Mean Girls
Bye, Felicia, but Justin is not the reason Canada will never be great.
Since the election, life has been…complicated, but I am enjoying the Great Canadian National Freak Out. Apparently, you can bring down the entire Canadian government with some mean tweeting, which should not surprise me at all, but is still somewhat shocking at its speed. Unfortunately, while Canadians try to recover from this latest national embarrassment, they lash out at the nearest American to them, which is, of course, me. It’s causing all sorts of interpersonal and cash flow problems.
It’s fine, whatever, I get my tax money back. And, admittedly, the rendering of emotional cloth might be worth it. Canadians spent all this time complaining about “America the Bully” and now Trump told them, actually, to stop crying or he’d give them something to cry about. Canadians are FREAKING out. They never imagined that Trump would really come back, and this time, No more Mr. Nice Guy. Oh, the waling; how can this possibly be happening to Canada?? Poor things. Does Trump and his supporters not know how important Canada is?? The country that does nothing but condescend to Americans and suck oil out of the ground? (It doesn’t even do that very much anymore.) What a bunch of IDIOTS those Americans are! THE INSULT!
Oh, the humanity.
Of course I am roped in with my fellow Americans (Hi, my idiot friends!) despite being just as vulnerable to a tariff as any other Canadian resident. I would just as much appreciate our Prime Minister to not grate on the Americans and their brass knuckled leader as much as anyone else; I *still* live here, for crying out loud! According to The Prince in Parliament, I also HATE WOMEN simply because I would not vote for a vapid, giddy, possibly Canadian, black (sort of), wine aunt. And clearly, I am definite moron for voting for the party that will reopen the Keystone pipeline, funneling millions into Canada's moribund economy. Who do I think I am to want the ERs open at 3 in the morning? It’s just bananas I think that Trump, with his unrepentant hyperbole, can shore up the Northern Canadian border through some strategic saber rattling at Russia. I mean it's not like the Canadian military isn't falling into complete disrepair and couldn’t fight its way out of a cardboard box. (Wait..wut?)
Thinking that every American is an absolute retard sounds like a “you” problem, as the kids would say, but I probably don’t help myself by not being a complete dolt in public for the sake thin skinned Canucks. Look, I may not be the smartest person in the room all the time, (that would go to someone with much better social skills), but I know when a Canadian makes a ridiculous statement like “Americans are sexists.” I live in a city filled with people, known worldwide for their cheapness and where the men will accuse you of “golddigging” if you expect them to buy you dinner. (That’s before they call you “stupid” over said dinner for IDK, whatever, existing, I guess.) Maybe instead of the 51st state, we should just make Trump "King of Canada." I’m pretty sure he can take King Charles in a fight. That'll learn 'em.
As you might imagine, this gets very tiresome. SO TIRED. Seriously dude, get a life. Just because you, Justin, nepo baby dilettante, have the political instincts of tired, autistic three-year-old, doesn’t mean I have to vote for someone who gives the 19th Amendment a bad name. I get that you want to throw some kind of temper tantrum, but I’ve pretty much had it with every interaction becoming a sort of one-sided competition where no behavior or insult of America by a Canadian is so odious as to be off limits between friends and neighbors. Racists? Sexist? Stupid? No. We are done. Also, do you really want to continue to give me all the monies? Fine. I'll take it. Not like I have a choice. I have a cash flow problem now and still have to pay for dinner.
I’m sorry Trump said what we were all thinking. Yes, we think you are a joke. Getting all butthurt about it just puts a nice fine point on it and makes it funnier. And why should we think any different? Don’t you have enough problems with Chinese police stations and government officials using public money to go on fancy vacations where they buy mustard, hats, and an unhealthy amount of booze? Well, I, for one, am tired of listening to your "No one likes you, Marsha" nonsense. How about this: you sit down and listen to why the USA is better in almost every way? Maybe a little exposure therapy will give Canada enough grit to stop complaining about every single little thing their southern neighbor does and learn to mind their own fucking business. Or if they can’t do that, realize who is paying the cost to be the boss and back off. Let’s see if you can take what you like to dish out.
Reason One: Demographics
I don’t remember who said it, but talking about the USA with another American, they said, “With 400 million people, nothing gets controlled.” There is a phenomenon in statistics where the more chances you have for a rare event, the more common the event becomes, even in proportion to the population. Having that many people is going to pull a whole lot of “black swans.” It is just statistically more likely that an American will be the one to do something extraordinary, and there are enough people around them to trigger even more extraordinary.
Certain areas of the States have completely foreign-born populations, and while often that is looked upon a maybe a bad thing, the trade-off is they bring fresh perspectives to old problems. That perspective may be something completely new (Macintosh, Tesla), or it may be an old, long forgotten solution to a perennial problem (bacteriophage therapy). In that sense, diversity really is a strength, and America is one of the most diverse and accepting of that kind of diversity places in the world. As much as Americans complain about illegal immigration, they are loath to denigrate anyone who comes in by the proper channels. They may object to the system (H-1B visas) but they will not object to the immigrant, personally. You can’t really blame them; who wouldn’t want to be here? America is awesome. Well, some might, but I've never met them.
Sure, as an immigrant, in both places you have your doctors driving cabs (or as happened last week, an Uber). But in the states, this seems a temporary problem that can be overcome with enough work and desire. Besides, America generally isn’t importing skilled workers at scale. Stat after stat claims that the only jobs that are being taken by the foreigners are ones that would have gone to people with no high school degree. Basically, the ones that we give to people to keep them from knocking over liquor stores. Jobs like picking tomatoes and packaging chickens are now being staffed by people who probably don’t speak English, much less have a Ph.D. It’s a win-win now that small town Missouri has excellent Mexican food. It’s going great!
