America’s role as Canada’s culture-shaper is coming to an end

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In the United States, the life expectancy is 78.4 years. In Canada, it’s 82.2.

That would be a good statistic to insert into a response to America’s Canada-trashers, like Ambassador Pete Hoekstra or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. A line like: “Dear Americans, if you want to live several years longer, move to Canada.”

It’s a telling statistic. In the debate in Carneyland over the need to turn away from the United States and broaden relations with Europe and elsewhere, the focus has been on the imperative of lessening reliance on American trade and defence.

What about culture? Having the U.S. as our foremost culture shaper was once not such a bad thing. But given the deteriorating trajectory of that culture, it’s a model to run from, not to follow. Even without Donald Trump’s threats to Canadian sovereignty, it would be sufficient reason to deeply diversify.

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Mr. Hoekstra and Mr. Lutnick might first like to know about some of the lifestyle differences that existed between the two countries before Mr. Trump came to power: how our greater social safety net and our health care system compares; the multicultural harmony in our system, compared to their enduring racism and immigration conflagration; the gross gap between rich and poor in their country compared to ours, despite their greater per capita wealth. The peace on our streets compared to the ravages brought on by their insane gun culture.

In understanding the significant life-expectancy difference, they might benefit from hearing how their junk-food culture has created one of the worst obesity rates in the world. It would note the toll from drug overdoses, the highest among the world’s developed countries.

Mr. Trump’s hucksters might like to explain how their country has become ruder, cruder, lewder than ever before. Whether they are proud of the vulgarization and the example it sets for youth and other countries like this one. Most leaders have been profane in private conversation, but this class-act President has taken his gutter talk and expletives public.

This is in keeping with the new anti-intellectualism, the push for lower learning, that Mr. Trump has brought to America. Canadians used to look up to the U.S. for its intellectual prowess. What can be said now, given the administration’s attack on scholarliness, on elite universities and on climate science, just for refusing (as they should) to conform to its political agenda?

America produces outstanding entertainment. But the MAGA crowd has turned the arts from a detached civic sphere into a political battleground. One illustration among the many was Mr. Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center, alleging it was politically one-sided and overly woke.

The American media culture has been attacked and degraded. For Mr. Trump there’s too many “low IQ” reporters asking “disgraceful” questions. Political opponents are being targeted by his Justice Department as if run by a fascist-style regime. Social cohesion has frayed. The political culture is as unstable as anyone can remember.

During the MAGA years, the gap between Canadian and American values has expanded like never before. Generally speaking, what happened is that the political fringes took over in the U.S., while in Canada the outliers remained outliers. Our centre held, and so did our values.

All’s not to say that Canada is doing so well in many of the aforementioned areas. Far from it. But there’s been no populist backlash with the dire consequences we see in the great republic.

The U.S. is the same country – I lived there for seven years – that twice elected Barack Obama, whose moderate values align with most Canadians. Those values appealed to about half the American population as well. But the other half of that population, sticking it to elites who for a lot of reasons had it coming, flipped the switch in 2016.

If Mr. Trump’s populism fails, we could see the switch flipped again and a road back to normalcy. But Canadians can’t bank on that.

The government is rethinking economic and defence ties, but it hasn’t done much in terms of cultural protections. In his book Lament for a Literature, former CBC president Richard Stursberg argues that Canada once fought hard to defend cultural industries, but eased off in recent times, resulting in American products flooding the market, which weakened Canadian publishers, broadcasters, and newspapers.

Ottawa’s cultural-protection measures have had a mixed record in the past. Today’s communications environment – the internet has no borders – makes such measures all the more difficult.

But it’s not so bad, because Canadians are turning away from the American way on their own. They don’t need prompting or programs.