S4 E16 - Canada Uncovered: A Satirical Look North of the Border

In a satirical rant, the script discusses numerous criticisms and comparisons between the United States and Canada. The speaker refers to America as a bully and unreliable ally, implies strained relations with an ostensibly rebellious Canada, and playfully mocks various aspects of Canadian governance, lifestyle, and culture. The critiques cover topics such as the Canadian government's lack of a formal written constitution, the electoral process, crime rates, the metric system, and socio-economic conditions. Historical events and trivia, including the role of Canada in World War II and the country’s oil exports, are also mentioned. The script finishes with a humorous note, emphasizing that such critiques can be leveled against any country.

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Transcript

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America is a bully. America is an unreliable ally and the great Satan. There's an oldie, in fact. It's the worst country in the world except for all the others, especially Canada. Today on the 10th, man, as promised, it's time to roast one of our allies and we're gonna choose Canada. Canada has been misbehaving lately and needs to be punished because they're supposed to do whatever America says. We love Canada. They're our little brother, but sometimes they act unruly. They want to be, uh, Europe's little bitch instead of our little brother, and we can't have that now. They're basically America's attic up there above us, most of the time forgotten. And, uh, not that we put our trash up there, it's actually the other way around. Canada imports their trash to the US to go to the dump. But putting that aside. Let's look at some of the, uh, things that we could say about Canada that you could say the, the whole point being that you can criticize any country and do it unfairly. And America's often put under the microscope, so we just wanna demonstrate how, with a little bit of familiarity with our neighbors, we can do the same kind of roasting of them that they, that they, that they often do of us, they always do of us. So Canada. As you know, it's just like America, except it's a lot nicer and it's the, it's big. It's the second largest country in the world by land area, and they're strong and independent and they have the RCMP, the Mounties, and people get up about, go about by dog sled or, or, or snowmobile. If they're more modern and they harvest maple syrup and they eat poutine. So nowadays our two governments are in are in conflict. So let's just take a look at their government, actually, the Canadian government is very haphazard. They don't really have a written constitution. They say they do. They think they do, but their constitution is actually a collection of documents that they have agreed to call their constitution, and then a lot of just unwritten customs that they all follow. Well, every country tends to do this to some degree, as we will learn when we start looking at the Constitution. But in Canada it's especially haphazard and risky because none of their rights are really written down. They don't really have rights. They subscribe to the United Nations, the so-called Rights of man, which says, everybody should be happy and you should give your neighbor. Social security and medical care and things like that, but there's nobody that, there's nothing in that that implies that people have any duties, nor any reason or, or any means for you to maintain your rights such as a right to defend yourself. They don't have any of that, and we'll see how that's dangerous. They Congress or their legislature speaking generally, they have two houses that sounds familiar. They have an upper and lower. And of course, Canada's government is modeled after England's, which is their first mistake. But the House of Commons is really the only house they have because the, uh, the Senate, the Senate just rubber stamps everything the House of Commons does and the Senate, they're not even elected. All the senators are appointed by the Governor General. So you don't really effectively have two houses. So how does that sound so far? their head of government is a prime minister. It used to be, uh, Justin Trudeau. But he's gone now. He's gone. And how was he elected? No one really knows. Well, they know how he is elected, but it's not written down. There's no defined method of selecting the Prime Minister of Canada. I find it especially amusing when people criticize our election of our president as not being a direct popular vote. Here's how it goes in, uh, Canada. In Canada, you vote for a member of parliament and whichever political party has the most members, then those guys select a prime minister. So as you know, they just have a new. Prime Minister having been selected. Mr. Kearney, do you know how many votes he got outta the population of Canada? How many people in Canada voted for Mark Carney 132,000 population of 40 million people. 