""NOV. 9, 2003: FIRE AND ICE
Canada and the United States are different – and becoming more so. That is the bold thesis of Fire and Ice, a new book by one of Canada’s best-known pollsters, Michael Adams of Environics Research. On a recent trip across Canada, I was asked so often about Adams’ work that I realized I was witnessing the birth of a new orthodoxy.

So I bought Fire and Ice at a bookstore in the Ottawa airport and read it carefully. I was so astonished by what I saw there that I sat down this past weekend and read it again. The second reading was even more disturbing than the first. The more carefully one studies it, the more apparent it becomes that this fall’s leading Canadian high-brow bestseller is an intellectual card-trick.

Start with the basics. Michael Adams claims to have accumulated massive survey data proving that Canadians and Americans live by radically different values. He rests this claim on the “values map” he draws based on three major surveys of U.S. opinion over the past ten years and on regular surveys of Canadians.
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[ 12 November 2003: Message edited by: Geneva ]

It strikes me that his observation of Quebec seems to be an overgeneralizaton, but I leave that to others to comment on. But his description of the "conservative Deep South" is misleading. It is not so deep, but runs from a few miles south of Washington to Disneyland in north central Florida, and from the the Atlantic east to the Rio Grande in the west. In short, the states that voted for Bush last time. The areas of the U.S. that have much in common with the bulk of Canada are in the northeast, middle atlantic, upper midwest, and the pacific coast. In short, the states that voted for Gore last time.

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Originally posted by Geneva:
Why does this get him so upset?

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[ 11 November 2003: Message edited by: Geneva ]

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Am I saying that Canadians and Americans are culturally identical? Certainly not. But I am saying that the differences between the two nations deserve honest and unbiased study

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. . . is the polling data really THAT weak?

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Adams is a competent pollster. No serious poll is taken on one or two questions. To the contrary, they ask lots of questions. And they ask similar questions in different forms in order to disguise their intent. Adams has been doing this for a long time.

This column is the usual load of hooey. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Frum is right (I don't think he is) and the two countries are the same, except for the "south" and Quebec. The fact of these two regions exerting their influence has profound implications for the entire respective countries, something which Frum just glosses over. These are not insignificant, but very large and influencial regions.

Quebec, if there was nothing else, is the reason that no hard-right politics will ever have much success in Canada, while the "south" is the reason that a man like Bush can run the whole country. To pretend that the result of these realities doesn't set a strong course that the whole country must deal with and be influenced by is disengenuous in the extreme. So even if Frum were right, he'd still be wrong.

"Canadians and Americans still dress alike, talk alike, like the same books, television shows and movies, and trade more goods and services than ever before. But from gay marriage to drug use to church attendance, a chasm has opened up on social issues that go to the heart of fundamental values.

A more distinctive Canadian identity — one far more in line with European sensibilities — is emerging and generating new frictions with the United States."

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A more distinctive Canadian identity — one far more in line with European sensibilities — is emerging and generating new frictions with the United States."

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I like the image we're generating abroad, but I don't trust it. Michael Moore is on some kind of blinkered Canadian honeymoon, and we all know that child poverty and housing issues mean that our poorest citizens are worse off than they've been since the 30s.

Try this:

His book is based not so much on snapshot surveys but on farily in-depth longitudinal studies.

Every four years for a decade or so, his organization has posed about 300 questions to many thousands of Canadians, Americans and Europeans. Those questions cluster together into value groups along various axes like authoritarianism/liberalism, patriarchy/feminism etc.

Over the years, the US trend is towards conservatism, the Canadian/European trend towards social liberalism. Even the most conservative Canadian subgroups (older Albertans) score higher on the liberalism scale than the most "liberal" American subgroup (university-educated New Englanders). Yup, that's right: our Ralph Kleins are on average much more left-wing in their value system than their Vermont socialist ex-hippies, pardon the stereotypes. I don't know if Klein or the ex-hippies of Burlington will be more upset but that's a consistent finding.

These differences have been consistent throughout he years and are growing more and more radical as US society becomes more isolationist and conservative.

Adams also uses a number of test questions over and over again that reveal deep-seated value patterns. One question is to ask if people agree with the propoition that "the man must be master of the house". All US groups agree. Even a majority of university-educated US women agreed and the percentages have been growing over time. In Canada, the scores for all groups for this test question have been falling over time and falling at an increasingy rapid rate. Even in the most conservative Canadian group on this question, the percentage of agreement is in the low 20s or high teens.

other rapidly growing differences between US and Canada: Americans increasingly agree with the use of military force as well as physical violence to "protect one's property". Canadians do not. This difference is growing, and growing at an increasingly rapid rate. The increase in the rate of growth in the values gap precedes the reaction to September 11 in all cases.

Adams also found that the fastest growing group of hardline conservative Americans is among young Americans.

So Frum will understandably be upset because someone actually went out and measured more than 300 data points in 1992, 1996, and 2000 using the exact same questions and the results are that Canada is growing rapidly more tolerant and open-minded whereas the United States is growing increasingly isolationist and ready to accept violence as way of life.

And the largest social values group in the US, a group that is growing rapidly and already represents a third of the population, is the social-Darwinist, isolationist, violence-prone group. And its growth is coming from people under the age of 25.

[ 02 December 2003: Message edited by: Mimichekele2 ]

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although I think that marijuanna should be legal, regulated and taxed.

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