You will not find the same attitude in Canada, which is rife with nepotism and xenophobia, and habitually ejects people who have been lured here with all kinds of promises, only to find those promises hollow. It is not uncommon for me to hear the complaint from (usually very skilled) immigrants self-deporting from Canada, “I was lied to” they say as they angrily try to pack whatever they can carry. One immigrant, having to abandon all her things to a storage unit was so angry she said to me “Don’t give a single thing away. Throw it into the sea if you have to.” I did not, but I should have. It would have served “them” right.
This is such a common theme, there have been court cases where immigrants to Canada, mostly temporary foreign workers, have tried to sue Canada for misrepresentation. They fail, of course, because you can’t sue a king, but they shouldn’t. For them, Canada is one giant tiger, that’s taken an arm, and they may never financially recover from it. And while immigrants always have a hard time breaking into a society, it's just so much easier in the US. Breaking through to be accepted as part of group, any group, is difficult, but to do it in Canada, where people have walled themselves off because of their pride, (“This isn’t the USA”) it can be damn near impossible. You would be shocked at the number of Canadians that demanded to know my citizenship status - as if it’s any of their business. How about I tell you over the dinner you are buying?
After being underpaid and ostracized for years, drained of money and good will, a lot of talented people, from all over the world, throw in the towel and go home or use Canada as a stepping stool into America. One man who spoke perfect English and was from Switzerland of all places, said to me, “It’s so hard to find a job I feel like I’ve gone to jail.” It's no wonder people leave. Good ideas, brains, skill and capital go where they are wanted and, clearly, they aren’t wanted in Canada.
Reason Two: Ambition & Risk
Americans are ambitious. They celebrate success. Before Donald Trump ran for president, and became the devil incarnate, he was probably America’s most admired billionaire. His rough style was the model of American deal making, and he was a man who came up in New York real estate, where the union runs all the construction workers like a mob boss. (I deeply suspect they are sometimes one in the same). Trump was famous for tweaking the snobby New York elite by building his gauche buildings to block their views from the tony coops. They would have never allowed a person like him in anyway. Why not sell to blacks and Jews and gays and foreigners? They can all come in if they can afford the ticket. When he was asked about co-ops whinging, he replied, “If they want a better view they can move into my building.” Even while the blue pinstripes on Wall Street rejected him as not enough old money blueblood, they secretly loved and respected him for doing what they could not: be rich out loud. It was a better time in a better place. But everything moved forward into the future because it had to and if you wanted to get anywhere you did what you had to do. No one would ever fault you for it. Ad astra.
No one ever falls from grace permanently in an American story. Even if they find themselves on the unemployment line, asking if there’s any jobs in the “$100,000 box,” at the end, they are redeemed; the protagonist is always #winning at the end, one way or another. American history and culture is replete with people who, against formidable odds, succeeded. Ambition to “be the best,” the greatest, is seen as a value akin to bravery or chastity. To be ambitious in America, to eschew welfare, handouts, dependency, is the highest aspiration. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. The streets are paved with gold. MAGA.
Along with ambition, goes the tolerance for risk. A long time ago, I went to a college known for its production of all kinds of artists. It’s not a big school, second tier state, but it was a great college if you were a person who just didn’t fit in with the rest of society. My peers were, and still are, some of the most creative people I have ever met. And the school itself was no slouch. My literature professor was an ivy league educated man who, within a week, could remember every single name of his students in his 100-person attended classes. He taught Shakespeare and the Bible with such skill, I still remember his lectures today. I asked him once, “Why do you teach here? You could be at Yale.” And he replied, “Students here are more interesting. They are willing to dive into the abyss.”
You don’t have to be a quirky, artsy co-ed to take risks in America, everyone does it. Only rubes invest in index funds or buy soccer mom cars. No, in America, if you aren’t taking some kind of ridiculous risk, have some hair brained scheme that’s so crazy that IT JUST MIGHT WORK, why, who are you? Might as well be some NPC running into a wall.
It wasn’t until I got to Canada that I realized that “tall-poppy syndrome” was a real thing. And I still run afoul of it all the time because my brain does not allow me to weaponize incompetence. I am, apparently, mortally allergic to passive aggressiveness. I know I am too loud, too direct, too open[i] for polite Canadian society even if most of the Americans I meet find me a bubbly, interesting, funny delight. I try to dull it down, mitigate it with faux naivete, always happy all the time. Mask, mask, mask. It doesn’t work, sooner or later I get tired, I say a thing, and no more tomorrow’s parties. It’s fine. I was an only child. “No friends” is still preferrable to fake friends or, horror, boring ones. And it is Sudden Career Death (“SCD”) when your coworkers realize you have bothered to learn something new since 1995. The jealousy, the back biting, the drama – no one should be in a hurry to come back into the office. In fact, it’s probably better that they don’t.
No, too much ambition and you get crushed by a plethora of regulations, human rights rules, and the tyranny of manners. Trump is inexplicable to Canadians. “Who says these things?” they ask me. Well, every stock trader in New York from my experience. And as ambitious as you might want to be in Canada, it may still not allow you to surpass the wink, wink, nudge, nudge politics that put Chrystia Freeland (?) in a job like finance minister, a woman so vapid, petty and bad at her job, the economy may never recover.
