Tag: politics

The Coffee Klatch: Why Canadians Compare Themselves to Americans

November 16, 2024

When I sat down for coffee, my friend asked, “Will your children return to Canada?” I understood he was talking about Trump’s presidential victory in the US and its impact on people. Trump’s win caused widespread consternation among my friends.

I said no. Why would my children return when they have good jobs, own their houses, and are growing families in the USA? I said that I do not talk with them much about politics; we talk about their families. Besides, a new government would not make any difference to them, at least in the short term.

His question upset me because it steered our conversation immediately toward US politics. Why are we Canadians so preoccupied with US matters? Yes, the US is our largest trading partner; most of us visit and travel to the US. But don’t we have our own political issues to talk about?

I find scant news about Canada despite watching Canadian TV channels. Two recent provincial elections were hardly covered on the national TV channels. Ontario’s big news recently was that the Premier ordered municipalities to remove bicycle lanes on major roads to ease traffic jams. I agree with him; on some major roads in Ottawa, the bike lanes take up space, making for dangerous driving while watching for cyclists right next to you. And, of course, one cannot park along the curb to visit stores because of the bike lanes. Beyond the bike lanes issue, what comes to my mind is the Premier’s promise to give every Ontarian $200, anticipating an election next spring. These news items produce no excitement in me.

Although local news has had sparse coverage, US news of the election was shown in detail on Canadian national TV channels every night. Canadians have a love-hate relationship with Americans. They like to winter and shop in Florida and Arizona. However, they often express critical views of life there, mentioning rampant crime and an expensive healthcare system compared to Canada.

You’ll be surprised how often you read a thread on Quora (a social network) about universal Canadian healthcare and its superiority to American healthcare. It is also cheaper, according to the threads. Perhaps. However, the subject is more complex; only eight percent of Americans are without health insurance today, and we should also compare the quality of healthcare in the two countries before drawing simplistic conclusions. Two-thirds of Americans with private insurance have better healthcare quality than in Canada; for example, access to a family doctor is much faster than in Canada, and waiting times for hip replacements are shorter.

Also, in Quora threads, many Canadians think Americans are ignorant; I remember the popularity of Rick Mercer’s TV show (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) when he presented fake situations and asked people to respond, for example, when he said the Canadian parliament building is made of ice. Is that Canadian humor? It was a silly statement and demeaning to the people he interviewed. In one episode, he interviewed Mike Huckabee when he was governor of Arkansas, embarrassing him: Huckabee congratulated Canada on having a “National Igloo” in response to Mercer’s prompt. I think American comedians could come to Canada and emulate Mercer’s performance in the US, showing how ignorant Canadians are.

I went to graduate school, worked in the US in the 1960s, and have fond memories of my life there. That was after I lived in Vancouver, Canada, where people, particularly the British people, wanted to learn about your pedigree before befriending you. I found them class-conscious, and the Brits still considered themselves living in the colonies. In contrast, the Americans asked what I could do and what my skills were, not dwelling on my background.

In my experience, Americans work harder and longer hours than Canadians, which may also lead to higher stress levels. I remember when my brother, who traveled a lot, told me that it was always calming to fly into Canada; the atmosphere was just more relaxed at Canadian airports compared to US ones.

The conversation with my friend over coffee made me think of why Canadians spend so much time comparing themselves to the US, and always in a favorable light. I do not have an answer, but I cannot help wondering whether this results from an inferiority complex, justified or not.

Exploring North Carolina: Vineyards, Memories, and Family

May 15, 2024

Sitting in the sun, shaded partly by an umbrella at Shelton’s vineyard in North Carolina, was hugely relaxing. Helping the relaxation was the Cabernet Sauvignon that we sipped. The food was average: pulled pork on an open sandwich base, or perhaps it was a pizza. I am not sure, but it tasted like pub food, appropriate in the setting.

Driving away from the lush meadows of the Yadkin Valley where Shelton’s grows its grapes, my thoughts turned towards the many times we visited North Carolina over the last few decades, and my memory lane took me back to the first time I drove to Chapel Hill, NC.

