Two views: many observers have noted that it's hard to find two neighbouring countries more alike than Canada and the United States. That may be so at first glance. Look a little closer and marked differences show up.

Michael Adams, who has been studying opinions in both Canada and the U.S. for a couple of decades, says our values actually are going in different directions. Mr. Adams is President of Environics, a public opinion polling company. He says polls show that Canadians believe the opposite; that our values are becoming more American.

In his 2003 book, Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, Mr. Adams says Canadians have become more liberal and Americans more conservative.

He adds that American public-opinion is out of step with trends in most of the developed world. In Canada and Europe the liberal political centre grew in the 1990s; in the United States it has all but vanished. Words that aptly describe the Canadian world-view are: partnerships, cooperation, consensus, community. Whereas the American world-view is characterized by: competition, exceptionalism, isolation, individualism.

Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson writes that: "Canada sees the world, as modest-sized states do, in terms of influence; the U.S. now sees the world almost exclusively in terms of power."

Religious Divide

More than two in five Americans say they go to church weekly; only one in five Canadians does. In the U.S., 30 percent of the people say they believe the words of the Christian Bible to be literally true; only 15 percent of Canadians have this belief. And, while church attendance is rising south of the border, it's declining in Canada.

Springing from those deeper religious convictions comes a stronger attachment to the statement that "The father of the family must be master in his own house." That sentiment appeals to twice as many Americans (more than 50 percent) as Canadians (less than 20 percent). Again, this belief in the supremacy, of Dad is rising in the U.S., and declining in Canada.

Mr. Adams also says "While Americans are more likely to believe that the only legitimate family configuration is two parents of the opposite sex and children, Canadians are more open and receptive to diverse family arrangements: single parents and common-law and same-sex partnerships, with or without children."

Of course, the gay rights issue divides Canadians as well. It became a hot-button issue in the 2004 federal election. Those on the left were very supportive of full equality for gays and lesbians, while those on the political right were opposed.

The North and the South

In the United States there is also a North/South split. People in the northern states tend to have more liberal values than those in the southern states. So, Andrew Kohut, of the Washington-based Pew Research Center, says it's a mistake to accept generalities covering the whole of America. For example, religious intensity and church attendance is on the rise in the South and Southwest while it's on the decline in the Northeast and the West Coast. There is a much greater tolerance for same-sex unions in New England than there is in, say Texas. Mr. Kohut says that on many topics the views of people in northern states are strikingly similar to those of Canadians.

A large majority of Canadians (70 percent in recent polls) are in favour of decriminalizing possession of small quantities of marijuana. There are places in the U.S., California for example, where possession of small amounts of weed is informally tolerated. But, the average preacher in Gatlinburg, Tennessee is going to promise the holder of a small stash of pot a swift trip to Hell in a handcart. And, those are the -kind of folks who voted for George W. Bush. So, when the issue came up in 2003, the New York Times reported that: "The Bush administration has cautioned Canada that Washington would be forced to increase time-consuming border searches if marijuana possession was decriminalized. American officials say decriminalization would increase supplies and trafficking."

Public Versus Private Health Care

The contrast between the two nations is most marked in social programs.

Canadians have a publicly funded health-care system to which every citizen has access. For most medically necessary treatments in Canada no fees are charged; the cost is covered by taxes.

In the United States, the delivery of health care is, for the most part, in the hands of for-profit private enterprise. Most Americans have private health insurance, often paid for by their employers. If they get sick and require medical treatment the insurance company pays the hills.

Both systems have problems.

In Canada, there are not enough nurses, doctors, and other health-care professionals. The result is that waiting times for diagnosis and treatment are longer than they ought to be.

In the United States, treatment is swift but the costs have gone through the roof. A 2003 study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine says the per person cost of U.S. health care is $1,059, while in Canada it's $307. (The huge difference is mostly due to the added administrative costs of processing payment through scores of insurance companies).

By putting health care on an ability-to-pay basis about 44 million Americans are left out in the cold. These are the people who are not covered through their work and cannot afford to pay the premiums for private insurance. For them, there is a patchwork of health services, but only for emergencies.

Canadians are fiercely loyal to their publicly funded system. It is always at the top of the list of things that Canadians cite as distinguishing them from Americans and that they want to hold on to. And, why not? Where it really counts, Canadians have a life expectancy that is 2.2 years longer than that of Americans.