Canadians, ironically, are also the most risk adverse people I have ever met. They may take stupid risks without realizing it (see below) but if they are aware something is a risk, they’ll immediately refuse to go any further with things. Spending money is an anathema and the lack of capital investment here in Canada is dismal. Old tools, processes, and people are clung to as if the alternative is the dystopia out of “Mad Max.” Things break or are worse than useless but fixing them would require a modicum of effort and *change*. We can’t be having that, even if it is bleeding us dry. This is a people who have never heard the word “anti-fragile” and it shows. The pandemic has been catastrophic. Now, nothing works.
It’s not enough to be intelligent, work hard, be educated, have the right tools, and skillful in execution, you need friends in Canada. This national nepotism doesn’t just keep people out, it’s how you get in. Jobs, government and societies all require the references so you can function in the society. (Seriously, no one in the USA has asked me for a reference since 2000.) Even your ability to leave the country relies on someone being able to vouch for you, a friend or relative or doctor because your passports need something called a guarantor. You can’t just go off and make a thing, you will be hamstrung, perhaps forever, in red tape. And if someone important doesn’t like you because they are jealous or think you need to take down a peg or they are just dumb - your coworker, the regulator, the adjudicator at your tribunal hearing[ii] - just forget it. You’ll just have to find a way to apply for disability as you are now a social leper. Merit? That has nothing to do with it.
There is one quality that all immigrants share: they are willing to dive into the abyss. So many skilled people are moving to the USA from Canada it’s breaking records. The Facebook page “Canadians Moving to Florida & USA” has grown to over 70,000 members. I have no doubt that even immigrants from the most cossetted population in the world will find a way to be useful in the USA. They don’t really have a choice. They know that America will reward their ambition, not stab them in the back because they have the audacity to do things. You can’t kill your talent because you have deep seated feelings of inadequacy. And if you do, you’ll be outrun by companies and countries that don’t do that. In America it really isn’t personal, it’s just business, so whatever “issues” you have with someone, you better get over it and get back to work or you’ll be in the unemployment line behind all those people from Twitter. And if Sharon in accounting has some sort of problem with the girl who gives you the most leads in your deal book, well fuck Sharon. She’s employed at will.
Reason Three: Class
It would be a lie to say that the United States is a classless society. It very definitely has classes and anyone who has watched any reality show ever probably knows what they are. But unlike Canada it is easy to move through those classes. And more importantly, it is…dishonourable to trash talk the lower class. These are people who do the jobs no one else wants to do, haul away garbage, fix the septic system, fight in wars. Back to Mr. Trump, who reviles the concept of class so much, he fired a guy on the Apprentice for a self-effacing joke where he referred to himself (disingenuously) as “white trash”.
Americans are so hostile the idea of a permanent class that there is a special clause in the Constitution that deals with “Titles of Nobility” and it’s literally unconstitutional for an elected official, or any government official to accept them. It’s also unconstitutional for states to grant them, a rare express limit on the state’s power. The founding fathers knew how the class system worked in Britian and they were absolutely not having it. If there was any debate about the clauses preventing the titles, it was they didn’t go far enough, not that they weren’t needed or wanted.
The laptop class is held in the same regard as the king’s court in France in 1788 and the most recent election is proof that Americans will probably not change on that opinion any day soon. The idea that your class would indicate anything good or bad about you or would necessarily prevent you from achieving whatever it was you set your mind to is roundly rejected by every American I know. Circumstances of birth are meaningless, it’s what you do after that that matters.
But Canada never completely rejected the British concept of class and, as per their usual arrangement, made it worse. At least in Britian it’s tacky to reference one’s class, but regularly, I am assaulted by people who think their station is life is so much greater because of who and where they were born. I am reassured on the regular that this person or that person’s ancestor was a Very Important Person who mattered, even though the person standing in front of me has been unemployed since the last century. Because of this, they seem to think I should afford them the same respect that I give to Vietnam veterans and someone who cured a rare cancer. Well, look, I don’t think you are a terrible person, but let’s be reasonable here.
Curiously, they don’t afford the same respect to the creators of the class structure that they so desperately cling to. There is a clear line between people who think they British royalty still matters and those that don’t. There was an absolute donnybrook when someone (I can’t remember who or when, as it was a while ago) suggested that the Queen was irrelevant to the Canadian government. But when you press Canadians on this issues, like the fact that they are still subject to the British monarchy, and that same royal has to put their imprimatur on every law they pass, or that their military ships still bear the moniker “His Majesty’s Canadian Ship” they get all offended and brush it off with “it’s just a formality” as if that changes things. Considering Americans had to fight two bloody wars over that formality (THAT THEY WON), that “formality” is no little thing if you ever disagree with it.
But no matter to whom you are born, if it’s not in Canada there’s something suspect in your lineage and, obviously, Americans are all stupid, evangelistic, Kid Rock loving, Honey Boo Boo watching yokels. Every Canadian knows this. (Actually, not that there’s ANYTHING wrong with that. I love ya, Kid Rock.) That is just a fact and between being complete morons and rednecks, mostly both, Americans couldn't possibly be vulgar if they tried. Then they elected Trump. But it’s not just American, being Asian, First Nations, from the Prairies, or just not from the neighborhood can be enough. Of course, I know it is obviously caused by deep feelings of insecurity on the part of these people – this is very much a “them” problem – but still, the idea that you could not accomplish anything by nature of birth allows people an excuse to hold their competition down.