That was when the Dean of the Graduate School of City Planning welcomed me with an open smile; Jack Parker welcomed each planning student. His intimate reception touched me, and he generated a feeling that I’d succeed in my studies. It was a competitive program, but I have known no one who failed. The UNC Planning School admitted me for the January session; I applied to many other Ivy League schools, but UNC took me mid-year, and I accepted the offer, not waiting for the other schools to respond. But let me explain how I decided to attend planning school.

After graduating from the School of Architecture at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, I worked with a small architectural firm in Vancouver. I lasted six months before getting bored with mundane designs of lobbies for high-rise buildings put up by developers. Another job with an even smaller firm was more interesting: designing a recreation center for a specific location in Vancouver. This project came about as a request for proposals for a competition our firm did not win.

After my brief experience with two architectural firms, I decided that I did not fit the mold of an architect. Architecture envisions plenty of attractive and well-appointed living spaces unavailable for most people worldwide. Architecture is irrelevant to people who have no choice but to tolerate less attractive environments. So, that was the impetus for me to search for a new field of endeavor. City planning appeared to be a related field, so I started applying to graduate planning schools in the fall, which is how I ended up in Chapel Hill in January.

When I arrived, I felt I was in paradise, experiencing southern hospitality and the positive energy generated by, and friendships made with, the planning students. Living at a campus-type university was another positive for me; UBC was a city university where moststudents lived off-campus. In contrast, campus life at UNC was rich with lectures and performances I could attend. For example, at the annual Jubilee Music Festival in the spring, I listened to Johnny Cash while sitting with thousands of students on the ground of the quadrangle. It was a memorable concert. 

Another primary reason North Carolina holds deep memories is that I spent considerable time with my future wife during our second year there. Although we met in Washington, DC, where we both had summer jobs, upon returning to UNC for our second year, we saw each other daily, starting with breakfast in thestudent dining room,Lenoir Hall, when it cost forty cents. And we spent many evenings talking late into the night at the Rathskeller, a student pub in Chapel Hill. We married at year’s end at the Anglican Church on the campus with family and all my classmates in attendance. The audience had a big laugh when the newlyweds left in the car with a colossal ruckus created by the rocks my friends put into the hubcaps of our vehicle.

A career launch and meeting my lifelong partner provide deep roots in North Carolina. But there is more to it. Our three children applied to US universities after finishing high school in Ontario. Although they did get into Canadian universities, they thought going to American schools would be more adventurous, perhaps influenced by their parent’s experience there. The upshot of their leaving Canada was that Tony and David attended UNC in Chapel Hill, while Megan graduated from Duke University in Durham.

They married after graduating from university; the two boys married North Carolina girls and settled in Charlotte and Durham. Further, Kathy’s brother, Huw, retired from Washington, DC to Winston-Salem, near where his wife had grown up. Our recent visits to North Carolina span from Charlotte to Winston-Salem to Durham, all of these locations along Interstate 40, within three hours of driving time.

Innumerable opportunities have existed to visit our children and their growing families in North Carolina, share a vacation, help them move, or see them. Over the years, I wore out several car tires along Interstate 81, driving from Ottawa to North Carolina. However, the visits have also provided opportunities to see the state and enjoy what it offers.

Huw and Judy introduced us to vineyards while driving around Wiinston-Salem. With the decay of the tobacco industry, growing grapes had taken over the rich agricultural soil. My attraction to visiting vineyards goes beyond sipping wines; they happen in areas with lush vegetation on rolling hills, with a lake and a fountain facing the tasting room.

Having visited Shelton’s vineyard, where the wine was tasty, but the food was not the best, we decided to visit Shadow Springs Vineyards with Huw and Judy on our last visit before returning to Ottawa. They do not have a restaurant, and since we do not sip wine without some food at lunchtime, we stopped at the Shiloh General Store in Hammondville to pick up a sandwich.

Amish people run the store, and the owner, Phil Graber, was on cash. I learned from him that the area has over fifty Amish families. Phil and his wife Mary established the store in the early 2000s and expanded it to over thirty-five hundred square feet. The store sells homemade products with fresh ingredients, such as pickled vegetables, dry soup mixes, Amish noodles, pretzels, and crackers.

