For Canada, U.S. Debates Are Old News
bootlegga @ Thu Jun 14, 2012 9:27 am
$1:
NEW YORK — Those Americans embroiled in combustible debates over abortion, birth control, same-sex marriage and other social issues this electoral season might look north of the border to find North Americans who are not riven by such heated disputes.
“These issues do not seem to be as divisive and inflammatory in Canada as they seem to be in the United States,” Laura A. Liswood, the secretary general of the Council of Women World Leaders , a policy program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said in a phone interview.
To many Americans, and particularly American women, who are wondering why some of the issues listed above still stir controversy decades after apparent resolution, Canada appears to have it all over the United States.
Over the past three decades, Canada enacted a constitutional provision banning sex discrimination in 1983; lifted a ban on gays in the military in 1992; became one of the few countries with no legal restrictions on abortion in 1988; and legalized same-sex marriage in 2005.
By and large, all these arrangements skirted the overwrought arguments and legislative moves and machinations seen over those same issues in the United States.
Ms. Liswood, who is based in Washington, attributed the difference of attitude, at least in part, to Canada’s political system. “Ours,” she said, “is a winner-take-all system.” In Canada, which has a parliamentary system, it is more common to have to forge coalitions with other parties and find compromise, and, she said, Canadians seem to have come to terms with a large immigrant population and different cultures.
What’s more, Ms. Liswood pointed at the role that money plays in U.S. campaigns. “These social issues are great wedge issues that a lot of people raise money on,” she said. “Polarization is encouraged in that way,” deepening what is already a socioeconomic gap that is bigger in the United States than in Canada.
Kim Campbell, who briefly served as Canada’s first female prime minister in 1993, said: “The fact that these are issues in the United States seems extraordinary to me.” Canada has fundamentalists here and there, she said on the phone from Vancouver last week, but they aren’t a major factor in political life.
“Even our current prime minister, who leads a party that has a conservative wing, made it very clear — though some members wanted to revisit the abortion issue — that ‘I’m not going to do it.’ He personally doesn’t favor abortion, but he understands that the issue is resolved,” she said, referring to Prime Minister Stephen Harper . “We don’t talk about it — it’s a medical procedure, like contraceptives. It’s part of our health plan.”
As for same-sex marriage, Ms. Campbell declared it “a fact of life here.”
She also attributed the unity to the parliamentary system, where the prime minister is enormously powerful and the executive is in the legislative branch. “It’s a different system in the United States. Here, the parties have to come to common ground much more. There’s much more coherence, much more party discipline.”
“The notion that the extreme can dictate the mainstream is very much harder in Canada,” she said. “The problem in the United States is that the extreme can dictate, particularly in the primary process, which tends to have more extreme single-issue groups, where they can actually nominate people who do not represent the mainstream of the party. We don’t have that in Canada.”
In her view, “Canada is in many ways much more tolerant than the United States.” Citing the Canadian researcher Michael Adams, head of Environics and author of “Fire and Ice ,” a 2003 best seller comparing the United States and Canada, she said, “He argued that although the Canadian and U.S. economies have become more integrated, socially we’ve become less alike. Canada has become more socially liberal and less religious than the United States.”
Ms. Campbell — who was prime minister for only four months in 1993, losing her position when the government was defeated in elections that year — can claim other political firsts: first female minister of justice and attorney general, first female minister of national defense and first woman elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
Every step of the way, she had a hand in efforts to remove social and sexual discrimination. “You try to create a new normal, a new level of acceptance,” she said. But if there’s a single issue that absorbs Ms. Campbell, a consultant on the advancement of women and democracy, it is women’s rights — an area where Canada has a mixed record.
When it comes to gender equality, Canada has 76 women in the elected lower house of Parliament and ranks 40th in the world on the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s 2012 list . The United States has 73 female representatives and 17 female senators and ranks 78th in the world. The United States ranks a notch ahead of Canada — 17 and 18, respectively — in the 2011 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report but lags behind Canada on women’s political empowerment.
The widest gap seems to come in child care. According to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, Canada offers longer maternity leave, maternity leave benefits and maternity coverage, paternity leave and paternity leave benefits, and public and private allowances for day care. The United States has no national policy for paid parental leave.
As for women running for office, Ms. Campbell said some people “are uncomfortable having you there. They can’t say it’s because she’s a woman. So they look for reasons. They never give you the benefit of the doubt.” Looking back at her own campaign, she voiced a sentiment common among politicians: “Many Canadians favored me,” she said, “but my biggest problem was the press. I didn’t look or sound like any of the others. It was a very difficult campaign.”
“These issues do not seem to be as divisive and inflammatory in Canada as they seem to be in the United States,” Laura A. Liswood, the secretary general of the Council of Women World Leaders , a policy program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said in a phone interview.