Social Assistance

With welfare there is less of a gap between Canadian and American values. In the U.S. being on welfare is often seen as the result of personal failure, of not making the most of the opportunities available. This is a view held by many Canadians also, but north of the border there is more of a recognition that a lot of people on welfare are there through no fault of their own.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton introduced strict welfare reforms. The stated goal was to kick-start the lives of people who had become lazy and trapped in a cycle of welfare dependency. Some of those whose welfare was cut off did pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Others have simply "disappeared."

Canada's approach to welfare is more in the nature of providing support to the disadvantaged. It is likened to systems used in Europe where a child born into poverty is six times more likely to escape that poverty during their lifetime than a similar child in America.

Pollster Michael Adams says that "... The American dream of moving from rags to riches is more of a reality and less of a dream in Canada than in the United States."

Add up the pluses, subtract the minuses and where are we? A 2003 Global Insight report gives us an answer. The overwhelming majority (89 percent) of Canadians believe their country offers a better quality of life than the United States.

The crucial factor seems to be that most Canadians accept the need for taxation as a way of redistributing income. Canada's lowest 10 percent of income earners have 57 percent more disposable income than their U.S. counterparts. The gap narrows the further up the income ladder you go.

Other factors, such as public health care and lower crime rates, also add to Canadians' contentment with life at home. Canada's deeper and broader social programs than those of the U.S. are generally popular, except among those with high incomes.

As the wealthy pay most towards these programs and reap few of the benefits, it's not surprising that they don't like them very much. At this end of the scale, Americans enjoy an advantage over Canadians; the top 10 percent of earners have 37 percent more disposable income than their Canadian counterparts. This helps to explain to so-called brain drain; some of Canada's most highly educated and best paid citizens head for the U.S.

But, the majority of Canadians don't define themselves or their society in narrow economic terms. In 2000, Ekos Research, a polling company, posed the question: "If you were prime minister for a day and had to pick an overall national goal for Canada to achieve by the year 2010, which of the following would you chose?" From the list of options, Canadians' favourite goals were:

* Best quality of life in the world;

* Best health care system;

* Lowest incidence of child poverty;

* Safest communities in the world.

The least popular of the choices offered was "Highest standard of living of industrialized nations."

FACT FILE

In 1976, the Canadian Parliament abolished the death penalty; in the same year, a four-year halt to executions ended in the U.S. and, today, 38 out of 50 states have the death penalty.

Website

Fire and Ice Survey--http://fireandice. environics. net/surveys/fireandice/ main/fireandice.asp? surveyID=1

FACT FILE

According to The Economist's 2004 World in Figures, Canada has two cities among the world's top dozen for highest quality of life (Vancouver: 2nd, Toronto: 12th); the U.S. has no cities in the top twelve.

FACT FILE

In the late 1990s, Canada introduced the very expensive and controversial gun registry; at the same time, Los Angeles brought in a law that prohibits residents from buying more than one gun a month.

FACT FILE

In a 2003 survey Ekos, only eight percent of Canadians said they would like their country to become more like the United States. In the same poll, 40 percent said they would like Canada to be less like the U.S.

Canadian comedian Rick Mercer said that living next to the United States in 2004 is a bit like "being in a pen with a wounded bull."

WOMENS' RIGHTS

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms became law in Canada in 1982. The Charter gave women the constitutional right to complete equality with men. Nineteen eighty-two was also the year in which the most recent major attempt to have equal rights for women written into the U.S. Constitution failed to receive the backing of the 38 states necessary for it to become law.

TAKEN FOR GRANTED 

Almost a third of Americans think Canada is another state. Many don't know that Canada is their biggest trading partner; they believe either Japan or China is. A majority of Americans say that the United Kingdom is their best ally. However, Canadians remain stubbornly loyal to the U.S. Sixty percent of Canadians name the U.S. as their closest friend and ally; only 18 percent of Americans say the same thing about Canada. These findings are from a 2002 Ipsos-Reid poll.

TWO NATIONS DIVIDED BY A SINGLE LANGUAGE

More and more bits of American English are making their way across the border. Canadian pronunciation of schedule (shed-jule) is giving way to the American version (sked-jule). Only older Canadians still refer to a couch as a chesterfield, but all Canadians say left-tenant and never lootenant. Linguists say Americans are also picking some Canadianisms and shortening the sound of the letter "a" in some words. "Caught," for example is more likely to be heard in the U.S. as "cot" rather than the drawling "caaa-it." Future generations will detect almost no language differences in mainstream speech as the two versions of English merge. However, there will still be strong regional accents; a Newfoundlander will never sound like someone from Alabama.