They made a tasty sandwich for us. I found their order-taking fascinating. You choose on a piece of paper the type of bread, meat, spread, vegetables, and sides you want and place it in a window. Then, they prepare the sandwich and call your name. There was no limit on what you could ask for, and I thought, why not order pulled pork and chicken under meats? And low and behold, my sandwich had both meats!

Armed with our sandwich, we entered Shadow Springs’ tasting room. Judy selected a 2022 Seyval Blancand a2022 Chardonnay while we settled at a table on the lakefront, cranking up the umbrella to provide shade from the sun’s heat at midday. The chatty hostess in the tasting room described how Chuck Johnson, the owner, decided to retire from his corporate job to his home state and look for another career opportunity after missing too many of his son’s ball games. Chuck and his wife Mary went winetasting upon their return to NC and decided that winemaking might be an excellent opportunity for starting a new life. They looked at dozens of farms for sale until they found this piece of land with the proper orientation and soil qualities to make wine. They started making wine in 2005.

And we were not disappointed with their wines. We spent the two-hour lunch sipping wine in sunny weather, sitting outside with a huge fountain making a bubbling sound in the middle of the lake next to us. What a way to spend our last day in North Carolina before returning to Ottawa, where the trees were getting leafy.  

The Book “Red Notice” by Bill Browder Brought up Memories

January 28, 2024

Published in 2015, Red Notice is a memoir spanning the period of Russia’s privatization of state assets during President Yeltsin’s time (1991 to 1999) and the rise of the oligarchs during President Putin’s time (from 2000). Browder noticed business opportunities spawned by privatization and took advantage of them but then ran afoul of the Russian political system, and the government deported him from Russia in 2005.

He returned home to London, but upon learning that his lawyer and friend Sergei Magnitsky died of a beating in Moscow on November 16, 2009, he became a human rights activist. The book describes his advocacy that resulted in the Magnitsky Act in the US, signed by President Obama in 2012.

Born into an intellectual and leftist Jewish family where science and mathematics were the only career choices, Bill rebelled and decided to become a capitalist.

Bill’s grandfather, Earl Browder, was a union organizer in the US. Russia invited him to live in Moscow, where he married and had three sons. When Earl came back to the US with his family, he became the head of the US Communist Party and ran for President in 1936 and 1940, becoming subject to the McCarthy witchhunts of real and perceived communists and jailed for sixteen months.

All of Earl’s sons became noted mathematicians in the US. Bill’s father, Felix, a child prodigy in maths, earned his Ph.D. from Princeton at age 20. He had trouble landing a job because of his father’s communist background. However, Eleanor Roosevelt, then Chair of the Board of Governors at Brandeis University, overruled the Board and hired Felix in 1955. Subsequently, Felix taught at the University of Chicago, Yale, and Princeton

Bill studied economics at the University of Chicago and earned an MBA from Stanford to pursue his career goals. The typical career ladder for MBAs led Bill to join investment banks, but he was not happy until he found an opportunity to go to Eastern Europe. He describes in his book that he longed for some experience that reminded him of his grandfather’s stay in Russia.

Bill describes in his book how the Yeltsin regime privatized state assets. Each Russian citizen received one share to buy any company’s share. Some people realized that accumulating shares cheaply was advantageous; most had no idea what the shares meant and sold them cheaply or for a drink.

Bill had the business training to value Russian companies, and by comparing them to similar companies in the West, he quickly realized that the Russian companies were way undervalued. And he thought he could make a fortune buying into the Russian oil and other companies.

But he needed money to invest, and the first part of the memoir describes his talent in raising capital by cold-calling, networking, and directly asking rich people to trust him to invest their money in Russia. The book reads like the who is who of people with millions of dollars in Europe, the Middle East, and the US.

Studying Russian companies, Bill discovered that the oligarchs, who controlled the enormous Russian companies with their accumulated shares, stole from their companies by splitting off parts of them and selling them to their friends and family at discounted prices. When President Putin came into power in 2000, he took advantage of Bill’s work exposing the corrupt oligarchs. Putin put some of them in jail – the prime example was Khodorkovsky of GasProm – and others agreed to Putin taking a portion of their profits to avoid prison. But when Putin took control of the oligarchs, he had no use for Bill anymore and kicked him out of Russia.

