Wil's Rant

I read an article in Maclean's lately that raised a couple of very interesting points. The affect was to soften a few of the fairly smug attitudes I've had regarding the Canadian verses American position on several subjects. One of these was Kyoto. I have criticized the Americans over their refusal to sign onto the Kyoto Accord. The article points out that while we have signed onto Kyoto, we currently have no workable plan to actually implement it. On the other hand, the Americans haven't signed, yet they have in place more strict regulations regarding emissions than are found in Canada. As a result, the Americans have made more real progress along these lines than Canada has, reducing pollution by a greater margin than Canada has been able to achieve. Another point deals with the treatment of the poor. The American low income families come out well ahead of their Canadian counter-parts in that they pay much less taxes for their income level. So while we take a much more liberal position, in the actual fact, American low-income families fair much better. Even in the area of gay rights issues, while we may be a little ahead, the margin is in fact very small and could even have gone the other way had it not been for court intervention.

The results of all this is to say that in Canada we may take a very smug attitude as far as our liberal policies go, there is an awful lot of work to be done. While the Americans may come off as being behind us in this regard, appearances can be very deceiving. A little more reading and research will quickly show that in fact, when it comes down to the actual day to day implementation of our policies, the Americans are ahead of us in several areas. Perhaps we don't really have all that much to feel smug about.