I have been ruminating much lately on the myriad forms of obliviousness that mark American reactions to Canada. On the one hand, Americans, whether the media, government or individuals, pay little attention to news here, and do not seem to look to Canada as an alternate laboratory of social policy. On the other hand, Americans look benignly on Canada as being somehow their own, and not a foreign country at all.

An example of the first tendency I note in the fact that the current student strikes in Quebec have attracted not the least attention south of the border. Since late February, some 230,000 students in Universities and CEGEPS (2-year college-level institutions) have gone out on strike to protest hikes in tuition and the cutting of $103 million in scholarships. This is a level of student activism not seen in North America since the 1960s. For example, the entire student body at my institution, UQAM, is on strike. Other campuses have been hit by one-day solidarity strikes. In early March, students even occupied the office of Quebec’s Minister of education! (In addition to articles I the GLOBE AND MAIL, there is an excellent summary of the situation by an American observer at McGill University here). On the one hand, I feel like I am caught in a time warp or a surreal world when students explain the havoc that will occur if tuition reaches $2000 CAD per semester. On the other hand, an estimated 70 percent of students rely on grants or loans to pay their tuition, and debt levels, while not astronomical by American private university standards, can be substantial. We Americans should watch this situation closely, as the extraordinary cost of college tuition and the absurd debt burden it is causing out young people is a problem that will have to be dealt with sooner or later.

An example of the other kind of obliviousness is the shameless interference of American right-wing groups in Canada’s internal affairs. It will be remembered that during the 1996 campaign the Republicans raised charges about the Democrats taking money from noncitizens, forcing the implementation of a restrictive policy. In the 2004 election, the British newspaper THE GUARDIAN invited Europeans to write to voters in Ohio to express their feelings about the election. This caused thundering editorials from the conservative press about foreign influence and attempts to sway voters. Now reports come that the Knights of Columbus have invested $80,000 to print out postcards that are to be shipped to Canada in order to oppose the same-sex marriage bill now before Parliament, and that the anti-abortion and anti-Gay group Focus on the Family is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in sponsoring copycat groups in Canada. (I recommend the recent MONTREAL GAZETTE article on the subject,which is accessible here).

The extraordinary lengths to which Religious Right groups will go, and the hypocrisy with which they defend American sovereignty while violating that of their neighbors, make me think that old Patrick Buchanan was right that we have entered a cultural war, but one against Christian fundamentalism, and that that it is a foe which respects no national borders.