9 Questions Canada Has for You, America

2. And speaking of ‘humour’…­­­­

What is with the American phobia over using the letter ‘u’ in the English language? Humor, color, flavor, neighbor, labor? Clearly, that’s just not right…

3. What is it with the love affair for drive-through everything?

Banks, funeral parlors, strip-clubs, prayer booths, liquor stores, law firms, doughnut shops, wedding chapels… almost everything you have to leave your homes to acquire seems to be available from your car window. What’s with the antipathy for getting a little exercise by parking the car and walking through a store to make your purchases?

4. How in the hell have you Americans survived your health care system?

In Canada, we have a socialized medical system that the majority of us access on a fairly regular basis, and which doesn’t break the bank every time we step through the door of a doctor’s office. What happens if you’re an unlucky schmuck who doesn’t have private health care coverage and get a nasty infected splinter in your big toe and you can’t afford the trip to the doctor’s office and a course of antibiotics? Yank it out and do a healing ceremony? Pee on it like Chandler did to Monica when she was stung by a jellyfish in ‘Friends’? Is the fact that you’ve managed to stay alive in spite of your health care system proof that God really IS an American?

5. How come you have New York and we have Toronto?

Toronto is cosmopolitan. Toronto is artsy. Toronto is multicultural. Toronto is Canada’s financial heartland. Toronto has Italians who know how to make real pizza. Toronto even has a beach you can swim on, for God’s sake. And yet, whoever heard of anyone boasting that they’re off to Toronto for their vacation? But nooooo… it’s all ‘We’ve booked our flights, and we’re going to New York!! New YAWKKK!!!’ How is that fair?

6. How come Americans get all the good Netflix shows?

Canadians pay outrageously high fees for bandwidth, and yet basically have to cheat on their own computers just to get a decent Netflix line up. How is it that, in spite of the fact that many American series and movies are actually filmed in Canada, Americans get vastly more selection from their Netflix accounts, compared with the old sitcom reruns and endless Teletubby cartoons that Canadians are supposed to put up with?

7. How is it possible?

How is it possible that a country like the US can have cities like San Francisco on one coast and Provincetown on the other, both of which are shining beacons of liberality and tolerance for the broad range of sexual orientations, and yet can be a home to certain states where someone can be refused service or other everyday civil liberties if they’re even suspected of being gay? Really?

8. When are you going to open up Trader Joe’s franchises in Canada?

Because those long drives across the border to stock up on amazingly drinkable $10 bottles of wine and cocoa dusted truffles with toffee bits are getting downright tedious.

9. What’s up with that water crisis in California?

Apparently, Californians are now watering their crops and drinking stuff out of their taps that’s been sitting in aquifers for 20,000 years because all the other water is gone. What’s your plan, California? Because the technology to mine water from asteroids is a few years off and, although we’re polite and all, and would love to share if we could, we kinda need to hang on to our own water supply to freeze for our igloos.