132,000 people picked the Prime Minister of Canada. So when people tell you no other country in the world has the electoral college that we have, that's stupid. This is what they're comparing it to. This is what they're comparing it to. Yes. No one else has the electrical college, or very few have the electrical college that we have. They have something like this. Oh, and then, then don't forget that monarch thing. So the. Party decides who will be the prime minister and makes that suggestion to the king, and then if the king approves it, then he becomes the prime minister. So this is why all the proclamations about objecting to unelected billionaires are really hollow complaints. Now here's everybody's favorite fun fact about Canada. It's that it's huge. There are a few huge countries in the world and we often joke about the Europeans, and I think the Europeans get tired of it, of saying, oh, you don't realize how far it is from one state to the other. And Canada's one of those. In fact, Canada's the, uh, fourth largest country in the world by land area. And uh, yes, you heard that right? I find it very amusing. When they say they're the second largest, I actually heard. Um, and, uh, I guess we'll talk a little bit about why people might know a lot about Canada. I'm go back to my youth, my teen years back before, um, back before people had FM radio in their cars and a little known fact, it used to be FM was horizontally polarized, so you could pick it up pretty well with your TV antenna with those sideways. Elements, but your car antenna didn't until the seventies. Uh, that's when all the rock stations started switching to uh fm. But before that, back in the sixties and sixties and seventies, we listened to AM radio. So over on the, uh, west coast of Michigan where I grew up, the AM radio waves would travel across the water. We would listen to, uh, the stations in Chicago, WLS and WCFL, and uh, uh, DJs, art Roberts, Larry Lujack, uh, JJ Jeffrey, and that was the west side of the state. So over on the east side. So over in southeast Michigan, they would listen to. CKLW and that would be the rock station, the M rock station out of Windsor, Ontario. And that's, there were, there were stations in Detroit too, of course. But, uh, now that rock and roll has gone to fm all those stations have become, have, become, uh, news talk stations as WLS has, and CKLW certainly has. So you can turn on the radio here and listen to CKLW if you're in southeast Michigan. It's, uh, 800 on the AM Band, and I recommend you do so. One of the things you'll hear is they're, uh, giving you the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit, So you can tune into CKLW and listen to News Talk, and they'll talk about the American elections and who they want to win. And you'll find just like here. Uh, just like here, there are people interested in Trump support supporting Trump and people opposed to Trump. And, uh, when we have an election, they'll have a poll on there of who you want to win, kind of election interference. I. Also you can, uh, if you can make the drive from Michigan to Buffalo, you're probably gonna drive over to the Blue Water Bridge across that Sarnia and drive to, uh, Niagara Falls, Ontario, and over. And you can listen to AM radio there. And you can also do what I do, which is, uh, listen to the, listen to the CBCA, and, uh, and you can pick that up on your, on your, uh. Spotify, or even on your, your cable channel, you can watch, you can watch the CBC news and learn a lot about Canada that way, and you'll find that it truly, they are not that much different from us, unlike what the press here would have you believe. But you can also see a lot of their warts and we'll talk about some of them. So let's talk about this. Uh. Second largest country in the world by land area. I heard a member of parliament say that. I don't know what they were debating, but he said, uh, and as a citizen of Canada, the second largest country in the world by land, era. Era, and it's like, hold on there, Pierre. No you're not. Canada is the fourth largest country in the world by land area. It's smaller than Russia. Of course it's smaller than China, it's smaller than the us. It's number four. Russia has 6,300,000 square miles of area. China has 3,600,000. The US has 3,530,000, and Canada has 3,510,000 square miles of land area. It is not much smaller, but it is definitely smaller than the other two than China and the US and much smaller than Russia. Now, if they wanna change that standing, all they have to do is join the US like they've been invited. And uh, of course if Alberta joins the us, like some are talking about, of course it'll put, make the US much bigger than China or Canada. And these numbers are important for actually for another reason.'cause if you look at it, China, the US, and Canada are all virtually the same size and Canadians. If you want to tell everybody that you're the second biggest country in the world by total area because you happen to have a long coast line and uh, all that water also counts, fine, go ahead and do that, but it's not gonna change this fact. Here's the big difference between Canada's land area and the, and the, and the us. China and Russia. Canada has a lot of dirt, but you can't grow crops on any of it. And, uh, Australia, when we come to you, don't laugh'cause you're in the same boat. So if you ever want to be like the US in Canada, uh, you never will be. Canada only has one third, the amount of farmland of other countries like China, India, Russia, and the US Canada's just ahead of Nigeria and Ukraine in terms of land, crop land where you can grow any food and other countries are not even on the same scale as, uh, the US and India. Canada has something called the Canada Shield. It's a, it's a giant rock formation that comes up to the top and there's no top soil on it, and it covers half of Canada. So not only are you not the biggest, but what you do have is not valuable land. Now One of the funniest things about Canada is how they're trying so hard to be Europe's a little tag along. You ought to take a look at the globe, see which side of it you're on, and they're obviously America's little tag along and they ought to just embrace that. In fact, Trump offered them American citizenship, which the people arguing for immigrant rights say is the greatest prize in the world. But Canadians, they were insulted. Uh, well that really wasn't very polite. If you don't want to be an American citizen, just politely decline. You don't have to be insulting about it, but they truly are. America's tag along, not Europe's. Just