The US and Canada 5 Common Aspects of Healthcare

Members of Parliament holding the new Canadian flag during the flag debate in Ottawa, 1964 (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-142624). Conversation, Not Negotiation. The perspective of Canada as a deeply varied community emphasizes the need of settling issues via discourse rather than negotiation. This viewpoint holds that discourse advances the common good by focusing on listening and working toward a shared understanding. In contrast, negotiations involve competing parties attempting to get the best possible outcomes for themselves. This idea of the common good in Canada fosters a solely political, rather than national, conception of the country. In this view, Canada is a "civic" community – a community of citizens rather than a "nation." National communities are primarily cultural entities. However, the civic or political vision of Canada acknowledges that the country has many other types of communities, including the national. As a result, people who advocate this strategy refer to Canada as "multinational" or as a "nations-state." They encourage citizens to speak out their disputes rather than negotiate them, despite the fact that bargaining is frequently viewed as unavoidable.

Indeed, most Canadians have implemented this strategy in a fashion

that reflects small-l liberal philosophy. In the United States, conservatism is more prevalent. In Scandinavian countries, democratic socialism is more prevalent. As a result of this emphasis on liberalism, Canadian political parties seeking to form a government have highlighted the more liberal aspects of their agendas. Rights of Indigenous Peoples On November 16, 1981, more than 100 Indigenous people marched on Parliament Hill to protest the deletion of Aboriginal rights from the draft Constitution. (credit The Canadian Press/Carl Bigras). Recognition of Ethnic Groups According to this viewpoint, national communities should be distinguished from civic or political groups. They should also not be compared to ethnic communities. (See also, Ethnic Identity.) The question is whether the ethnic group seeks acknowledgment and self-determination from the state, or if they identify primarily with Canada. Indigenous peoples, French-speaking Québéckers, English-speaking Canadians, and maybe Acadians are among the ethnic groups demanding self-determination and recognition. Many hyphenated Canadians (e.g., Scottish, Chinese, African-Canadians) are examples of ethnic groupings that do not seek this designation.

English Canadians are frequently described as being a "nation that dares not speak its name."

They do not view themselves as a distinct community. Instead, they are frequently seen as one of two language groups in multilingual Canada. English Canadians have had the luxury of adopting this viewpoint. As the dominant group in the country, it is all too easy to lose sight of the distinction between one's own national community and the country as whole. Each of these viewpoints has been adequately represented in the discussion over the basis of Canadian identity. There is no reason to believe that the disagreement will conclude anytime soon.Data shows that Canadians are embracing diversity rather than simply adapting to it. The following essay appeared in The Globe and Mail on December 31, 2022. This is Michael Adams' third annual year-end review of social development in Canada. Michael Adams founded the Environics Institute and wrote Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Multiculturalism. Andrew Parkin is the Institute's Executive Director. This last year has given Canadians numerous reasons to reconsider their national identity. The angry takeover of Ottawa last winter, on the outskirts of Parliament Hill, contradicted our perception of Canadians as polite compromisers. Day-long emergency room wait times have eliminated whatever desire we might have had to brag to Americans about our public health care system. Provincial governments began acting as if our precious Charter of Rights and Freedoms were only a suggestion, not a set of binding principles. Even the death of Queen Elizabeth II caused disruption, as some of us refused to swear loyalty to a new monarch.

Other signals of change included Statistics Canada's regular release of updated census results until 2022

We discovered that immigrants make up a larger part of our population than ever before (23%), with more coming from Asia and Africa than Europe. More than one in four of us is now racialized, and one in every twenty is Muslim. Our Indigenous population is expanding about twice as quickly as the non-Indigenous population, and it will shortly exceed two million. It is plausible to believe that the combination of change, worry, and conflict we have encountered over the last year is stretching the shared links that have traditionally kept us together. When we look at the public appeal of classic Canadian symbols like our flag or national anthem, we may see some evidence of this. Both are less likely than they were 20 years ago to be seen as central to the Canadian identity. Other famous organizations, like as the RCMP and the CBC, have lost some of their attractiveness as emblems of common identity. Even hockey has declined in relevance to the Canadian sense of self since its pinnacle in 2010, the year of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. However, the Canadian identity is not waning; rather, it is transforming. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is presently more popular among Canadians than any other symbol or institution. The concept of multiculturalism is more popular than ever, with nearly two-thirds of Canadians saying it is extremely essential to our identity (30 years ago, it was closer to one-third). And in the last decade, there has been a significant increase in the extent to which Canadians regard Indigenous peoples as critical to the country's self-image.