Published at 08:01 on 8 March 2025
Or, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” versus “peace, order, and good government.”
At least, that’s the dichotomy as it is commonly presented on both sides of the border. Or, should I say, it is so far as Americans are even aware of the second quoted phrase above, and most are not. It is a dichotomy that I disagree with. While it is possible to pick and choose examples that fall into that narrative, one does not have to try very hard to find counterexamples to it.
Zoning and Land Use Planning
I live in a neighbourhood of the sort that simply does not exist in most US West Coast cities. The sole exception is San Francisco, which is old enough to predate most planning and zoning laws. My neighbourhood does not predate such laws, yet it has a form more typical of neighbourhoods that predate such laws in the USA.
First, the lot sizes are a lot smaller. In the USA, supposed land of individual freedom and property rights, there was a government agency (the FHA) handing down dictates from above regarding, amongst other things, minimum lot size. Properties in nonconforming neighbourhoods would be not be eligible for government-underwritten mortgages, so not surprisingly, municipalities and developers caved to the demands. In Canada, supposed land of submission to good government, the Federal government was largely silent. The market dictated lot sizes, and since there was a market for 3500 square foot lots, such lots were platted and sold.
Second, a lot of the people who first settled here were immigrants from southern Europe. They were not wealthy. They could only just barely afford homes, and many of them couldn’t afford homes on their own; they could only afford them if they split their housing cost with some tenants. So they did just that. Now, this was against the law, these areas being at the time zoned for single family use. But then a curious thing happened: the City of Vancouver blanched at enforcing the law. These were people’s homes after all. These were individuals with property rights choosing to do what they wanted with their property. Is this the sort people we are, to come down with the mailed fist of authority onto individuals pursuing their own dreams with their own homes in their own way? So East Vancouver ended up becoming neighbourhood after neighbourhood of mainly duplexes. Eventually the city acknowledged reality and legalized such uses.
Americans have tried to do this, too. Sometimes it flies, but usually it doesn’t end so well. Neighbours notice other neighbours have too many cars parked in front, or have too many people entering and exiting, some routinely using the exterior entrance to the basement. A zoning violation gets reported. And the city usually comes down hard on such things. We have neighbourhood standards to enforce after all. Conform to the norm or suffer the consequences.
Policing
Independent police oversight, in which a third party investigates accusations of unlawful behaviour by law enforcement officers, is the norm in Canada and many other First World democracies. It is the exception to the norm in the USA, where police departments are generally trusted to police themselves. How this can be squared with Canadians having faith in government and Americans questioning authority is simply beyond me.
Incarceration
No nation locks up as many people as does the USA, either per capita or in absolute numbers. Not even China. Not even Russia. Not even Cuba. My guess is that North Korea should probably be number one on that list, but accurate data is sort of hard to come by when it comes to the Hermit Kingdom. Still, if your standards for a core human rights measure are “well, at least we’re better than North Korea,” let me suggest that your standards define the bottom of the barrel. Again, how this can be squared with Canadians being the ones more accepting of authority and submission to it is simply beyond me.
Prohibition
This one’s a little murkier. Both the USA and Canada went on an ill-fated experiment to micromanage which substances adults may or may not imbibe, and it went poorly in both countries. The difference is that when it started going poorly in Canada, it got repealed. Because of course it did: it was just like the illegal duplexes of which I wrote earlier. Do we really want to be in the business of policing what private citizens want to drink in their own homes? Is that the sort of society we are?
The USA doubled down. Respect authority! Obey! Time for a new, powerful, Federal police agency! Only after the doubling-down failed, and a Great Depression made people realize that a legal, profitable, alcoholic beverages industry might prove to be something of an economic shot in the arm, did the failed experiment finally end. In the meantime, Americans acquired a taste for Canadian whisky which led to one of Canada’s more profitable export industries.
On cannabis, some US states such as Colorado and Washington beat Canada to the game at legalization. Sort of. It’s still illegal on the Federal level, so what we have is a legal gray area where cannabis is illegal under Federal law but legal under State law, so the state and local cops won’t enforce what is a Federal matter. Plus it’s an all-cash business; banks are Federally regulated and don’t want to have anything to do with it.
Canada took its time (and many Canadians were embarrassed that it took so long), but cannabis is now completely legal here. Pot shops take credit and debit cards, because of course they do, that makes life easier for your customers and the banks have no qualms about serving just another legal business.
One area that fits the popular narrative is that no province pushed the envelope the way any US state did and tried to legalize cannabis before the Federal government was ready.
Narcotics
Canada trusts me, as a responsible adult, to go to my local pharmacy and purchase narcotics over the counter. No, they are not very strong narcotics. Yes, I do have to go and ask the pharmacist for them. Yes, he does ask to see my ID, and does record my purchase, so if I become addicted, it will be evident to the authorities. But I still can do it. Not in the so-called land of the free.
The Draft
Canada has been very reluctant to conscript people into its military against their will. Doing so during World War I triggered rioting and a political crisis. It was the USA that drafted young men to go fight in Vietnam against their will, and it was to Canada that many of these men fled for sake of their individual liberty. It is hard to think of any greater violation of liberty than to force an individual into servitude, yet the USA did just that.
Slavery
And not just during the Vietnam War. For decades, enslaved Black Americans fled north to freedom via the Underground Railroad. It’s not so well known in the USA, but Canada had slavery at one time, too. It just wasn’t so economically important on this side of the border, and quickly ran into adverse court decisions (there was a famous one in what is now Quebec that proclaimed that while slavery was legal, there was no law against a slave running away from their master). It was the so-called land of the free that for decades made peace with slavery and rationalized it because it was economically profitable.
LGBTQ Rights
Sex between consenting adults became fully legal nationwide in Canada in 1969. It took until 2003 for the USA to get to the same place (via a court decision that could be reversed at any time now). Canada also beat the USA when it came to legalizing same-sex marriage (which again is the law of the land in the USA by virtue of a court decision that could be reversed any time now).
And Finally, the Elephant
You know, the decline in liberty accompanying the transition to fascism that most Americans apparently seem just fine with. And sorry, I don’t know any other honest way to interpret those poll results. If Party A is advocating fascism, and Party B is advocating something squarely within the bounds of small-l, small-d liberal democracy, and the overall public takeaway that Party A is approximately where it ought to be and Party B is too far left, well, it seems obvious to me.
But You’re Cherry-Picking!
Sure, there’s things that fit the narrative (I even pointed one out above). But come on now, the last few months should conclusively prove beyond doubt that something is rotten in the supposed Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Some of us have been sensing the rot for some time.
I suggest it’s merely a commonly-believed narrative, and not any sort of accurate summary of actual political attitudes. The land of “peace, order, and good government” is quite often also the land of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and such it has long been.
