What do you Americans think of us Canadians as?

[Grey Acumen]

Dogs Rule said:

This post is intended to correct certain fallacies on both sides of the Canadian issue.

[Lots of stuff]

Grey Acumen said:

"I think of cheap, but poor medical service, low religious tolerance, and hazardous military."

I will get into the medical service later as you expand on it later in the thread.

I don't know where you get low religious tolerance from. Religious freedom is constitutionally protected. We are generally a very open society who are tolerant of other people's believes (especially when it does not effect us directly, so of like live and let live). We attract many immigrants from all over the world because of our openness. Do we have rednecks that fear and hate others because their religion, sexual orientation or skin colour is different? Of course, but they are not the majority and they are a dying breed. Also most societies are a little xenophobic, especially ones that have been so homogeneous for as long as Canada has been. But we are and have accepted with open arms multiculturalism, not assimilation, for decades now.

We even have a doctrine of Reasonable accommodation, which is the guidelines, set forth by the Supreme Court of Canada, by which government bodies must take reasonable steps to accommodate their policies to ethnic minorities. Last year, in the province of Quebec, there was a provincial Commission whose goal was to get public opinion on how the concept of reasonnable accommodation could be reconciled with the concept of Quebec Identity(the definition of which also was a mandate of the Commission). Unfortunately, since all members of the public could participate, many hateful bigots had an opportunity to voice their opinion in a public forum. While I do respect their freedom of speech, it saddened me to think that I was a contemporary of these people.

If you do have specific examples of "low religious tolerance" please share them with us and I may be forced to review my perception of our openness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_freedom_in_Canada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_accommodation

As for the military, I agree with you in the past, but I would have you note that things are changing. The Liberal government in power from 1993 to 2006 (2 different leaders) did in large part neglect military expenditure (in favor of other policies) which led to an ever worsening of our military capacity through the obsoleteness of our military equipment and infrastructure. The Conservative government in power since 2006 has had as a policy to rejuvenate our ageing equipment to better protect our soldiers, but it is a long and expensive ordeal which is not always popular with the opposition parties. Since the Conservative government is in the minority, it cannot vote the necessary budgets without the approval of at least one other parties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_forces

[lots of other stuff]

 

Basically, it's a few examples I heard of that people were fined/jailed for reading the bible in public. It was a while back when I had heard the majority of it so I don't really recall most of the details, but that's also much of the reason why I added "I also recognize that much of this may be localized areas/circumstances" line at the end of that.

One thing to keep a mind out for is that people don't go overboard trying to be tolerant, as down here in America, there have been numerous cases where during christmas, people were trying to restrict mangers from being set up in public view even if it was displayed on private property. It's amazing how intolerant people can be in the name of tolerance. This is more what I was reffering to by my statment about the religious tolerance, than the "redneck" effect that you seem to be refferign to.

I am glad to hear that you guys are working on updating your military and wish you luck with that. Wether or not you're planning on going to war, you shouldn't leave your military to rot.

 

Props to you for taking the time to put that whole long thing together, though I have to question a study that puts america behind japan. :P