Outsiders, they are a “bad fit” you know? They can never be hired and if they are not promoted to bosses or upper management. They just don't have the right breeding, they don't read the right books or say the right platitudes and even if they do say them (I don't know how many expat Americans I meet who claim that the USA is the worst place on earth, even though they clearly know better.) No matter who they are they just don’t belong in our little exclusive club, you see? They don’t reflect Canadian “values,”; they don’t have “Canadian experience.” They are perpetual victims of residential schools and therefore are incapable of achieving anything more than living on poorly maintained and government owned reservations and aren’t we so clever and sophisticated to recognize it?
God, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. Insufferable.
Those who overcome this are, deservedly, proud of this fact, but that doesn’t mean that the prejudice isn’t there in the background. And it’s not totally unfair to suggest that the tribal descendants are right in that, despite the promises of residential schools, they are excluded from high society unless they find a way to bully themselves into it.
Pretending not to know this and to prove the benevolence of the social betters, fancy dinners and fundraisers are conducted on the natives’ behalf by those who would privately muse about how “Indian” a person looks and wonder if they would steal the silver. Would they ever do a fundraiser for someone who didn't fit? Well for all the local legal female empowerment organizations (Pivot, Atira, LEAF) in Vancouver, not a single one of them lifted a finger to help the victims of one "Jessica" Yaniv. This was a transgender “woman” and scam artist who was shaking down female immigrant beauticians when they wouldn't wax his male genitalia while alone in their home. They had to get a lawyer from Alberta. None of these rah-rah girl power women would touch it. So much for the sisterhood. Tacky bitches.
For myself, I am a descendant from Americans who came over on the Mayflower. I am well connected in government and finance and law and am on intimate terms with a whole bunch of pinstriped douchebags. And I have been to plenty of deadly boring parties where I had to listen to some elderly couple, dripping in gold and diamonds, give a play by play of their last trip to Barbados while eating canapes that were probably made by someone in a much lower class. My name may not be Trudeau or Dunsmuir or Laurier, but all I have to do is tell an American what my family does and suddenly I get that look that says, “Oh my.” Someone needs to teach these people that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. In the meantime, as we used to say in New York, “I’ve been kicked out of better places than this.”
Reason Four: Violence
By any measure, America is a violent country. Americans kill each other at a rate that is more akin to the third world than the “civilized” west. Some people will say that this is because American’s love affair with guns. Truly, the gun is a feature in everyday life for tons of Americans. Whether it’s the gangbanger in central LA, or the cop to chase him, the hillbilly in the Blue Ridge, the shop keeper in New York, or the conservative lawyer in Saint Louis who keeps a piece just in case one of his clients gets nasty, Americans own a lot of guns. They are stashed into floorboards and behind the walls. They are taped to the underside of tables and carried in purses to church on Sundays. It is estimated that there are approximately over 400 million guns in America – one for every man woman and child.
And that was how the founders intended it to be, because you never know when an “adventuring” country (like, say, Canada) might try to invade and burn down the White House. Every farmer, baker, maid, and tax collector should be ready at a moment’s notice to grab their musket and know how to blow the destroyers of liberty away. It says so, right in the Second Amendment where it goes, “shall not be infringed.” Don’t ask me how machine guns are illegal. They shouldn’t be.
I’m not convinced it’s the guns. Lots of countries have lots of guns and they don’t kill each other with such frequency. But also, Americans also love solving problems with violence and they are very, very good at it. And that culture surrounds us. It’s in the movies, or on TV shows or video games. The first violent video game was an American invention; Death Race was based on a movie, also very violent, of the same name. But from the time of “On the Waterfront” to “John Wick” Americans have never shied away from suggesting that while violence may not be the answer, it’s as close to one as you are going to get. Of all the people I’ve ever met, it’s clear to me that Americans, more than any other, are prone to using violence to solve problems. Think about it; when was the last time you saw a movie where the action hero ended a problem with a negotiated settlement?” Would John McClane negotiate for the freedom of the hostages? Would it have worked? Would we have watched it? Would Die Hard be a Christmas movie? No. Yippee Kay Yay, Motherfucker.
This of course, has very real-world consequences, as without Americans preference, competence and capacity for violence, much of the western world would be beset by violence from the Germans or the Russians or the Chinese or the Japanese or Korea or...you get my point. America was born in an act of violence, maintained through that, and even bound together in a supreme act of national attempted suicide, only to come back to forgive, build statues and set an example for every other country on how to just forget all that killing and move on. We fought unwinnable war after war and won them. And after a supreme act of American violence on August 6, 1945, relative peace has been the normal in the west, even if outside of the bubble, the world remains as it always has been – war-torn, self-defeating and gross. Ukraine is now a current example of that. Despite our recent unwillingness to commit and a deep desire in our electorate to grab our little red, white, and blue ball and go home, I would never question the capacity of the USA strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger and turn an entire country into a sheet of glass – if it really wanted to.
We backstopped “the long peace” with and for our friends and we did it with the violence that makes America uninvadable, dominant and very useful to countries that don’t irritate us. Could France or the UK do it? Could Canada? And even if they could, could they muster the money and will and courage to be thought of as the evil empire because in today’s world there are “Gays for Gaza” at the Ivy league? No good deed goes unpunished, I guess. Considering all America had to do was blink in Afghanistan and suddenly there’s a war in Europe with Russia, I have my doubts. Pax Americana.
