By Peggy Tartaro,
Executive Editor

Growing up in Western New York, as I did, one tends to take Canada a bit for granted. Travel between the two countries used to be easy and frequent, and despite new border security, it mostly still is.

In fact, where I live now, if I wanted to-and I'd have to really, really want to-I could walk to Canada if I didn't mind a couple mile hike. My maternal grandfather was the construction superintendent on the Peace Bridge, one of four main access points for the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area into Southern Ontario, Canada's largest province.

So we often made the trip across the border, and despite the fact that the currency and measuring system is different and most signs and packaging are in English and en Français, most folks around here get pretty used to considering Canada as just another neighborhood.

And vice versa. Ontario license plates are common around here, as visitors from across the border come for the same reasons we go there-shopping, recreation, hockey games and beer.

But Canada is not the US and in recent years, there has been a great deal of tension between the two countries as Canada's Liberal government has often been at loggerheads with both the Clinton and Bush Administrations on foreign policy, trade and, post 9-11, security issues.

The Liberals in Canada-and the upper case "L" is because that is the name of the political party-has also been anti-gun, creating an unworkable boondoggle of a registration system that found support in the populous East (mainly Ontario and Quebec), even as it enraged Western Canadians. The cost of the system began in the millions and escalated to billions and still hasn't exactly worked as government nannies predicted.

Canada, under Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin has also carried a lot of water on the UN small arms disarmament issue, throwing in with those who think armed citizenry are first and foremost a threat to "order," whether that order is in Canada or Rwanda.

And, most recently, the mayor of Toronto, the country's largest city, has been blaming the US for "exporting gun violence" into his city, in the wake of a number of shootings there.

"It's a sign that the lack of gun laws in the US is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto," said Mayor David Miller in January.

And, outraged that the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) had sent out a number of press releases about the Martin government in the weeks leading up to Canada's general election, which Martin and his Liberal Party lost, a Toronto columnist put the differences between the two countries rather well, even if that was not her intention.

Barbara Neyedly, who exchanged emails with staffers at CCRKBA, wrote in one:

"In the US the rights of the individual have always been paramount, while here, the watchword has always been 'peace, order and good government' and the collective good. If society itself is good, then individuals within it will have a better life."

While it's not the most elegant reasoning, it does come close to describing the attitude of many of the citizens of one of the world's largest democracies-we will give up quite a lot in return for order.

That shouldn't be a huge surprise to Americans, after all, while we share a lot with our neighbors to the North, including our beginnings as a colony of England, we were the ones who took on George III and his armies, while they were the ones who stayed and put most subsequent monarchs on tea towels.

The people who always blame someone (or thing) else for their own problems are not just in Canada. It's common practice for big city mayors in the Northeast to blame Southern states for their own crime problems. This is a common approach that politicians-unlike most other children-never outgrow.

When the dust settled in the Canadian elections, Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party had ousted Martin and the Liberals, but not with a majority of seats in Parliament. As such, Harper will preside over a "minority government," that is one that must rely on a coalition of Members of Parliament from other parties (Canada has four parties with seats in Parliament). The Parliamentary system, it should be noted, promotes "order," if not always "peace" by often forming in the minority.

It's interesting that Neyedly and others around the globe seem alternately frightened and dismissive of a country where "the rights of the individual have always been paramount."

It's actually pleasant to visit a country which seems more interested in "order" than individual liberty-but I wouldn't want to live there.

Peggy Tartaro

Photo © Copyright 1998 Nancy Floyd, used with permission.