It's not just the weather that's cooler in Canada
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Pittsburg, PA Post-Gazette

You live next door to a clean-cut, quiet guy. He never plays loud
music or throws raucous parties. He doesn't gossip over the fence,
just smiles politely and offers you some tomatoes. His lawn is
cared-for, his house is neat as a pin and you get the feeling he
doesn't always lock his front door. He wears Dockers. You hardly know
he's there.

And then one day you discover that he has pot in his basement, spends
his weekends at peace marches and that guy you've seen mowing the
yard is his spouse.

Allow me to introduce Canada.

The Canadians are so quiet that you may have forgotten they're up
there, but they've been busy doing some surprising things. It's like
discovering that the mice you are dimly aware of in your attic have
been building an espresso machine. Did you realize, for example, that
our reliable little tag-along brother never joined the Coalition of
the Willing? Canada wasn't willing, as it turns out, to join the fun
in Iraq. I can only assume American diner menus weren't angrily
changed to include "freedom bacon," because nobody here eats the
stuff anyway.

And then there's the wild drug situation: Canadian doctors are
authorized to dispense medical marijuana. Parliament is considering
legislation that would not exactly legalize marijuana possession, as
you may have heard, but would reduce the penalty for possession of
under 15 grams to a fine, like a speeding ticket. This is to allow
law enforcement to concentrate resources on traffickers; if your
garden is full of wasps, it's smarter to go for the nest rather than
trying to swat every individual bug. Or, in the United States, bong.

Now, here's the part that I, as an American, can't understand. These
poor benighted pinkos are doing everything wrong. They have a drug
problem: Marijuana offenses have doubled since 1991. And Canada has
strict gun control laws, which means that the criminals must all be
heavily armed, the law-abiding civilians helpless and the government
on the verge  of a massive confiscation campaign. (The laws have been
in place since the '70s, but I'm sure the government will get around
to the confiscation eventually.) They don't even have a death penalty!

And yet ... nationally, overall crime in Canada has been declining
since 1991. Violent crimes fell 13 percent in 2002. Of course, there
are still crimes committed with guns-brought in from the United
States, which has become the major illegal weapons supplier for all
of North America-but my theory is that the surge in pot-smoking has
rendered most criminals too relaxed to commit violent crimes. They're
probably more focused on shoplifting boxes of Ho-Hos from convenience
stores.

And then there's the most reckless move of all: Just last month,
Canada decided to allow and recognize same-sex marriages. Merciful
moose, what can they be thinking? Will there be married Mounties
(they always get their man!)? Dudley Do-Right was sweet on Nell, not
Mel! We must be the only ones who really care about families. Not
enough to make sure they all have health insurance, of course, but
more than those libertines up north.

This sort of behavior is a clear and present danger to all our
stereotypes about Canada. It's supposed to be a cold, wholesome
country of polite, beer- drinking hockey players, not founded by
freedom-fighters in a bloody revolution but quietly assembled by
loyalists and royalists more interested in order and good government
than liberty and independence.

But if we are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of
our time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if
Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive
about letting people do what they want to?

Canadians are, as a nation, less religious than we are, according to
polls. As a result, Canada's government isn't influenced by large,
well-organized religious groups and thus has more in common with
those of Scandinavia than those of the United States, or, say, Iran.

Canada signed the Kyoto global warming treaty, lets 19-year-olds
drink, has more of its population living in urban areas and accepts
more immigrants per capita than the United States. These are all
things we've been told will wreck our society. But I guess Canadians
are different, because theirs seems oddly sound.

Like teenagers, we fiercely idolize individual freedom but really
demand that everyone be the same. But the Canadians seem more
adult-more secure. They aren't afraid of foreigners. They aren't
afraid of homosexuality. Most of all, they're not afraid of each
other.

I wonder if America will ever be that cool.

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