go into Home Depot, first of all, realize that in Canada they have Home Depots going in Home Depot. You're gonna find'em selling nails in one pound boxes. Turn on your television, you can watch this show. In America, there's a show called Decks and Docks. Well, the show's in Ontario, and they'll drive up to a house, get out their tape measures, and they say, yeah, we're gonna add out, we're gonna put a deck here, uh, 16 by 20. And then they'll go get a load load of plywood, same way as we do in a bunch of two by fours. Uh, none of that's metric. Uh, go on to, uh, go on to Zillow. You can find homes for sale on Zillow and find'em in, uh, over, in, you know, Windsor or Brampton or London, anywhere. And those are all Ontario cities that I happen to know the names of. Go on Zillow and you can find all the houses are advertised in square feet. And all the loss are advertising acres. Well, if they got an acre right and they're all sold in dollars, how come it's dollars not pounds? Well, it's Canadian dollars. Well, sure, but why isn't it Canadian pounds? So I. They, uh, they, they're really big on saying they switched to the metric system. But if you go into their schools, the kids are still drawing lines with a foot ruler. It's also marked out to 30 centimeters. Big deal. It's still a foot ruler. And when they changed the metric system, what they did is they went and took all the signs and changed them. So all the highway signs say kilometers per hour, and everybody knows that. Uh, a hundred is the same as 60, basically, uh, 62. And, uh. So now all the Indians up in, up into the Yukon Northwest Territories. Yeah. I know you want me to call it, none of it, but I will have none of it. And you're still gonna say, well, how far is it, how far it is to a yellow knife or medicine hat? Well, it's uh, it's a four hour drive from here. What's that? In kilometers? Well, who cares? It depends on the traffic. It it's, well, the traffic, the distance does depend on the traffic, but you know what I'm saying. Okay, so I was at, uh, I was at Red Rock Canyon and, uh, I heard somebody making a joke talking about, talking about the metric system, and they were talking about the temperature.'cause the, the guides had told us the te the temperature. And it turns out these people are Canadians, typical Canadian tourists coming down here and being impolite about it. And they're, they made a comment about us being the only ones that weren't on the metric system. And I said, well, what'd you mean by that? And then they, they went, uhoh. Oh. They said, oh no, we've got a Proud American here. It's like, what? No, I just wanna know what you're talking about. And, and she said, well, we were just, we were just talking about how you're the only one, only ones on the metric system. I said, so, oh yeah. So what are you, you're about five two, aren't you? And she says, yeah. I said, well, what is that in deca deca meters? What is that in meters? Well, they give their height, they give their height in, uh, feet in inches. In Canada, they give their weight in pounds. And you go to the deli if some stuff is in grams and some stuff is in, uh, pounds, and you, you buy beer, it's in a 12 ounce, can they call it 320 milliliters? But how is that metric? And you asked them why and they said, well, we just do that because we're close to you and it's easier. Well, that's the exact same reason we do it. Okay. We just do whatever's easier, but everybody else makes an issue of somehow they're more intelligent than we are. I guess. Uh, we won't be seeing as many tourists out at Red Rock Canyon from Canada because they're supposedly not coming here. Well, what's that gonna do to our tourist income? Well, it'll have a limited effect because, uh, for, for one thing, the Canadians, they don't tip. I think a lot of tourists come here and they say, well, this is nice. Everything's so cheap. Everything's all the food's. Very low price in the, in the restaurants. Well, yeah, it's cheap because you didn't, you didn't tip the staff. You cheap skates. The uh, yeah. All the people in Florida, all these service people in Florida, they're not that upset about Canadians not coming down because they don't tip. Canadians like to say that their crime rate is lower than the US. And, you know, uh, that's questionable. But why don't, why do they say the us why is the US the standard for everything? Why don't they say their crime rate is lower than the uk? Uh,'cause it's not, it's not even close. I, they might try saying something like they don't, might try making the claim that they have the lowest crime in the, uh, Western Hemisphere because crime seems to go up going from, uh, uh, east to west. But crime rate also goes up going from, uh, south to north, farther north. You go the lower crime you go. I said, I said it wrong, but the crime goes down going, uh, from south to north. I probably said the other one wrong too. Or the farther you get from the cr, the equator, the less crime you have. And Canada's not next to a third world country like the US is. So they like to, they like to, uh, take advantage of that fact and, um, they're not getting all the. Illegal immigrants because they come to here for some reason, they come to here, an open borders concept stops at our northern border. And that's not even getting into the, the fact that we have a bigger problem of inner city crime. We won't, we will talk about that later on, but we don't wanna make that a racist comment, just we do have a different situation, but here's the most important thing. They're not saying. Yeah, your crime rate might be lower in some cases now, but yours is going the wrong direction. Yours is going the wrong direction. That's why on, you know, the World Happiness Index, Canada just went down, they went down to 18th place from, I