Pubdate: Tue, 02 Dec 2003
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2003 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Clifford Krauss

CANADA STEERS CLOSER TO EUROPE THAN THE U.S. ON SOCIAL ISSUES

Toronto -- Canadians and Americans still dress alike, talk alike, like the 
same books, television shows and movies, and trade more goods and services 
than ever before. But from gay marriage to drug use to church attendance, a 
chasm has opened up on social issues that go to the heart of fundamental 
values.

A more distinctive Canadian identity -- one far more in line with European 
sensibilities -- is emerging and generating new frictions with the United 
States.

"Being attached to America these days is like being in a pen with a wounded 
bull," Rick Mercer, Canada's leading political satirist, said at a recent 
show in Toronto. "Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite 
frankly it's a wonder there is not a giant deck of cards out there with all 
our faces on it."

Mr. Mercer acknowledged in an interview that he was overstating the case 
for laughs -- two Canadian provinces have legalized gay marriage, and 
Ottawa has moved to decriminalize use of small amounts of marijuana. But in 
the view of many experts the two countries are heading in different 
directions, at least for the time being.

Recent disagreements over trade, drugs and the war in Iraq, where Canada 
has refused to send troops, has made the relationship more contentious and 
Canadians increasingly outspoken about the things that separate them from 
their American neighbors.

"The two countries are sounding more different -- after 9/11, dramatically 
more different," noted Gil Troy, an American historian who teaches at 
McGill University in Montreal. "You hear a lot more static and you see more 
brittleness."

Of course there have been frictions before, for instance during the Vietnam 
War, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau welcomed American draft evaders, 
but the differences in those years were more political than social. 
Analysts say that Canada and the United States have always been similar yet 
different, and that the differences are often accentuated at the margins.

But today, many analysts and ordinary Canadians said in interviews around 
the country, the differences appear to have moved center stage, 
particularly in social and cultural values.

The nations remain like-minded in pockets, but the center of gravity in 
each has changed. French-speaking Quebec, with nearly a quarter of the 
population and its open social attitudes, pulls Canada to the left, just as 
the South and Bible Belt increasingly pull the United States in the 
opposite direction, particularly on issues like abortion, gay marriage and 
capital punishment.

None of those have resonated much over the last decade in Canada, where the 
consensus on social policy seems more solidly formed, its fissures narrower 
and less exploitable.

Chris Ragan, a McGill University economist, observed: "You can be a social 
conservative in the U.S. without being a wacko. Not in Canada."

Drugs are one point of departure. A bill to decriminalize small amounts of 
marijuana is working its way through the lower house of Parliament, 
bringing threats from the White House that such a law could slow trade at 
the border.

Recently, while musing about his retirement plans, Prime Minister Jean 
Chretien said he might just kick back and smoke some pot. "I will have my 
money for my fine and a joint in the other hand," he said with a smile. The 
glibness of the remark made it nearly impossible to imagine an American 
president uttering it. But in a nation where the dominant west coast city, 
Vancouver, has come to be known as Vansterdam, few Canadians blinked.

When Massachusetts's highest court ruled for gay marriage, the issue loomed 
over American politics. Conservatives vowed to change the Constitution. 
President Bush said he would defend marriage. Even the major Democratic 
presidential candidates backed away from supporting gay marriage outright.

Contrast that with Canada, where two provincial courts issued similar 
rulings this year. With little anguish, Canada became only the third 
country -- after the Netherlands and Belgium -- to allow same-sex marriage 
as a matter of civil rights.

Canadians themselves are not wholly united on the issue. Most elderly and 
rural Canadians express reservations, and the Canadian Anglican Church is 
almost as divided over homosexuality as the American Episcopal Church. 
Still, Canadians remain tolerant of the shift.

More than 1,500 gay and lesbian couples have married since the court 
rulings. "The Canadian reaction to same-sex marriage has been mostly 
positive," said Neil Bissoondath, an acclaimed Trinidadian-born Canadian 
novelist and social critic.

But the same issue in the United States "has upset the fundamentalist 
Christians who drive a lot of the politics in the country, especially with 
the present administration in power," Mr. Bissoondath added.

Rachel Brickner, 29, a political science graduate student at McGill 
originally from Detroit, said that despite her own liberal views, she 
sometimes tired of the anti-Americanism she encountered among Canadian 
students.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she said, an old roommate told her that 
"the U.S. deserved 9/11 because we're bullies."

"Canadians are quick to blame the United States for not knowing about 
Canada," she said, "but Canadians make a lot of ignorant statements about 
the U.S." No Canadian city reveals differences as much as Vancouver. It 
looks like any American city, except for a drug culture that is so 
abundantly open. The police rarely interfere with bars, storefronts and 
even offices where people can buy or smoke marijuana. A "compassion club" 
distributes marijuana legally to cancer patients and others who have 
doctors' notes.

The city opened a publicly financed and supervised injection site for 
heroin users in September. The federal government, meanwhile, is preparing 
to start an experimental heroin distribution program for addicts in 
Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver in 2004.

The changes in marriage and drug laws, said Michael Adams, a Toronto 
consultant and polling expert, "means Canada is moving in the opposite 
direction with the United States and closer to Europe."

In his new book "Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of 
Converging Values," he argues that greater Canadian tolerance reflects a 
fundamental difference in outlook about everthing from the ethnic and 
linguistic diversity of immigrants to the relative status of the sexes.

Mr. Adams notes that weekly church attendance among Canadians has plummeted 
since the 1950's while American church attendance has remained virtually 
constant.

To many commentators the two countries seem to be exchanging their 
traditional roles, one founded in America's birth as a revolutionary 
country and Canada's as a counterrevolutionary alternative.

During the Depression, under the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 
United States was the progressive force, while Canada stubbornly held on to 
conservative economic policies.

By the mid-1960's, though, Canada shifted to a far more activist 
government, moving to a national health insurance system. Not long 
afterward, the Vietnam War began siphoning popularity from the Great 
Society experiment of President Johnson. The trends have only widened since.

Not all analysts see a big, lasting divergence. Some like Peter Jennings, 
the ABC News broadcaster who was born in Toronto and became a dual American 
and Canadian citizen in May, believe that Canadians have actually drawn 
closer to Americans. Nevertheless, Mr. Jennings said Canada had become "a 
socially more relaxed kind of place."

"Canada, as it is with some of the European countries," he added, "is 
trying to balance some of the market forces with public policy, which is 
not as apparent in the United States, where the pursuit of happiness and 
individualism are very much alive."

Still, a cultural gulf is widening.

"In the 70's we were taught Canada would be absorbed by the United States, 
and in the 80's it looked like it was happening," recalled Douglas 
Coupland, the Canadian author known for his cultural commentaries on both 
sides of the border. "Then came the latter part of the 90's and it was like 
some high school class 16-millimeter film where you see the chromosome 
duplicates, then realigns, and finally the cell splits.

"And that process only seems to be quickening in recent months."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens