Cana­dian Totem

Since no Cana­dian got super mad at me for Things Cana­di­ans Don’t Like Part I, I thought I’d con­tinue with part II. Indeed, there are most than 5 things which annoy Canadians.

Over­all, we are in a pretty good mood right now. Canada took gold medal against the U.S.A in men’s hockey at the Van­cou­ver 2010 Olympics, Sid­ney Crosby is now God, the snow is slowly melt­ing and Spring is com­ing soon. In short, the coun­try is doing fine. But eh, we still have our pet peeves, espe­cially with both the tax sea­son and the con­struc­tion sea­son com­ing soon…

Dis­claimer: this post is to be read with your morning/ after­noon cof­fee. It is not that seri­ous. Note that some Cana­di­ans may actu­ally love some stuffs from this list!

Argu­ing about the Arc­tic: It’s pretty much inhab­ited, it’s cold and it’s way up North. Yet we care. Under inter­na­tional law, no coun­try cur­rently owns the North Pole or the region of the Arc­tic Ocean sur­round­ing it. But the legal sta­tus of the North­west Pas­sage is dis­puted: Canada con­sid­ers it to be part of its inter­nal waters while the U.S.A con­sid­ers them to be an inter­na­tional strait. In 2005, the news that U.S. nuclear sub­marines had allegedly trav­eled unan­nounced through Cana­dian Arc­tic waters spark­ing out­rage in Canada. The Cana­dian gov­ern­ment takes defend­ing Cana­dian sov­er­eignty over the Arc­tic very seri­ously and our lead­ers can be reg­u­larly seen tour­ing the North and eat­ing raw seal.

The Canada Rev­enue Agency: It’s not so much about pay­ing taxes since most Cana­di­ans value their health care sys­tem and social wel­fare. The main issue with the Cana­dian Rev­enue Agency is that peo­ple who came up with income dec­la­ra­tion forms are either sadis­tic, either from another planet. I usu­ally man­age to write my name, my SIN num­ber and my address down before I decide to give up and call for help. One year, I appar­ently made a mis­take some­where and the Canada Rev­enue Agency decided to rec­tify it years later (of course, by ask­ing for money). Full of good­will — it was I think my first time doing taxes in Canada — I wrote to the CRA to ask what the mis­take was. The answer was some­thing like: “accord­ing to sched­ule B654489, page 77654, you declared that you had 0 at BX8657”. Ahah… yeah, of course, obvi­ously (*face palm*). To this day, I’m pretty sure the CRA made the mis­take but I decided the $100 it was ask­ing for were worth pay­ing to avoid the headache.

Some aspects of the health sys­tem: Most Cana­di­ans value their health sys­tem. Indeed, here we don’t have to deal with pri­vate insur­ance com­pa­nies, health care is deliv­ered through a publicly-funded sys­tem which is basi­cally free at the point of use. Yet, like all sys­tems, this one is not per­fect. Cana­di­ans’ biggest pet peeve? Wait­ing lists! Life-threatening con­di­tions are taken cared of imme­di­ately but some non-urgent ser­vices (such are M.R.I) and surg­eries (hip and knee replace­ment, for instance) have long wait­ing lists. Decreas­ing wait times is always a pri­or­ity but this remains a prob­lem. Addi­tion­ally, a lot of Cana­di­ans don’t have a G.P (fam­ily doc­tor) so when­ever they have a seri­ous health prob­lem, they go to the E.R… clog­ging the sys­tem even more.

The bumps on the roads: no, this is not a metaphor for life. I’m talk­ing about the actual bumps and pot­holes that can be found on any Cana­dian roads. After Win­ter, dri­ving con­di­tions can be really bad since thaw and freeze can open holes in the roads. In the Spring, hordes of con­trac­tors are sent to patch up roads. This sig­nals the begin­ning of con­struc­tion sea­son aka morn­ing road rage for the poor dri­vers who have to deal with numer­ous closed streets and detours. Pot­holes oper­a­tions can last until Fall… and then start again the fol­low­ing Spring. Some argue that pot­holes help peo­ple lower their speed. Oth­ers, who have to replace their car sus­pen­sion year after year, bit­terly vote for the worst road in Canada.

Pro­rogu­ing the Par­lia­ment: Mr. Harper, the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter, likes his free time.  When­ever he wants longer hol­i­days, he just shuts down the Par­lia­ment — how con­ve­nient it is to be a PM! But Cana­di­ans got quite pissed off a few weeks ago and I wit­nessed the biggest rally I had ever seen on Par­lia­ment Hill. The signs were hilar­i­ous, but I think Cana­di­ans got the mes­sage across: please, stop shut­ting down Par­lia­ment!

Related arti­cles:

1. Stuffs Cana­di­ans Don’t Like (Part 1)
2. Stuffs Cana­di­ans Like (Part 2)
3. Stuff Cana­di­ans Like (Part 1)
4. 10 Myths About Canada
5. 5 Things to Do When You Land in Canada (That No One Told You About)