I was born in Canada but I’ve lived in the United States for most of my adult life, and I became an American citizen a few years back. Over the years, it’s been interesting to note the changing role that Canada has played in my imagination. For instance, during the Trump years, Canada served as an imaginative escape. If things here ever got really bad, I knew that my Canadian citizenship would provide my wife and I a means of escape. However, over the past few days, as the reality of the Biden administration becomes clearer, I find myself imagining Canada in a new way: Canada is where I’ll go when I finally give up on America.
Read MoreCanada's healthcare is becoming more privatized, while America's is becoming more public.
As a dual citizen, someone who grew up in Canada but who now lives in the United States, healthcare has always been one of the biggest sacrifices. Even with a good insurance plan, which I luckily have, it's hard for me to imagine how anyone who had experienced both could in their right mind choose the American system. And while I thought this would always be true, I can now imagine a time when the American system is better than the Canadian. It might not happen, but it's now within the realm of my imagination.
Read MoreThis was my first election as an American citizen. Today of all days there's no shortage of voting stories and political analysis, so it occurred to me that I might write a little something about the experience of voting as a new citizen. But I don't really have any grand thoughts about the experience.
As a long time voter in Canada, the differences were pretty obvious, and probably not all that surprising. Voting in Canada was much easier and I never had any doubt that my vote would be counted. And this wasn't the case here. The voting process is a mess, the ballot is extremely complicated, and I have little faith that my ballot will be counted, especially as I had two write-in votes.
And while I'm a huge fan of more democracy, this country also has a tendency to use democracy in an extremely undemocratic way.
Read MoreI recently became an American citizen, I thought I’d do my patriotic duty to try and cheer up my fellow citizens.
On Friday, at the oath ceremony, about 250 people became new citizens. Those 250 people came from 64 different countries, which means that more than a third of the world was represented. As we were informed, ceremonies like this take place 4 days a week, so that this Brooklyn courtroom swears in tens of thousands of new citizens a year. And nationally, this means that about three quarters of a million people become new citizens every year. And we all registered to vote. But what was most striking wasn’t that we became voters, it was that we became Americans.
Read MoreI keep seeing posts about Bernie Sanders’ trip to Toronto in my Facebook feed. First, they came through the University of Toronto page, then, through Canadian media, and now, from Sanders' own page. And the message has been the same throughout - Bernie travels to Canada to tell Canada how wonderful Canada is. Don't get me wrong, Canadian healthcare is far and away superior to the disaster of US healthcare, and the purpose of Bernie’s trip was to learn about the Canadian system. And I've written a little about this superiority, and I’d also argue that in a few other really important areas, America would be wise to learn from Canada too.
However, these headlines also point to one of the things that really drives me nuts about Canada. We're too self-congratulatory
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