Open Letter, or, a Clueless Canuck Seeks Answers

Now Playing: Friendly Fires – Lovesick

For all that the United States of America is Canada’s closest trading partner, our cultural brother-from-another-mother and the South to our True North Strong And Free, there are aspects to American Culture that I find unfathomable.

First of all, what is up with the one-dollar bills? This may seem a trivial point to many, but one of the things that really feels ‘alien’ about the US – when visiting from Canada –is the one-dollar bills. Why hasn’t there been a movement en masse to Sacagawea dollars?

More seriously, I have trouble understanding the mindset of people who do not think that universal healthcare is a right – who believe that adopting universal healthcare will turn America into a third-world country like Canada. Gee, is that why we’ve been calling Scarborough Scarlem all these years?

Why isn’t healthcare seen as a fundamental essential that everyone has the right to, like education? You’ll educate a child at government expense, but someone with a life-threatening illness has to shift for themselves? Alright, I’m unclear on the exact working of the US system – if you’re uninsured, are you treated at all? Or do you get treatment and then get slapped with a giant bill afterwards – and if you had the money to pay that, wouldn’t you have gotten insurance in the first place?

Answer me this - why defend the right to bear arms, but not the right to universal healthcare?

It is almost fashionable in Canada to complain about our healthcare services – the waitlist to see a specialist can run more than a month – but atleast we’ll never be in the position of not being able to afford cancer care.