“Is America going Third World? Bridges crumbling, schools and firehalls closed, streetlights turned off. The U.S. decline goes far beyond job losses and public debt.” That’s the cover story in this week’s edition of Canada’s national magazine, Maclean’s. My goodness. When exactly did that happen, that Canada looks south and is startled to see a country in threatening disarray, fighting fruitless wars it cannot afford or win while letting many of its urban centres turn into wastelands as hundreds of thousands of its citizens lose their homes due to the greed and lack of control of financial institutions. Not to mention a medical system that is great for the rich and non-existent for the poor.
Not very long ago, Canada would have been a laughing stock if it had given the impression that it considered itself to have designed a superior society to the superpower to its south, but that’s no longer the case. All the UN rankings of national liveability rate Canada at or near the top as the US sinks down into the mid-teens. It used to be that Seattle would have been considered a far more interesting city than its northern neighbour Vancouver, and Detroit more cosmopolitan than dull Toronto, but now those are laughable propositions. It used to be that Canadians moved south for better wages and job opportunities (and climate), and of course many still do, but now over a million Americans live in Canada, for the first time since the Vietnam War when Trudeau’s Canada became the refuge for Americans who felt disinherited, many of whom stayed on, making it the fourth-largest immigrant group in one of the major immigration lands.
It is of course perfectly legitimate to point out the hypocrisy of these kinds of articles, as Canada has its own third world problem that has failed to solve: the miserable conditions of far too many First Nations reserves, a true disgrace if the country is as wonderful and rich as this article suggests, the miserable performance of the current government on environmental issues like climate change, a drug problem that is out of control. Not to mention that if the US economy really tanks as many fear it will if it doesn’t stop fighting awful wars soon (what ever happened to you Barack Obama?) it will take Canada down with it part of the way. But the main point is still worth pondering. Has the US so mismanaged its economic and social affairs that its closest neighbour and best friend is right to have legitimate concerns in seeing how it can steady a wallowing ship of state? Let’s hope the hosers are wrong.