forget where they were, ninth or something like that. It's'cause their crime is going down or crime is going up. It's getting worse in America. All crime, all crime statistics are going down and Canada's going up. You go to Canada right now, you're not gonna believe this, so go look it up yourself. Property crime is higher in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Toronto, Ontario than it is in New York City and la All right. Property crime is higher in those Canadian cities than it is in New York or la and. Canada's not exempt from mass murder. We are gonna be approaching this week, the April 18th anniversary of the Nova Scotia mass shootings, just a few years ago, 2020. That shooter. We'll have to feature this on the today's mass shooting. Sadly, there are some, uh, ironically amusing. We will just say ironic there, there are some, there are some ironies. He killed 22 people. All of the dead were either civilians who were unarmed or police who were armed. And when he finally shot himself, the shooter finally killed himself. The police then riddled his dead body with bullets if that this, this is controversial, but the police then. Well, we will talk about that again in the, in the feature following which Justin Trudeau then banned 1,500 different kinds of guns. Now this is because, and this should give you pause. This is because in in Canada and unelected dictator can take away any of your rights whenever he pleases. Alright, now, this was your gun rights. But he can do that to any of your rights. Unelected dictator, Justin Trudeau. Now, put aside your mistaken belief that guns are not a right, that the ability to arm yourself is not a right. Put that aside and take something that is your right and answer the question what's to stop Justin Trudeau or uh, Mark Carney from taking away any of your rights just by decree whenever he wants. It could get worse and it probably will. Uh, a couple years ago, I didn't write down the year a man murdered. A woman bashed, well bludgeoned her, we'll say with a dumbbell, and he was charged with second degree murder, rightly so. Well, probably should have been first degree. Meanwhile, the same year, another man was attacked in his home by Five Armed home invaders. Five armed men attacked him. He managed to shoot one of'em. The man died. He, like the dumbbell killer, was charged with second degree murder. Man in his house being attacked by five men, he and his mother being attacked by five armed men. I, so with those laws, those are reactions to crime, I think. Are they more American or European? Well, in some aspects are European, but in many other aspects they're more American. Just look at the houses they live in. Look at the houses they live in, in the cars they drive. Are they living in itty bitty houses or are they living in great big houses with big yards and central air and storm windows, two stall garage? They're just, they're just, they have this big, wasteful lifestyle, just like the Americans do. What about the cars they drive? Is everybody in Canada driving this tiny car with a four cylinder turbo diesel in it? No. They drive cars just like us. And the, and the irony on crime. Here's what I wonder If Canada's so peaceful, why do their police and their police cars look just like ours? Police are driving around in big SUVs, big, uh, Tahoes, and they're walking around with, uh, the, you know, the same police hat and body armor carrying a, carrying a nine millimeter. Why is that? Why do their police look just like ours? Australia's like that too. Now. We love Canada, but we've had some rough patches with them. In the war of 1812, they took the English side. They conducted a sneak attack on Mackinaw Island. Then they invaded Lower Michigan as well. You know, for some reason, for some reason, the Canadian flag is allowed to fly here now, 150 years ago, we invaded the southern states when they declared their independence, we invaded them yet. Yeah, they're not allowed to fly that flag. Their army battle flag that they had back then on American soil, because they took up arms against the us. That's the phrase they use. Well, they were being invaded so well. Canada invaded us. Yet that flag is allowed to fly. Of course, it's a different flag now. That flag is allowed to fly. Let's talk about something you think you've heard about the booing, the national anthem, the booing at the hockey games. Yeah. I don't mean the national anthem. What I mean is the school bus full of middle schoolers that were going to a youth hockey game in Niagara Falls. Back in 2003, they were mobbed and booed and trash thrown at their school bus because Canadians didn't agree with our government's actions in, uh, Iraq. And, uh, if I got that wrong and a shameless plug for comments, I actually couldn't find a reference on this. And I think it's because they wanted me to pay a subscription to the Buffalo newspaper. But uh, that did happen. So somebody either straightened me out or confirmed this. But yeah, the nice, polite Canadians attacked a bunch of school boys, innocent school boys, going to a hockey game in 2003. So they make a good show of being peaceful, but they're really not. No more so than any, other than any than any other population back in World War ii, the Democrats governing the United States, and especially the state of California, they interned all the Japanese Americans, at least any of who, uh, any who refuse to leave the exclusion zones on along the, along the West coast. And, um, we, we questioned the wisdom of that idea some today, but you have to admit, this was after the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. They had, uh, shelled Los Angeles and they had invaded. They put troops ashore in Alaska and in the Philippines. So as a precaution as due to fear of a Japanese