Canada is currently undertaking a campaign to lure British people to go and live there.
The campaign keeps telling us about how great it is to live in Canada.
However, one British man -the Daily Mail's Philip Delves Broughton - has lived in Canada before, and he says that it is definitely not as good a place as Britain to live.
For a start, there's the weather in Canada. The British might often complain about their weather, but Britain is actually WARMER than Canada. Canada can sometimes make Britain look like a Carribbean island. Winters in Canada are freezing and drag on for months.
Culturally, of course, Canada doesn't even compare to Britain.
And, despite what many Canadians think, the Canadian economy could be in deep trouble, with only resources such as oil, etc, masking Canada's economic troubles.
No wonder the local beavers bite off their wotsits: Why one man won't be joining the rush to move to Canada
By Philip Delves Broughton
30th June 2008
Daily Mail
The pitch is boringly familiar: Come to Canada! Voted best country to live in by the United Nations four years in a row! Tolerant! Cheap! Great free health care! Lots of space!
That final element should be the giveaway. Despite being larger than its southern neighbour, the United States, it has around one tenth of the population, 33million to America's 300million (its population is also around half that of Britain's, despite Britain being much much smaller).
Despite banging its own drum for decades, calling on the world to gather on its shores, Canada still looks like one of those poor young girls at a trade show, thrusting flyers at disinterested passers-by.
It is the big, earnest, empty restaurant which can't understand why the scrappier joint next door is hopping. People just do not want to go.
'The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slowwitted, toothy rodent known to bite off its own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees.'
The late newspaper columnist, June Callwood, summed up Canada's status compared to its great English-speaking rivals: 'The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slow-witted, toothy rodent known to bite off its own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees.'
And yet, for Britons considering the latest blandishments to move to the Land of the Maple Leaf, the argument tends to go like this: Why carry on hacking away in the UK, paying a monstrous mortgage on a house, battling through traffic and public transport while being taxed within an inch of my life when I could be making the same money, living in a much bigger house, getting lots of fresh air and at least getting good schools and health care for my high taxes?
On the surface, of course, this makes a lot of sense.
But as someone who, in the course of my reporting duties from North America, has visited Canada on more occasions than I care to remember, I should warn you that there are a number of other factors to consider before you wave goodbye to Blighty.
First, the climate makes Britain's look positively Mediterranean. The winters drag on for months, with temperatures well below freezing. The nights are interminable. And in summer you have a choice between extremely humid and dry and windless. You're either sitting in a steam room or a sauna.
In Toronto, an entire subterranean network of passages and shopping malls has been built for its inhabitants to scurry around all winter. London feels like Nassau by comparison. And don't think for one moment that there will be enough diversions indoors to distract from the climate.
The British Museum, which has 13 million objects in its collections. Culturally, Canada does not hold a candle to Britain.
Culturally, Canada does not hold a candle to Britain. Its museums and orchestras are resoundingly second tier, though it may have an edge in country music festivals.
This is, after all, the home of Shania Twain, whose full-throated warblings make Dolly Parton sound sophisticated.
In the dramatic arts, Canada's greatest recent contribution - unless you include Jim Carrey and Pamela Anderson - is the incomprehensible, semi-nude contortion act of Cirque du Soleil. And as for its newspapers, they are lifeless and hobbled by the provincialism which divides the country.
Canadian celebrities: Pamela Anderson and Jim Carrey are proud Canadians... despite becoming U.S. citizens in recent years
Sure, Canada has been through a food revolution similar to Britain's, but still the way to a Canadian's heart is not through fancy Newfoundland oysters, but with ' poutine' - chips smothered with cheese curds and gravy. It makes a chip butty look like the healthy option.
Then there's its politics. However tawdry and disappointing the British politicians may sometimes seem, the Canadian version is no better. Canada now has a conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, but for most of the 20th century it was run by the Left-of-centre Liberal Party which created a culture of big government and high taxes.
As the Canadian poet Irving Layton once said, the Canadian political and intellectual communities' have a tendency to regard ' cowardice as wisdom, philistinism as Olympian serenity and the spitefulness of the weak as moral indignation'.
As for the economy. Britain's prospects may stink at the moment, but the notion of Canada as some Shangri-La is false. Yesterday a report was published saying that Canada was suffering from endemic complacency.
'In almost every major category of socio-economic performance studied, Canada's performance is slipping, causing it to fall behind countries that are its peers, partners and competitors,' said the report issued by The Conference Board of Canada, an independent thinktank.
