Canada and the United States: Differences That Count

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Twenty authors have written 19 comparative articles about life and
institutions—financial, political, cultural—in the United States and
Canada. All but one writer lives and works in Canada, and all are
knowledgeable in their fields.

There is no chapter on Quebec, since Quebec is a uniquely Canadian
factor (there is no comparable country-within-a-country inside the
United States). What the book does discuss, it discusses very well. One
might wish that Robert G. Evans’s article about health care in the two
countries could be circulated throughout the United States, where
defenders of the status quo point to Canadian medicare as a horrible
example to be avoided. “The worst in America is very bad indeed,”
says Evans, “and would not be tolerated anywhere else in the developed
world.” Health-care costs in Canada are quite reasonable. David Perry
provides a series of tables on comparative debt and taxation levels,
along with a commentary on the difficulties of such comparisons. John
Richards offers suggestions as to why the Canadian workforce is more
unionized than the American (and why this matters), while Helmut H.
Binhammer and Philip F. Bartholomew compare banking practices in the two
countries. George Hoberg’s comparison of environmental performances in
both countries terminates the financial section of the book.

A series of articles on the comparative political systems
follows—everything from the Senate to the role of aboriginals. Then
Tamara Palmer Seiler offers a superb comparison of immigration practices
and policies, while Stephen J. Randall compares the foreign policies of
Canada, a middle power, and the United States.

Every library should have a copy of this book.