Reason Five: Competence
People who are afraid of dying are highly motivated. Unless they are seriously ill, they generally want to live and keep surviving. In a highly competitive environment, this means being better than the other guy, no matter what it takes. If that means learning a new technology, or embracing a change of location, that’s what it means. Adapt or die. A Canadian woman expressed wonder to me one time going, “I can’t believe how much Americans move house.” Well, you would move too if you lost your job, and your health insurance with it. No one is going to volunteer to pay your rent or your medical bills. The more competitive the environment, the more competent you have to be. And while you may be able to skate on style for a while, like Sam Bankman-Fried, or that lady from Theranos, you will eventually have to “put up, or shut up” as the saying used to be. Notice both of them are now in jail. In a competition with 400 million people, you have to think things through, you have to come correct – and you have to do it fast.
Canadians do none of this. I hate to say that, and this is probably going to make a whole bunch of people mad at me, but tendency in Canadians to ignore big obvious problems, that then blow up, and then Canadians panic, then have the impulse to “do something”, which is often the wrong thing, and then be surprised by a (mostly) negative outcome seems to be standing operating procedure for any given problem. And it is death by a thousand polite cuts. I don’t know how many times I have watched Canadians gloss over a serious pending disaster because it would have been “mean” to say something, only to have it end in predictable tears. I would say it was just general stupidity, but Canadians are not by nature any more stupid than Americans are. It is simply refusal of correction, and arrogance that belies any attempt by anyone to suggest that maybe if you take a bunch of drunk kids, and squeeze and trap them in the middle of downtown to watch a Very Important Hockey Game, and their team loses, they might act just like drunk kids act everywhere in any part of the world, turn into an angry mob, and tear up the joint. Canadians act like they are immune to gravity and then are shocked whenever they hit the pavement.
I have literally made very smart people violently melt down (alright, so maybe it is kind of my fault) by expertly picking apart their statements that if they had thought about for forty-five seconds would have realized aren’t rational at all. (See my replies on X.) Most of the time, this is because they've heard a stupid argument and never had the chance to try it out on a "real American." But I've heard this same line thousands of times, it's something stupid, and I don't fucking appreciate it. I will not stand for being called names like 'sexist' from a guy who clearly has never learned to respect a woman in his entire life. Maybe if he had, he wouldn't be divorced right now. And apparently, as of today, unemployed.
The problem is they don’t expect to me to listen to them and to be rational, they expect me to agree. This is not a debate, it’s a parlor game with an American (me) which Canada must always win (Canadians aren’t sexist but Americans are). So used to their own passiveness and the fact that other expat Americans indulge them, (much to my absolute disgust, the cowardly traitors) they know they can say whatever stupid thing they want about Americans and expect no one will ever challenge them on this. When they do react, it’s with over-the-top hysterics that make no sense. They simply do not know what to do with resistance and it freaks them out. "This isn't the US!" they say. I'm sorry sir, but this is a Wendy's and I'm just here for the frosty.
Unless they come across me in a bad mood, they really shouldn't worry about rubber hitting the road. Society and government and culture do everything they possibly can to insulate Canadians from the consequences of their actions. Canadian culture stymies competition with unions and regulations, it eschews outsiders and outside ideas, especially American ones. It hands out safe supplies – and Naloxone for when those same safe supplies turn out to be not so safe. It pretends to give the population "healthcare" for free, then offers them MAiD when the system starts running out of money. Everything is going to be fine, SUNNY WAYS, mind you. OR ELSE. And when things go poorly it drops gag orders in the court so that no one hears about the serial killers and the criminals that were out on the street that should have never been there. Or it blames the United States. Perhaps the shock is not so much you can hit the pavement, but that there's any pavement there at all.
Exhibit A is this arrogance has become a real problem in British Columbia’s courts. As it stands now, legal representation is so expensive, 1,000 of divorcing parents are representing themselves, making mistakes, clogging up the system, and legally and sometimes literally, hurting themselves in the process. Single mothers, mostly, but also fathers, become rapidly impoverished from paying the $250 to $700 an hour legal fees they need to settle a dispute over the exchange point, or a few more dollars in support they desperately need to stay housed in this overwrought housing market. Legal aid is only reserved for the very poor and usually “street entrenched” so the little money the couple may have isn't going to be a enough but is also too much at the same time.
Newly adrift, these people are frighted of everything, the courts, their spouse, the future, yet they are expected to find and fill out reams of forms so they can go into court or preliminary hearings they didn't even know existed and had no idea they had to schedule in advance. Once there, a judge tells them, in sometimes rude terms, what they can and cannot get. Often it is shocking because marriage is the only contract we ever sign where we never read the fine print.
All of this should be a provincial embarrassment, but since people only come in contact with it when they are most vulnerable, it flies under the radar of the general public, destroying people’s lives just as insidiously as some secret pandemic. It is needlessly expensive. Some law firms are so technically stunted they haven’t automated any of their processes or procedures since the 90s. They charge oodles of money in billable hours, but a rule had to be passed in BC to force lawyers to accept legal service via an email address. You could think for $700 an hour, a lawyer, no matter how august, would learn how to manage their email. But don't expect any MBAs to step in and start demanding that legal professionals upgrade their skills like every other industry has had to do. Only lawyers can own law firms and complain bitterly when they are devoured by their American rival, DLA Piper. Now it takes years to resolve a simple claim for child support or to be able to sell the house if a spouse is just sitting on it for spite.
