perceive themselves as Americans do — safe, sound, sensible, snug and maybe a bit snoozy — they could arguably add another adjective as they watch events fold south of the border in recent months: smug.
But some observers of Canada-U.S. relations say Canadians should guard against a feeling of superiority as America struggles through a period of seething discontentment.
While Canada may not have an anti-government Tea Party movement of its own or protesters marching on the nation’s capital to question their leader’s birth certificate, neither is it enduring a stubborn recession that’s left one in 10 of its citizens out of work — a dire reality that has spurred some Americans into political activism.
“We are fundamentally very similar, we have largely the same values, the same hopes and aspirations; we live our lives in very similar ways,” Chris Sands, a Canada-U.S. relations expert at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said in a recent interview.
But he cites the viewpoint of Richard Van Loon, a former civil servant and onetime president of Ottawa’s Carleton University who once asserted that a key difference between Americans and Canadians is that Canadians are less likely to get politically involved when unhappy.
“He argued that Canadians were spectator participants in politics, they felt disconnected, they didn’t get organized, they didn’t start up groups or get petitions signed — that isn’t really the Canadian way,” Sands said in a recent interview.
“Canadians have opinions, but they don’t really think their politicians care, so they watch it all go by and weigh in at voting time, when they often do something dramatic like reduce the government to a small number of seats.”
In the U.S., Sands points out, Americans take to the streets regardless of whether they’re on the right or the left side of the political divide.
That’s why tens of thousands of people, mostly Hispanic immigrants, protested in dozens of U.S. cities on Saturday to protest Arizona’s tough new anti-immigration law and demand reforms to federal immigration policy. Gloria Estefan and other Hispanic entertainers were on hand at the biggest event in Los Angeles.
In D.C. at the end of the month, hundreds of so-called Birthers will march near the White House to voice their belief that U.S. President Barack Obama was not born on American soil, meaning recently passed health-care legislation is “unconstitutional and voidable.”
They’ve asked those who want to join the march to bring their birth certificates.
“Americans have a notion that they can change the world and they have to get involved, they have to be heard, they have to protest, they have to go on talk radio and rant, that it’s the only way to change the system,” he said.
The Arizona law is a perfect example of this go-to American attitude, Sands added.
The push for the law didn’t start with politicians, but with citizens and police officers who demanded action from the state when the federal government continued to drag its feet on immigration policy reform.
“There was a lot of vigilante, independent action by citizens and people personally affected by the illegal immigration situation, and it was only after a long period of time that the state government finally got involved,” he said.
“As far as Tea Party protests and other protest of that nature, Canadians might think they wouldn’t participate in such uncouth displays of amateur hour, but a common complaint about Canadians is that they’re too passive, too willing to take things sitting down.”
Kory Teneycke, a conservative pundit in Ottawa who was once the director of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, says Americans have every right to be nervous about the direction of the country.
“The U.S. is hurtling at breakneck speed towards the debt wall and unemployment is dramatic,” Teneycke said from Ottawa.
“The Tea Party movement and other protest movements are something you see when people are fed up with how the economy is going. You have people feeling economically frustrated and disenchanted with the two political parties and now they’re trying to find a vehicle to voice their frustration.”
And such protests aren’t unheard of in Canada, he adds, pointing to anti-GST demonstrations in 1990 and a recent march in Quebec against taxes. As many as 50,000 people demonstrated in front of the Quebec legislature last month to protest tax hikes in the recent provincial budget.
“Not only could you see that kind of thing in Canada under the right circumstances, but we already have seen the same thing in Canada,” he said.
“Right now, we are simply not in the same dire circumstances economically as the U.S., Canadians are not genetically superior to anybody in any place. If the economic circumstances were the same, you’d see this anger being vented in Canada too.”
In fact, Teneycke adds, there’s one stark similarity between both countries — politicians aren’t likely to act until they fear losing public support come voting day.
“Politicians are elected by people; they aren’t the vanguard of anything. Politicians are typically pretty cowardly, they don’t tend to lead the public, they tend to follow the public —that’s what happened in Arizona,” he said.
“And in Canada, we saw changes to sex education policy in Ontario unceremoniously dumped, and Stephen Harper unceremoniously dumped any notion of changing the lyrics to the national anthem when there was a public outcry.
Politicians want broad popular consensus, and the system doesn’t encourage politicians to take action without it in either country.”