Bill moved back to London and published material on the corrupt business practices of the oligarchs, irritating Putin. In response to the bad publicity, the Russian police arrested Bill’s lawyer, Magnitsky, while other members of Bill’s Moscow staff escaped to London. Attempts to free Magnitsky failed despite newspaper articles and YouTube videos exposing the corruption in Russia. The bad publicity caused international condemnation, and Magnitsky’s jail conditions worsened, culminating in a deadly beating.

Learning of Magnitsky’s death, Bill had become depressed and swore revenge. Instead of focusing on his company, he spent most of this time trying to avenge his friend’s death. As a first step, he collected information on those who contributed to Magnitsky’s death.

Armed with this information, Bill lobbied Senators Durbin and McCain to sponsor a bill to sanction all those responsible for Magnitsky’s death. There is a detailed description of how Bill lobbied, working with the US government and Congress to advocate for the bill. The ultimate result was that Senators Durbin and McCain pushed the Magnitsky Act through Congress, subsequently signed by President Obama in 2012.

Browder has an eye for detail, and I found it fascinating to learn of the people Bill has known. For example, Bill worked with Crysthia Freeland in Moscow when she was the bureau head for the Financial Times. Freeland is the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in Canada today. He also talks about lunches in specific locations with dates. Maybe he journaled, or he has a fantastic memory.

The book reminded me of my early life living in Hungary under Russian rule in the 1950s. At that time, the state owned most of the property in Hungary, and there was no tax since the government employed all the people and provided all services. There was no private industry. And the secret police were all over. People disappeared overnight, and nobody asked any questions for fear of being the next one to disappear. The socialist system resulted in poverty, much like the situation Browder describes in Russia.

Further enhancing my interest in the book, Felix Browder, Bill’s father, was my brother Peter’s advisor at Yale University for his doctoral dissertation in mathematics in 1964.

My Rant for Today: Immigration Overload?

January 13, 2024

Driving to have coffee with my friend at Timmies, I listened to the daily talk show with a panel on immigration. One said the Canadian public is sympathetic to (and has an enviable record), welcoming immigrants. Based on that attitude and arguing that the economy needs immigrants for its continued growth, the government doubled immigration targets to the 500,000 range. In addition, another million people arrive in Canada annually as foreign students and temporary workers, many of these becoming permanent residents over time.

The combination of immigration and temporary workers and foreign students have coalesced into a momentous problem in Canada, resulting in an acute shortage of housing and a precipitous decline in healthcare (lack of nurses, doctors, unacceptable emergency department waiting times). Without question, the huge number of recent immigrants, foreign students and temporary workers are a major contributing factor to these problems. 

Up until a few years ago, with half the number of arrivals into Canada compared to the recent year, assimilation into Canadian society had occurred seamlessly without impacting housing and healthcare. Services provided paralleled demand. (In fact, it has just been revealed that the Canadian cabinet minister responsible for immigration was warned two years ago that we were facing a housing crunch, even before immigration levels were increased this past year!  This warning was ignored for political purposes!)

Now, Canadians are becoming aware of what the massively increased number of newcomers has wrought, and anecdotal evidence points to a shrinking welcome mat.

One panelist on the talk show said that we need immigrants for our economy to grow. OK. How many do we need? I’m not too fond of loose talk. Provide some metrics. Arguments with no evidence to back them up are useless. The bottom line is: how many immigrants, foreign students and temporary workers do we need for the economy?

People with skills required in Canada would be a great addition to the economy, but how many immigrants are skilled in occupations we need?  We are told that we need them for house construction; however, we are also told that only about 5% of immigrants work in the housing industry….

I’d like to know how many of the half million immigrants we allow to enter Canada qualify for the needed skilled categories. Equally importantly, how many of these needed people would be allowed to practice their trade in Canada without certification (medical licensing, trade licensing)? And how long would it take to get their licenses to be productive in Canada?

Without data to back up the justifications for even more immigrants, we, the Canadian public, are left with only anecdotal information and our own experiences of worsening health care access, inability to find family doctors, long wait times for emergency care and rapidly increasing housing and rents which all will translate into reversing Canadians’ goodwill towards immigration.