There is a solution: let paralegals and other paraprofessionals do some of this work. Law, especially family law, is not rocket science. What other profession can you learn entirely by reading and attending a classroom (ie, the courtroom) that, by law, is open to the public and is free to all attendees? Yet every time this solution has been suggested, it is met with derision by the lawyers themselves, comparing their skills at…um…talking…with brain surgery. It doesn't matter that 90% of the work is being done by an often-abused paralegal, or that the last mile, going to court, is going to have the party showing up alone anyway because they can't afford the fees.
These poor litigants were never going to be a lawyer's client to begin with. But the idea that someone else could competently, and, importantly, calmly, advocate for these litigants, or at least present what is relevant to the court, is an anathema to these lawyers. That would mean they have to, um, compete. I’m not suggesting leaving this up to any rando with a pen, but certainly it shouldn’t take a four-year law degree, a year of articling, passing the bar, and $200,000 for someone other than the estranged spouse to show up in court and go, “here is all the relevant information about this person and what they want” while they quietly cry in the background. To charge so many hundreds of dollars for it, and still not know how to do basic things like download a PDF is inexcusable.
It was all fun and games until the government stepped in and ripped the right of self-regulation away from the lawyers themselves. And it was clear that “access to justice” for divorce cases (fancy speak for we are going to let your paralegal take your jobs) was the cause. The lawyers are aghast. They immediately filed lawsuits and complaints. But did they really think the people would allow them to charge hundreds of dollars for years while everyone earning less than $150K a year gored themselves in court? They could have tried to make their services cheaper, with no cost to themselves. They could have been more efficient or realized that story after story of people suffering was going to have some kind of effect, but no. None of that please, this isn't the USA!
Hi, welcome to Wendy's, would you like some fries with your pavement?
In a country of 40 million people with socialized healthcare, this kind of monopolistic and expensive incompetence is affordable (well, sortof). In the USA, such failure is not. Entire companies have failed, the employees fired, and people have gone to jail, for failing to think things all the way through, being wrong, or just not being very good at their jobs. And Canadians themselves find themselves in trouble when they are in the USA and don’t understand that slop counts (See my other essay, Undercover Brother). But the cost of failure isn’t high enough to break the spell it seems, and the misery continues unabated. Head-to-head, the USA will win, and will always win, because Americans are competent. And they are competent because they don’t have any other choice.
Reason Six: Freedom of speech
It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that there are, in libraries all over the world, books on candle magic, crop circles, and the Standford Experiment. For literally centuries, starting with the Bible (okay IMO, but still...) publishers have been printing any nonsense that they could sell, no matter how silly. Keep in mind, “The Secret” was a best seller too. Any idiot can write a book and believe you me, if a publisher can sell it, they will. The idea that we needed to ban printed misinformation went out with the Red Scare. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” is a celebrated classic. No one has suggested, seriously, in the last 35 years that we limit speech in any way. Dee Snyder went to a hearing about it.
Look, I'm an atheist, so when Guttenberg fired up his presses, all he did was create a whole plethora of "misinformation" in my opinion. There's no fucking way there's a magical garden or an ark or burning bushes and tablets and golden plates from God. Ridiculous. Next you are going to tell me there’s a kraken in the sea and the entire world sprang from the head of some nepo baby. Right. But the Bible, for all its truthiness, defined a way of existing for humans that was prosocial, and even progressive in its time. It dispatched with human sacrifices; it allowed people to settle disputes without violence. In turn after turn, the Bible behooves man to give up his baser instincts and proceed with what it imagines as a just, compassionate, and ordered society.
We can quibble about what that means today but then what it meant is just not randomly killing whomever you feel like. This was progress for our savage, child race. It was a sort of technology. It created a community that could work together for the common good. It provided a law and was just as much an innovation as anything could be. Where would we even be now where it not for this tome of bullshit about reanimating a dead dude? The foundation it created, and the legal framework, created the western world and everything in it. Every powerful Western institution could trace its roots to this one collection of parables about humanities failings that may or may not be true, depending on if you like getting up early on a Sunday or not.
Now, free speech hasn't always been a thing and that has held progress back. The Romans killed Christians, the Christians killed the kings, the kings killed the revolutionaries, and the revolutionaries killed each other, everyone killed the Jews. But despite this, this religion, this "new technology" endured. Media clicked away with a common story, government grew and calcified, the society stabilized. It wasn’t totally peaceful, per se, but in the West, most people lived in relative harmony or at least begrudging tolerance. As a concept, thou shall not kill, thou shall not covet, thou shall not bladda bladda, bladda has endured though all that would have silenced it. So what it was made up of nonsense? It works. And it's made life better for trillions, more or less. Things settled eventually and that’s been the way now until a new type of printing press arrived.
Then the internet happened. A whole new printing press and a whole new reformation. Suddenly we were all privy to the ENTIRE world and its intimate thoughts, practices, beliefs, conflicts, interpretations, critiques, not just a specific book that it took hundreds of years for ordinary people to learn how to read. There is no control, no way to stop what is coming, the chaos of the universe and human experience has descended on us in a few short years. Before the internet, television, cable, and radio dominated the information highway. It was illegal to have your own radio station. Not just illegal but you were breaking a FEDERAL law. They made a whole movie about it with Christian Slater and Wynona Ryder. In a world where anyone anywhere can say anything to anyone this is problem if your whole business model relied on a monopoly of information.