The economic problems, the report said, were only being concealed by the surging price of the commodities being dug out of Canada's rich soil. When prices fall back to earth, Canada will be in deep trouble.
Move there now to grab one of the jobs sitting vacant, and you may soon be sitting on a fast-deflating bubble.
Canada's hiring pirates are especially keen on carrying off British construction workers and mining specialists, technology experts and most depressingly of all, doctors and nurses.
They believe that the restructuring of the National Health Service will force many British doctors and nurses overseas where their services are actually valued and properly rewarded.
These doctors and nurses should be warned, however, that their work, to quote the America humourist P.J. O'Rourke will mainly involve 'treating hockey injuries and curing sinus infections that come from trying to pronounce French vowels'.
Ah yes, hockey. If you thought British sport was becoming crude and violent, try watching two teams of toothless brutes sliding around on ice and pausing every few minutes to beat the daylights out of each other. It makes the Premiership look like synchronised swimming.
However bad Britain may seem, trust me, moving to Canada is not the answer. Why not try somewhere more appealing. Siberia, for example.
SOME FACTS ABOUT CANADA
Unfortunately for Canadians, income tax in Canada is higher than in Britain: the top rate is 46%, while low earners pay between 24% and 35%. The British get to take home a higher proportion of their wages.
Canadians are the world's biggest eaters of macaroni cheese.
Canada is the 11th most obese nations in the world. The US is the most obese and Britain is third.
Canadian $1 coins are called "loonies".
Quebec is the world's only walled city north of Mexico.
Canada has six time zones, unlike in Britain where everywhere is the same time.
Winters in Canada are much colder than their British counterparts. In Old rCrow, in the Yukon, the temperature once fell to -81.4f.
At 125,000 miles, the Canadian coastline is the world's longest.
Canada has a higher proportion of people born abroad than Britain. Around one in five Canadians were born outside Canada, but just one in 20 Britons were born outside Britain.
Hunters club to death 270,000 seals a year. This has led to condemnation from the EU and the US.
Canada is home to a quarter of the world's fresh water.
Canada's soccer team has qualified only ONCE for the World Cup - in 1986. But then it failed to score and finished last.
Canada invented Trivial Pursuit, the zipper, the BlackBerry and the electron microscope.
dailymail.co.uk
The campaign keeps telling us about how great it is to live in Canada.
However, one British man -the Daily Mail's Philip Delves Broughton - has lived in Canada before, and he says that it is definitely not as good a place as Britain to live.
For a start, there's the weather in Canada. The British might often complain about their weather, but Britain is actually WARMER than Canada. Canada can sometimes make Britain look like a Carribbean island. Winters in Canada are freezing and drag on for months.
Culturally, of course, Canada doesn't even compare to Britain.
And, despite what many Canadians think, the Canadian economy could be in deep trouble, with only resources such as oil, etc, masking Canada's economic troubles.
No wonder the local beavers bite off their wotsits: Why one man won't be joining the rush to move to Canada
By Philip Delves Broughton
30th June 2008
Daily Mail
The pitch is boringly familiar: Come to Canada! Voted best country to live in by the United Nations four years in a row! Tolerant! Cheap! Great free health care! Lots of space!
That final element should be the giveaway. Despite being larger than its southern neighbour, the United States, it has around one tenth of the population, 33million to America's 300million (its population is also around half that of Britain's, despite Britain being much much smaller).
Despite banging its own drum for decades, calling on the world to gather on its shores, Canada still looks like one of those poor young girls at a trade show, thrusting flyers at disinterested passers-by.
It is the big, earnest, empty restaurant which can't understand why the scrappier joint next door is hopping. People just do not want to go.
'The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slowwitted, toothy rodent known to bite off its own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees.'
The late newspaper columnist, June Callwood, summed up Canada's status compared to its great English-speaking rivals: 'The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slow-witted, toothy rodent known to bite off its own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees.'
And yet, for Britons considering the latest blandishments to move to the Land of the Maple Leaf, the argument tends to go like this: Why carry on hacking away in the UK, paying a monstrous mortgage on a house, battling through traffic and public transport while being taxed within an inch of my life when I could be making the same money, living in a much bigger house, getting lots of fresh air and at least getting good schools and health care for my high taxes?
On the surface, of course, this makes a lot of sense.
But as someone who, in the course of my reporting duties from North America, has visited Canada on more occasions than I care to remember, I should warn you that there are a number of other factors to consider before you wave goodbye to Blighty.