To many Americans, and particularly American women, who are wondering why some of the issues listed above still stir controversy decades after apparent resolution, Canada appears to have it all over the United States.
Over the past three decades, Canada enacted a constitutional provision banning sex discrimination in 1983; lifted a ban on gays in the military in 1992; became one of the few countries with no legal restrictions on abortion in 1988; and legalized same-sex marriage in 2005.
By and large, all these arrangements skirted the overwrought arguments and legislative moves and machinations seen over those same issues in the United States.
Ms. Liswood, who is based in Washington, attributed the difference of attitude, at least in part, to Canada’s political system. “Ours,” she said, “is a winner-take-all system.” In Canada, which has a parliamentary system, it is more common to have to forge coalitions with other parties and find compromise, and, she said, Canadians seem to have come to terms with a large immigrant population and different cultures.
What’s more, Ms. Liswood pointed at the role that money plays in U.S. campaigns. “These social issues are great wedge issues that a lot of people raise money on,” she said. “Polarization is encouraged in that way,” deepening what is already a socioeconomic gap that is bigger in the United States than in Canada.
Kim Campbell, who briefly served as Canada’s first female prime minister in 1993, said: “The fact that these are issues in the United States seems extraordinary to me.” Canada has fundamentalists here and there, she said on the phone from Vancouver last week, but they aren’t a major factor in political life.
“Even our current prime minister, who leads a party that has a conservative wing, made it very clear — though some members wanted to revisit the abortion issue — that ‘I’m not going to do it.’ He personally doesn’t favor abortion, but he understands that the issue is resolved,” she said, referring to Prime Minister Stephen Harper . “We don’t talk about it — it’s a medical procedure, like contraceptives. It’s part of our health plan.”
As for same-sex marriage, Ms. Campbell declared it “a fact of life here.”
She also attributed the unity to the parliamentary system, where the prime minister is enormously powerful and the executive is in the legislative branch. “It’s a different system in the United States. Here, the parties have to come to common ground much more. There’s much more coherence, much more party discipline.”
“The notion that the extreme can dictate the mainstream is very much harder in Canada,” she said. “The problem in the United States is that the extreme can dictate, particularly in the primary process, which tends to have more extreme single-issue groups, where they can actually nominate people who do not represent the mainstream of the party. We don’t have that in Canada.”
In her view, “Canada is in many ways much more tolerant than the United States.” Citing the Canadian researcher Michael Adams, head of Environics and author of “Fire and Ice ,” a 2003 best seller comparing the United States and Canada, she said, “He argued that although the Canadian and U.S. economies have become more integrated, socially we’ve become less alike. Canada has become more socially liberal and less religious than the United States.”
Ms. Campbell — who was prime minister for only four months in 1993, losing her position when the government was defeated in elections that year — can claim other political firsts: first female minister of justice and attorney general, first female minister of national defense and first woman elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
Every step of the way, she had a hand in efforts to remove social and sexual discrimination. “You try to create a new normal, a new level of acceptance,” she said. But if there’s a single issue that absorbs Ms. Campbell, a consultant on the advancement of women and democracy, it is women’s rights — an area where Canada has a mixed record.
When it comes to gender equality, Canada has 76 women in the elected lower house of Parliament and ranks 40th in the world on the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s 2012 list . The United States has 73 female representatives and 17 female senators and ranks 78th in the world. The United States ranks a notch ahead of Canada — 17 and 18, respectively — in the 2011 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report but lags behind Canada on women’s political empowerment.
The widest gap seems to come in child care. According to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, Canada offers longer maternity leave, maternity leave benefits and maternity coverage, paternity leave and paternity leave benefits, and public and private allowances for day care. The United States has no national policy for paid parental leave.
As for women running for office, Ms. Campbell said some people “are uncomfortable having you there. They can’t say it’s because she’s a woman. So they look for reasons. They never give you the benefit of the doubt.” Looking back at her own campaign, she voiced a sentiment common among politicians: “Many Canadians favored me,” she said, “but my biggest problem was the press. I didn’t look or sound like any of the others. It was a very difficult campaign.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/30 ... ter30.html
JaredMilne @ Thu Jun 14, 2012 11:58 am
$1:
Many of the issues that would take center stage in an American conservative narrative play far less of a role in the narrative of Canada developed by the Harper Conservatives and described by Coyne and Wells. Subtle but important differences can be found, namely the ideas of Christianity and religion as being a much more private matter that can serve as a helpful moral guide but should not be legislated on those who do not desire its solutions, weapons ownership as being a matter of convenience rather than an essential freedom, and a positive role for government to play in the economy and society. These exist to differing variations and in different forms among different thinkers and politicians, but they are aspects that help distinguish Canadian conservatism from its American counterpart.
DanSC @ Thu Jun 14, 2012 12:29 pm
$1:
much more party discipline