Before 1995, if people didn’t believe “the common narrative,” they would have to go peel through the stacks at the library or maybe go to downtown New York for a copy of the “The Shadow.” There you could find all kinds of "proof" that magic was real, crop circles were not some kind of practical joke, and the Stanford experiment may have had some issues. Books, magazines, newspapers, self-published books, all of it, was available and unless you were looking for pictures of boobies you could pretty much get whatever you wanted if you knew where to look. Not many people did, so it was easy for Big Media and governments to control the narrative of what was good and what was bad and what was real and what was not. Bigfoot, Elvis, Batboy, they were just inside jokes unless you were a complete nut.
But now there is the internet and there is no news anchor or editor or common understanding to draw the line between what is true and what is not. Now anyone can be a reporter, anyone can write, AND distribute a book (which was the hard part), anyone can have a radio station and babble incessantly about vaccines or libertarianism or “geometric unity” – whatever that is. There’s no quality control; there’s no control at all. AND IT IS GLORIOUS. Where would humanity be right now if back in the day, they labelled the Bible misinformation and banned it? (Oh, wait a minute...)
My little libertarian heart sings; the digital world is now so riveting and fun you could classify it as an intoxicating substance and regulate it with the 21st Amendment. You can now reach across time and space and talk to someone that, in the before, before time, you had to write fan mail and hoped they noticed you. That is amazing! So MUCH information, the world can be seen not as it is, or how the powerful want it to be, but how we are. It is so deeply gratifying. That is truth. That we are venal, and craven, and selfish and violent, all the stuff they want to ban, that *IS* us. What the Bible always said was true, well, now we have proof. And like casting your eyes on the true God, it has driven our legacy media completely mad. But the Bible, and the candle magic book, and the Stanford Experiment are just as true as they ever were. Nothing has really changed. The banning of TikTok will not change that. It will not change the truth of these things or the truth of us.
We can, by our own intuition, know what truth is as it is in the Bible, and in a scientific study, and a book on candle magic. All those things have some degree of truth, but I do not need to explain the difference to most people above the age of ten. The problem is that the internet still confuses us and there are no high priests now to act as arbiters. And AI will confuse us more. We will all be heretics and blasphemers no matter what we say. It was no accident that the Reformation and the invention of democracy happened after the invention of the printing press and normal people began to figure out how to read. This is the bargain we have always struck with a new way of disseminating knowledge or what passes for it. Yes, it will upset the apple cart in the immediate time, first the Church, and then the empire, and now the media, but we will be all the better for it when we finally find whatever will pass for a common truth.
But for governments, it means you actually have to govern and be good at that and most of governments aren't actually good at anything but printing money. They want to hold back the tide, keep the leviathan at bay, so they try numerous unworkable and stupid things like human rights laws and banning TikTok and engaging in digital racketeering. “That's a nice social media company, ya go there. Be a shame if something happened to it,” they say to Facebook and Twitter. But governments are playing a sad, losing game of whack-a-mole and now even The Zuck knows it. They uselessly try to tear down this or that tower of Babel, only for it to spring anew in some other form. (I hear SpaceHey is where all the cool kids are at now.) We all need to change tactics because I won’t be able to pry that phone from my teen's cold dead hands.
If governments are so hell bent on controlling speech, it will handicap their best and their brightest. During the cold war, when TV was fairly new and people could see what life looked like on the other side of the world, a whole lot of scientists defected from the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain, and it wasn’t just for the money. So, if a country, say Canada, starts silencing critics, ideas, "conspiracies," and hairbrained schemes, the smartest, most creative and innovative people might find a safer place to be. At least, they might get to keep their bank accounts. To be successful, you have to be able to be wrong. More importantly, you have to be able to be right in a way other people might not like because it upsets their apple cart. If the Bible is a thing, maybe even making shit up like the story of Cain and Abel and the concept of "a reasonable person” will get you (and society) where you need to go.
To be fair, the United States is unique in its reverence for free speech. While it may have some limitations, like threats or defamation, the bar to prove those is much higher in the USA than any other place I could find. And it is unique not just in law, but culture. There is no other place that the limitation of speech by the government or a quasi-government entity could elicit such total scorn like it does in the USA. What limits there are, they are handicapped in a way that is different than anywhere else. I found it endlessly amusing when during the fiasco of the trucker’s rally, it dawned on my American friends that when I said, “Canada is actually kind of a fascist country,” I wasn’t just making that up.
Even in the limits, for example, defamation, the two countries wildly diverge. Defamation in the USA is a high bar. You have to prove "malice" (proving that the person knew what they were saying was untrue and said it anyway) to succeed on a defamation claim in the USA. No so in Canada. A “defamed” person can shut you up even if you are making an educated guess and might be ultimately right. In Canada, as a loser, you will have to pay the cost. Both the defamer and the defamed carry risk that could be very expensive if untrue. Best not to say anything.
And that's not the only way speech is limited in the Great White North. Courts regularly slap gag orders on cases where the public interest could lead to unwanted attention to government policy, and there are no cameras allowed in most courtrooms. There are human rights speech codes with real penalties that can bankrupt a business or a person like those poor Yaniv victims. And there is the culture. As Piers Morgan recently put it, "No one wants to offend anyone." Well, if it's really funny you might, but maybe that's just for Americans and Ricky Gervais. Anyway, these people are all humorless gits, so one (very funny) joke and you are persona non grata at all the soccer mom functions and the Golden Globes.
And so, lies continue and the truth is silenced because the process is the punishment.