First, the climate makes Britain's look positively Mediterranean. The winters drag on for months, with temperatures well below freezing. The nights are interminable. And in summer you have a choice between extremely humid and dry and windless. You're either sitting in a steam room or a sauna.
In Toronto, an entire subterranean network of passages and shopping malls has been built for its inhabitants to scurry around all winter. London feels like Nassau by comparison. And don't think for one moment that there will be enough diversions indoors to distract from the climate.
The British Museum, which has 13 million objects in its collections. Culturally, Canada does not hold a candle to Britain.
Culturally, Canada does not hold a candle to Britain. Its museums and orchestras are resoundingly second tier, though it may have an edge in country music festivals.
This is, after all, the home of Shania Twain, whose full-throated warblings make Dolly Parton sound sophisticated.
In the dramatic arts, Canada's greatest recent contribution - unless you include Jim Carrey and Pamela Anderson - is the incomprehensible, semi-nude contortion act of Cirque du Soleil. And as for its newspapers, they are lifeless and hobbled by the provincialism which divides the country.
Canadian celebrities: Pamela Anderson and Jim Carrey are proud Canadians... despite becoming U.S. citizens in recent years
Sure, Canada has been through a food revolution similar to Britain's, but still the way to a Canadian's heart is not through fancy Newfoundland oysters, but with ' poutine' - chips smothered with cheese curds and gravy. It makes a chip butty look like the healthy option.
Then there's its politics. However tawdry and disappointing the British politicians may sometimes seem, the Canadian version is no better. Canada now has a conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, but for most of the 20th century it was run by the Left-of-centre Liberal Party which created a culture of big government and high taxes.
As the Canadian poet Irving Layton once said, the Canadian political and intellectual communities' have a tendency to regard ' cowardice as wisdom, philistinism as Olympian serenity and the spitefulness of the weak as moral indignation'.
As for the economy. Britain's prospects may stink at the moment, but the notion of Canada as some Shangri-La is false. Yesterday a report was published saying that Canada was suffering from endemic complacency.
'In almost every major category of socio-economic performance studied, Canada's performance is slipping, causing it to fall behind countries that are its peers, partners and competitors,' said the report issued by The Conference Board of Canada, an independent thinktank.
The economic problems, the report said, were only being concealed by the surging price of the commodities being dug out of Canada's rich soil. When prices fall back to earth, Canada will be in deep trouble.
Move there now to grab one of the jobs sitting vacant, and you may soon be sitting on a fast-deflating bubble.
Canada's hiring pirates are especially keen on carrying off British construction workers and mining specialists, technology experts and most depressingly of all, doctors and nurses.
They believe that the restructuring of the National Health Service will force many British doctors and nurses overseas where their services are actually valued and properly rewarded.
These doctors and nurses should be warned, however, that their work, to quote the America humourist P.J. O'Rourke will mainly involve 'treating hockey injuries and curing sinus infections that come from trying to pronounce French vowels'.
Ah yes, hockey. If you thought British sport was becoming crude and violent, try watching two teams of toothless brutes sliding around on ice and pausing every few minutes to beat the daylights out of each other. It makes the Premiership look like synchronised swimming.
However bad Britain may seem, trust me, moving to Canada is not the answer. Why not try somewhere more appealing. Siberia, for example.
SOME FACTS ABOUT CANADA
Unfortunately for Canadians, income tax in Canada is higher than in Britain: the top rate is 46%, while low earners pay between 24% and 35%. The British get to take home a higher proportion of their wages.
Canadians are the world's biggest eaters of macaroni cheese.
Canada is the 11th most obese nations in the world. The US is the most obese and Britain is third.
Canadian $1 coins are called "loonies".
Quebec is the world's only walled city north of Mexico.
Canada has six time zones, unlike in Britain where everywhere is the same time.
Winters in Canada are much colder than their British counterparts. In Old rCrow, in the Yukon, the temperature once fell to -81.4f.
At 125,000 miles, the Canadian coastline is the world's longest.
Canada has a higher proportion of people born abroad than Britain. Around one in five Canadians were born outside Canada, but just one in 20 Britons were born outside Britain.
Hunters club to death 270,000 seals a year. This has led to condemnation from the EU and the US.
Canada is home to a quarter of the world's fresh water.
Canada's soccer team has qualified only ONCE for the World Cup - in 1986. But then it failed to score and finished last.
Canada invented Trivial Pursuit, the zipper, the BlackBerry and the electron microscope.
dailymail.co.uk
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