Canada is socialist compared to America, however its way more fiscally responsible.

The USA is the largest consumer market in the world. There is no other country in the world that comes even close. The US buys about as much foreign products as the entire European market (and sometimes even more). Any country that chooses not to trade with the US and considers themselves part of the global economy, are kidding themselves and losing out on millions and billions of dollars. Canada would be hurt by stopping trade with the US than the US itself. As for oil the US can rely on Alaska, Texas and offshore drilling throughout the entire coast. Furthermore, the US has a good thing going with Colombia which is VERY rich on natural resources (definitely moreso than Canada thanks to various temperatures and the Amazon jungle) despite it being just twice the size of Texas (barely). I understand you wanna sneak a little nationalism and perhaps a bit of ethnocentrism in there but no, Canada is just another of many allies.
As for the US.....corporations have absolutely ruined it. They think with a short term mentality and are over-reliant on outsourcing but fail to see the bigger picture. The US as a big player in the consumer market, by limiting jobs further and further, and giving them to the chinamen and southeast asians, they are decreasing the number of potential consumers greatly. If more US Americans are to have greater disposable income, they tend to also spend more money on the products said corporations sell. Corporate greed blinds them to the longer term profits which can be made. Bringing back all those industrial and IT jobs to the USA would lead to many more people being paid fairly, but also these people are the ones who will most likely apply to have several credit cards, take out loans for a house, do the no interest no payments programs for various electronic products and circulate the money back into the economy. Personally I say we should bring back the tariff system on international products, ESPECIALLY those products US corporations bring from their sweatshops overseas. In this situation they will have no choice but to bring jobs back, or have considerably less profit margins (although the former scenario is more likely). Cigarettes in NYC are about $12! Yet people still buy a pack, which should show the resilience of the US consumer. Anyways this got derailed severely by me so I apologize.

Canada spends 39.7% of GDP for government services while the United States pays 38.9% of GDP ...

I don't think there is any reason to believe that the United States is significantly less of a socialist state than Canada is. Certainly, the United States doesn't have one of the social programs Canada does (universal health care), but it has a more "progressive" tax system with far more subsidies for the "poor" than Canada does to compensate for that.

well I should have been more clear, I mean when it comes to social issues we are more liberally minded and the American number is distorted due to massive security and military spending. Also even though you guys do not have universal healthcare, the govt still spends a lot on the healthcare.


What I meant is we as a country are far more fiscally responsible.

Canada is no more socialist than America today. Yes, Canada has universal health care where we do not, but it has so out of far more efficiency than America does - not because of socialism. As HS pointed out, both countries spend the same amount of money on government. The difference is that we get far less in return. Our government health system sucks (Medicare/Medicaid), our education is grossly expensive, and our pension system is near collapse.

I don't think so. Yes, we have more diversity on social issues, but I doubt there is much difference betwen social thought in Saskatoon or Alberta as there is in South Carolina or Alabama. Likewise, I am sure that social thought in Toronto is not much different than New York or California.

Ah, my bad. Still, it's easy to see bias in most governments when it comes to contract deals, and it's easy to see why. This is one area where I do applaud the British Government, they do tend to try to ignore country of origin a lot more than other governments, despite electoral pressure.

Actually, on the whole, the British are less prone to protectionism than most of the world, the only protectionism we really have is the EU imposed stuff... and we constantly lobby against it. (Also, green subsidies, though I don't believe the intentions are protectionism, that is one of the end results).

lol people out in the Western provinces are not as back ward thinking as we think.

They are becoming more liberally minded as the population increases and it becomes more diverse.

Just because they support the Conservatives does not mean they are Rednecks.

And the same is true of all Southern states in America. Thus the similarity.

Oh yeah.  Of course the other option the US uses is "Lowest bid" which in of itself has problems because the standards don't always seem to be set, and there is nothing holding someone too that lowest bid half the time.

Lately though a fun new reason why the Congress hands out contracts how it does has been revealed.

For some reason, insider trading doesn't include congressmen.

So say a senator knows a bank is about to fail ahead of time.  He can short the bank, tell the country they are about to fail and make a ton of money off it.  Actually there are claims that has actually happened!

Apparently according to of all people Jack Abarmoff, who probably knows a thing or two about the undersided part of washington, it happens by both parties all the time.

Which tends to explain why senators tend to leave millionaries even when they weren't when they went in, despite the 170,000 salary.

As someone who was born and raised in Calgary, I can say for certain that Albertans are not becoming "more liberal" and that the media is just becoming less successful at distorting/lying about the views of typical Albertans.

From the early days of the land-rush straight through to today Alberta has been a destination for economic immigrants who were seeking the opportunity to have a better standard of living. By the nature of ths immigration, Alberta has attracted primarily self motivated and hard working individuals who desire an environment of self-determination, and scared off those who have drastically different values. At the same time, being that there was no unified or organized immigration there is no binding force to hold together any social conservative movement; and there is also a multi-generational learned tolerance for people who are different.

As you can imagine, this meas that the majority of the issues for provincial and federal politics in Alberta are strictly economic and (because of the belief in personal responsibility and independence) these are generally very fiscally conservative people; and there isn't much in the way of social policy discussion in Alberta.

With this said, the (mostly eastern) media has always cherry-picked events to portray Alberta (and Calgary in particular) in a bad light ... About a year ago there were several news stories in most major news outlets because skin-heads were going to protest in Calgary. For weeks the media (CBC in particular) presented Calgary as a hot-bed of racism, and when the protest happened 12 skin-heads showed up with 8 being from out of province. Yes, 4 people from a province of 3 Million people protesting in a city of 1 Million people were enough for our publicly funded broadcaster to spend weeks calling Alberta a hot-bed of racism.