invasion based on that attack Japanese Americans were in interned if they did not leave the exclusion zone. So Canada did the same thing with their Japanese Americans because, uh, no reason. Huh? Canada wasn't invaded. They weren't at Pearl Harbor. They didn't have any possessions overseas, but they're just some racist sobs. I guess. They just had a reason to, they just wanted some excuse to put these poor Japanese Canadians into internment camps. So they did either that or they just automatically do everything the United States does because they're just the United States little brother. Similarly, when you talk about racism. And people will say that j, that Canada's less racist than the United States because, uh, the freed slaves went there. Well, yes, but it was legal. It was the Underground Railroad going through places like Ohio and Michigan that Underground Railroad people were risking their, uh, people in the America were breaking the law. Once they got into Canada. People sheltering the escaped slaves were not breaking any laws, and they did not necessarily welcome them either. But still, at least that part wasn't, uh, they weren't racist as a government, but then going forward to World War ii. Now during World War II in the United States, there was nothing stopping us from training black Americans to be fighter pilot pilots. There was nothing stopping us. There's no legal constraints. And so in America, we formed the Tuskegee Airmen. We trained men to fly fighters and bombers. Now, in Canada, on the other hand. Canada just copied English law and then therefore, in Canada, teaching a black man to fly was illegal. So that's why the stories about Canadians in World War II is how they were only limited to jobs outside of fighting, and that was by law. And there were no Canadian Tuskegee airmen. And we can go on about the mistreatment of the Indians and the Eskimos. We can talk about the murder rate in Saskatchewan, which is very, very high. We can talk about how the medical care, in some cases, is cheap. Now, they don't pay for drugs, they don't pay for ambulances or dental or, or uh, child, uh, or birth control. Um, but what you do get is cheap. Uh, but on the other hand, you get what you pay for. And we can talk about how they eat horse meat and how they hunt seals, and we can talk about how their markets are very protected, just like in Europe, and that's why their GDP per capita is so low, you know, with all the people we have on welfare in the United States, you'd think ours would be low. Canada's is only, is less than two thirds. Canada has less than two thirds of GDP per capita as the United States does. Canada has so many trade regulations. You, there are craft beers you can buy that are made and produced in, in Ontario. You can buy'em here, you gotta buy'em here in Washington, dc but you can't get'em there in, in British Columbia. That's because of all their regulations when Trump offered them to become part of America. One of the things that came out, again, just listen to the CB. C. But, uh, they have a$250 billion per year. No, it's Canada dollar, so no great shakes. Right? Uh, all kidding aside,$250 billion drain on their economy just due to all the over regulations they have between provinces, where like in the us tariffs between provinces are illegal. So they get around that by just doing, creating a lot of regulations, and they learn that from the Europeans. And we can talk about how the immigrant students at American Ivy League schools are such a problem. But it's a problem Canada doesn't have because Canada has special degree mills for their immigrant students. But we don't need to pile on because fact is that Canada is a great country. You could do this kind of assassination to any country and we're just a little tired of having always being done to us so that we are not American. Crap gets kind of old sometimes, but still we've got the greatest respect for Canada. They are still one of our greatest allies. And speaking of World War ii, people don't know this about Canada, how much, how much of the fighting they did, they, in fact, uh, this is just off the cuff. Most of the convoy escorts that took those convoys to England were, were Canadian built ships, and many of them Canadian crude. One of the greatest flying ACEs of World War II was a Canadian, uh, bus. Burling bus. Bus buzz Burling. And of course, we could not have closed out World War II by Obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki if it weren't for all the help we had from Canadian scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. Or without the uranium ore and especially the processing of that ore that was done by Canada. So thanks for helping to drop the first, the only nuclear weapons ever used in history and also Americans. We, Americans are not getting fat as fast as we used to. Thanks to the Canadians having taken rape seed oil. Which was poisonous and making it much less poisonous, but still poisonous and selling it to us as Canadian oil, also known as canola. Speaking of oil, I thought I was gonna quit, but I guess I'm going on. Speaking of oil, you know, Canada is only 12th in carbon emissions, so good job on not contributing to global warming. But do you really count that when Canada is the second greatest oil exporter? Canada is the Saudi Arabia of the Western Hemisphere, and that's all thanks to that dirty Canadian crude, which crosses the US through those pipelines that we built for them across sacred Indian land. I hope the irony and the sarcasm is coming through.'cause again, we could do this to anybody. We're just picking on Canada. And so go out and tell your friends, especially your Canadian friends about the 10th Man Podcast next time you meet them for some poutine across the border. Thank you for listening.