Mirror Images: Canadians See Us, We See Ourselves

North of us lies the world’s longest undefended international border--and the world’s longest one-way mirror, in the words of Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood.

Americans look at the self-reflecting side. Canadians are nearly invisible to us, but they see us clearly and know us well. They benefit, as we do not, from the comparative lessons offered by our two great national experiments running side by side.

What could we learn, if we bothered to see the world as our northern neighbors do? We could learn how we ourselves look to our closest and most sympathetic, but independent and sometimes critical, observers. We could learn how we might be, if we were just as rich, just as democratic, kinder and gentler in deeds as well as words--and a lot less cocky.

Maclean’s, Canada’s weekly news magazine, last month laid out comparative statistics on the U.S. and Canada, and asked people on both sides of the border what they know and how they feel about one another.

Their statistics show striking similarities between Canadians and Americans, in both strengths and weaknesses. Our incomes are nearly identical, as are the differences between male and female incomes. The average Canadian man’s income is $31,865, an American’s $31,553 (these and other figures are based on 1987 Canadian dollars, pegged at about 85% of U.S. currency value). The average woman worker in Canada is paid $21,012, in the U.S. $20,443. In both countries slightly more than 50% of women work.

Some of us think of Canada as a howling wilderness, but it is as urbanized as the United States--76% of Canadians live in a city, 74% of Americans. We think Canada is tax-and-spend liberal, but the average person’s income tax in Canada is a little lower than ours ($3,224 for them, $3,830 for us). Their corporate tax rate is much lower. After taxes, Canadian corporations retain about 7% of their country’s gross domestic product in profits; American companies retain about 2%.

Their unemployment rate is slightly higher than ours, as is their percent of population living below the poverty line. (But 85% of the unemployed get government assistance in Canada, only 25% in the United States) Our suicide rates are almost identical. There is a video recorder in 58% of American homes, 45% of Canadian homes.

There are also some major differences. Americans think their most important national problem is drugs; Canadians think theirs is pollution. The environment-conscious Canadians emit much more acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide per capita than we do (because of their enormous metal smelters). On the other hand, because of the prevailing winds, 50% of the acid deposits that fall on Canada originate in the United States; only 10%-25% of our acid rain originates in Canada.

Canada is the only country in the world that uses more energy per capita than we do. We produce 20% more garbage per person than they do.

Year after year Canadian households save about twice as high a percentage of disposable household income as American households do (though interest rates are roughly the same). Canada donates 0.5% of its gross national product to overseas development assistance; the United States donates half that much.

One third of Americans, but only 12% of Canadians, say they would be unhappy if one of their children married someone of a different race. But then, as essayist Allan Fotheringham says, “Canadians feel superior because of the way the Americans treat their black population. Luckily for Canadians, Americans don’t know the truth about how Canadians treat their native peoples.”

The average baby born in Canada has a 25% higher probability than the average American baby of surviving to its first birthday--although per capita health care expenditure in Canada is only $1,655 per year, as opposed to $2,125 in the United States. Every Canadian has free access to government-financed health care, which includes hospitals, doctors, lab tests and medicines. Eighteen percent of Americans, 44 million people, have no medical insurance at all. The U.S. divorce rate is twice as high as Canada’s. The percent of our population reduced to homelessness is more than twice as high. Our homicide rate per capita is more than three times higher, our sexual crime rate seven times higher; burglaries are about the same, the number of police per person is about the same. One-fourth of Americans interviewed say they own a handgun; only 3% of Canadians do.

In the United States, 97.9% of incumbent federal legislators were returned to office in the last election. Canadians are much more likely to turn the rascals out; they returned only 72.5%. That may be related to the average cost of election campaigns for federal legislators: $29,000 in Canada; $267,000 in the United States for the House and $2 million for the Senate. Canadian electoral districts place ceilings on campaign expenses--the highest in 1988 was $65,000. In the United States there are no limits. Less than half of eligible American voters participated in the last federal election; 75% of Canadians did.

Statistics like these make me think it would be worth knowing these northern folks much better, but the Maclean’s survey makes clear how few of us have done that--and there lies the Canadians’ biggest complaint about us.

One-third of Canadians interviewed could name Dan Quayle as America’s vice president, but only one-tenth of Americans could name Canada’s prime minister (Brian Mulroney, in case you’re in the other 90%). More than 80% of Canadians know that the United States is their largest trading partner; only 12% of Americans know that Canada is ours. (Most Americans think it is Japan.) Virtually every Canadian is aware that the United States and Canada just signed a free-trade agreement; only 57% of the Americans interviewed knew that.

You begin to understand why, when Canadians are asked to describe Americans in just one word, the word that occurs most frequently is snobs . Next come: good, friendly, pigheaded, aggressive, powerful, obnoxious, indifferent. Americans, when asked to describe Canadians in a single word, can only think of polite things to say: friendly, nice, neighbors, wonderful, similar, satisfied, normal.

It should come as no surprise that 42% of Americans say they wouldn’t mind living in Canada, but only 27% of Canadians would consider living in the United States. And 66% of Americans would favor annexing Canada as our 51st state, while 85% of Canadians think that’s a terrible idea.