Australian advisories

There's an amusing article in most of todays Canadian dailies about Australia's official travel advisory website which warns to "exercise caution" when traveling to Canada. The site lists Canada as more of a risk then Chile, South Korea and Latvia to name a few.

Some of the major dangers in Canada include:

- Risk of terrorist attack
- Petty crime such as pick pocketing and street theft occurs at tourist destinations, hotels and on public transport.
- The province of British Columbia in western Canada is in an active earthquake zone
- Alberta and British Columbia are also subject to avalanches. Tornadoes can occur in some areas of Canada between May and September.
- Bush and forest fires can occur any time in Canada. (Fires in the winter?)

I checked Estonia out on their site. Eesti is consider one step safer than Canada, some of the dangers include:
- You should avoid demonstrations and large public gatherings as they may turn violent.
- Driving in Estonia can be dangerous due to local driving practices, poorly maintained roads and vehicles, and inadequate road lighting.
- When you are in Estonia, be aware that local laws and penalties, including ones that appear harsh by Australian standards, do apply to you.

Canada sure sounds like a scary place. :)

Estonian Identity Act

The topic of ethnic relations has been on the radar in Estonia for the past 6 months since the riots. Quebec languages laws have often been compared and contrasted with Eesti so I was amused when I read an article in the paper today about the purposed "Quebec Identity Act" which the Parti Québécois is purposing in Quebec.

Essentially the law would create a "Quebec citizenship" which you can get if you speak French and know enough about Quebec culture and history (I'm assuming through some sort of test?). Without Quebec citizenship you would not be able to for the National Assembly, municipal council or school posts, and from contributing to political parties (even Federal Parties) or petitioning the assembly. The article gives a nice example: Just imagine. A born-in-Canada computer analyst from Toronto who moves to Montreal for work could apply for "Quebec citizenship" only if he or she speaks French and knows Quebec culture..

Even if this proposal were somehow to become law (which it won't) there's no way it would survive a legal challenge but it's always interesting to see that Estonia's ethnic integration issues aren't unique and exists even very close to home.

The Loonie

Lot's of talk around here about how the Canadian Dollar (ie. the loonie) is stronger than the US Dollar for the first time a long time. Stephan Colbert put in his two cents (or about 3 cents Canadian).

The Tragic Hip

I wanted to give some credit to Canada's much maligned health care system. I've had nagging hip pain for 3 years for which I've seen a lot of doctors and done physiotherapy but it still hasn't gone away so last week I had an appointment with a specialist who ordered a whole bunch of test. In the past week I've had an MRI, a EMG (electromyography) and some other test which name I don't know and can't pronounce. It looks like I'm close to a final diagnosis which is nice but what is amazing is the speed that everything got done, you hear horror stories about wait times in Canada for tests and medical care but my experience wasn't that bad. I know that a lot of people do have problems but I still feel compelled to give credit where credit is due.

Oh, and total cost to me for all these doctors and test was $80 which is covered by my work. Not bad. :)

Global influence!?

The Economist ran an interesting survey to see who has the most positive influence on the world and surprisingly Canada came in first place. It doesn't really explain much about the survey so I'm not totally sure what the questions(s) were or who they asked so it's hard to really comment much on this but I wonder how much people really know about Canada? Often people see Canada as a semi-socialist, cold wilderness paradise but I can't imagine that much is actually known about the country.

No wonder people put Canadian flags on their bags when the travel. :)

Oh Canada

Liisa and I are off to the nations capital, Ottawa, this weekend for a trip. Liisa hasn't been there before and it's been about 5 or 6 years since I last visited. It's about a 5 hour drive depending on the road conditions so hopefully there won't be any snow on the way. Ottawa is a strange capital, similar to Washington D.C., it's a bit of a made up city in the sense that it was selected as the capital rather than organically becoming the capital. If I remember my history correctly Kingston was the original choice for capital but Ottawa was chosen for it's location between Upper and Lower Canada at the time.

There are quite a few good sites to see: museums, parliament, galleries, the market, etc. Depending on the weather there we may get a chance to skate the Rideau canal which is the world's longest skating rink.

Growing up

Statscan released their latest census results yesterday which had some interesting tidbits in it. Canada's population grew 5.4% from 2001 to 2006 which was the highest growth rate in the G8 and now puts our population at 31.6 million. What was interesting was that 2/3 of the growth was fulled by immigrants and it's predicted that by 2030 all the population growth will come from immigrants. Most of the growth is occurring around big cities which isn't much of a surprise, not to many immigrants can afford 400k condos in the city which seems to be the only thing up for sale.

Another interesting stat was that the city of Barrie grew 19.2% to almost 180k people. No wonder the cottage (which is 15kms from Barrie) no longer feels like the great outdoors like it used to.

Canada is often held as an example of a country that is built on immigrants and can successfully absorb so many without a lot of the political and ethnic tensions that others experience. Sure we have our problem, PHD's driving cabs isn't good, but a lot of countries (cough, cough, Estonia) could learn a couple of lessons about growing their countries with immigrants.