Suppression of speech is rife in the rest of the world too. You can, and people have, go to jail in the UK and Australia (and possibly most of Europe) because of a tweet. X is now rife with reports that acknowledging the rape of 1,000s of girls in Rotherham was considered racist and therefore unsayable even as it happened in plain sight. It enough to make one pack up and head for the nearest Floridian suburb. The gators are less dangerous.
But preventing institutional abuses and the rape of children isn’t the only reason that unrestrained speech is a good thing. The heavy hand of government is so restrained in the USA, that, almost as a side effect, it allows all kinds of ideas (and critiques) to breath. Sometimes this is a bad thing, and I could probably fill a 1,000-page book with bad ideas that emanated from the USA over it’s almost 300-year-old existence. (New Coke, anyone? 50 Shades of Grey?) But out of every book of bad ideas, good ideas find purchase, like flight, and iPads, and the Super Soaker.
You couldn’t do any of that if you lived in fear of offending a stupid person who happened to win a political popularity contest and now has petty control of the levers of power. Yet this is what happens every day in Canada. Just ask a trucker. And what is more, a not insignificant number of citizens are perfectly fine with that. Despite their revulsion for Trudeau now, no one batted an eye when he called the truckers "racists and misogynists." Over 60% of people in BC thought it was perfectly okay to shut them up and the government did just that with extreme prejudice. This is just being “reasonable”, this is just what sensible countries do. You wouldn't ever want to offend anyone right? Or at least not the "wrong" anyone like someone with the name Trudeau. It doesn’t matter that it so inhibits invention that there’s a massive brain drain and foreign investment in Canada has plummeted since. No good (ordinary) person should be able hurtle slurs at (powerful) people on the internet even if they are hilariously funny. But are there any good Canadian insult comics? Automobiles? Has Canada even been to the moon? No. And it never will get there unless it hitches a ride with the Americans.
Epilogue: Take this job and shove it.
Right after the election, I had a conversation with a Canadian where they were going on in a typical way. We were talking about the Russians and Trump and the Northwest Passage, that, may I remind my American isolationists readers, is directly above Canada, and most assuredly is in the desire of Putin and his miscreants. I was making the case that Trump was probably more capable of handling this and that was to Canada’s benefit. Having a president whose threats are believed can be invaluable when you are trying to discourage any adventuring of your enemies (who might want to burn down your White House). But the TDS is strong with Canadians, and this man was basically saying “Canada is a real, sovereign country and will not be bullied by the US.” At which point something in me just snapped.
“I don’t know, are you?”
“Are we what?”
“A real country?” The question crackled like a whip.
He stared at me slackjawed. I wasn’t making a joke on the internet. No, I was right there in the flesh asking him a serious, direct question. It was almost as shocking to him as it was to me, but I just could not take it anymore. I said to him,
“What is that you want Canada to be anyway? There’s nothing stopping you from doing what the USA does. You can build yourself an army. We would sell you the weapons. The United States will have nothing to say on this. You are a sovereign nation. You don’t need America’s permission.”
“And we can patrol the arctic….” he trailed off.
“Yes, yes, you can do that.”
At the very least.
There is nothing so unique physically to the United States of America that Canada could not mirror if it so desired. I highly doubt that the Americans would get in the way. In fact, the President has had to resort to threatening punitive tariffs to force Canada to at least try to be fair to the USA on little things like milk, and illegal drugs. For a people who are so proud of their national image, you would think they would want to lift a finger to ensure that other people thought that as well, but no one seems to want to put in the work. Or pay the price - in money, or risk, or tolerance, or blood. Instead, like ungrateful children, they complain about their gifts, bestowed on them by their slightly distracted and preoccupied parents, only to freak out when those same parents start paying attention to their grades. Well, Daddy’s home and it’s time to grow up.
You can incentivize your workers to be hard, to learn new things, to be competent. You can let people feel the consequences of their stupidity and maybe they will pause before deciding that cutting off cars on their bikes may not be the wisest thing to do. Don’t bail them out when their businesses fail because they hired their 2nd cousin and not someone who actually knew what they were doing. Stop protecting unions and dairy and lumber and, for fuck’s sake, lawyers from any competition ever. You can stop fretting over class, which is often both racist and sexist, and at least xenophobic and generally bigoted. Literally, no one gives a fuck. You can get back to your main competency of extracting everything you can from the ground. You are very, very good at that and you should be proud of it. And if you want to do something else, do that, but stop resenting Americans because they “do things.” Make Kamala Harris Prime Minister if you want her so bad. She couldn’t be any worse than the one you have now and I hear there’s an opening. Why are you coming at me?
How about you refrain from passing judgment on people you clearly don’t/can’t/refuse to understand? Who is really being the bully here? And do yourself a favor, stop punishing people for speech. Just let them go. Maybe they have something important to tell you. No one is telling you what to do. You can decide what kind of country you want to be. Just decide already. Or someone else you don’t like will decide for you, someone like me. Probably from a great country, like America.
[i] One time literally got fired for being “too open.” I had told him that his office computers were giving me “blue screens” and I thought they would fail soon. That was it. No good deed goes unpunished.
[ii] Most tribunals are unconstitutional in the USA, which was by design. The founders didn’t want judges who would be agents of the government to have so much power, so now you are entitled to a jury even in civil trials where the amount in question is over $20. That would be equivalent to somewhere between $500 to $700 in today’s terms. Nevertheless, the text is the text and the $20 cap is the amount used, regardless of the value.