Talk:Canada

Some talking is on Talk:History of Canada.

Longest undefended border

IIRC Canada actually has "the world's longest undefended border," rather than "is often described as the world's longest undefended border"

Or is there a contending border I'm unaware of? --Krupo 08:21, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think it probably says often described as because if you claim it is then you have to be clear on exactly what you mean. It might depend on (i) whether one requires a border between exactly two countries or if you can sum undefended contiguous borders between one country and various neighbours or (ii) the extent to which one includes sea borders (or Great Lakes?!) and (iii) how undefended is undefended (unmilitarised, completely unpatrolled with absolutely free movement, or what?). One possible competitor to check would be the border between Chile and Argentina/Bolivia (or just Argentina if you require exactly two countries). Cambyses 14:58, 1 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks for the clarification, that makes sense. I've grown up with the "undefended border" tidbit accepted as common sense, so the alternative ways of looking at the issue are appreciated. :) Perhaps a link to Canada-US border would be in order?

--Krupo 06:10, 2 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Canada has vast deposits of natural gas on the East Coast and in the three western provinces, and has the largest proven oil reserves in the world.

Canada does not have the largest proven oil reserves in the world, not even by a long shot. According to The Institute of Petroleum, Canada ranks 15th. Perhaps the author meant natural gas, but even then I think Russia ranks ahead of Canada.

I changed this article to follow the guidelines set out at WikiProject Countries. However, I removed a large amount of (good) text that was just too detailed for this page; it should be moved to more appropriate locations (mostly History, and Québec, maybe a separate article on Québecois separatism?). I left the Canadian culture section open, ditto for the holidays table, hoping you Canadians (there's several of you would fix that for me). Please go ahead! Jeronimo

OH, and could somebody resize the coat of arms to a 125 pixel width? My imaging program's expired and I'm too lazy to get another one...sorry.

re: "In the second half of the 20th century, the French-speaking province of Quebec has sought independence, but two referenda have been defeated, albeit marginally in the last case (50.6% was against independence)"

...shouldn't it say "factions within the province" have sought independence or something like that? - stewacide 19:49 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)

Absolutely it should....Elliot

...Given the obfuscation practiced by the separatists and the wording of the referendum (which did not mention independence), its hard to say what Quebeckers thought they were voting for in the referendum. The soft separatists probably thought that they were voting for a better deal for Quebec within Confedration. A vote for independence was more how the rest of Canada and the hard-core separatists saw the vote. I'm not sure how to rephrase the statement. Edmilne 20:23, Nov 24, 2003 (UTC)

The Statute of Westminster is a pretty obscure piece of British legislation. Though it is taught for all of five seconds in Canadain high schools, nobody really pays it any notice and it is not commemerated by anybody except maybe wistfully by the Monarchist Club. The British North America Act(1867) is usually the date given for the founding of Canada as an independant country. And an arguement could be made for the Constitution Act(1982)which finally removed the right for appeal to the British Privy Council for criminal cases. Even now the Head of State appointed by the Queen of England can disolve Parliament and force an election. The First Nations still have treaties with the British Crown because of treaties entered into before July 1st 1867. When the Canadain government fails in its treaty responsibilities Natives still press their case in Westminster. I don't think that it has a stronger claim than 1867. Two16 06:47 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

So Canada, "despite its immense size ... is mostly harmless"? What's that supposed to mean? I'm not sure if it's a joke, or perhaps was written by someone whose English is deficient who meant something that is unclear from the sentence? Michael Hardy 01:22 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Whatever the explanation, I don't think it's very meaningful. I've removed it. --Camembert

It's a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference. Are you people illiterate or something? ;) Not appropriate here, certainly. --Brion 01:29 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

I knew that really. You must think I'm illiterate or something ;) --Camembert

Contrary to popular net opinion, not having read THHGTTG is not a sign of illiteracy... -- Tarquin

Thanks, Brion, for enlightening us illiterates. I used to listen to the radio show occasionally, but I haven't read the book, and had no idea that Wikipedia was mentioned in it. 131.183.81.100 00:51 Jan 21, 2003 (UTC)

Does anyone know of a place to get a better map of Canada than the one on this page? I've looked at gc.ca, and not found much. We need something that shows provincial boundaries and is up to date to include Nunavut. matt 01:02 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

I hate to be a downer, but I don't think we can use the map. Check the copyright notice on the site at http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/notice_e.html . One is allowed to use the map, for non-commercial purposes only, but I don't believe that is compatible with the GFDL. Someone could sell a copy of the Wikipedia on CD-ROM (of course, it would still be under the GFDL and free-as-in-freedom and all those good things). What's everyone's take on this? I think the Canadian rules differ (unfortunately) from the American ones, which seem to place most materials into the public domain. Dze27

I've just written into the the apropriate email alias to request permission to use the image given Wikipedia policy. If anyone can find a similar quality map in the public domain, I say replace it...but the previous map was sorely lacking. matt 04:31 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

OK. Hopefully they'll say yes. I work at a different Canadian government department but I'm not sure how much leeway there is (we have the same policy). Hopefully they'll let us use it since it's colorful and up-to-date. The .gif does identify NRC as the source department, and we're not representing it as official. We can't really guarantee that all "Users exercise due diligence in ensuring the accuracy of the materials reproduced" though... Dze27

Don't sweat, folks. According to Wikipedia:Copyright:

Wikipedia articles may include images, sounds, or other similar material from external sources with different copyright terms, and which is used with permission or under "fair use" doctrine. In this case, the material will be identified as from an external source (on the image description page, history page, or talk page as appropriate) and copyright holders of that material retain their rights and you must comply with the separate copyright terms for that material.

- Montréalais

"Eastern Canada is mountainous"? Did something get removed in editing here?Jfitzg

The deleter (217.81.32.129) of Canada came from Germany via Deutsche Telekom

http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois?form_type=simple&full_query_string=&searchtext=217.81.32.129+

Though the term is rarely used nowadays, Canada's legal name continues to be "The Dominion of Canada." It is established as such in the constitution, and the title has never been formally revoked. user:J.J.

This is true. However, the Canadian government, Canadian citizens and other reference works don't use that name. Thus, I'd say that the official-but-unused "Dominion of Canada" should be mentioned in the article, but not used as a heading for the table. -- Stephen Gilbert 18:26 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

I checked Peter Hogg's standard work Constitutional Law in Canada and he states in sec. 5.1(e) that the use of Dominion of Canada was chipped away by the Federal government in the 1930s. If you check any laws or official Canadian web sites it is called Canada, not Dominion of Canada -- that is officially an archaic use and inaccurate. As far as the Constitution is concerned it mentions the work Dominion but nowhere is the name Dominion of Canada used in the Constitution, the law that created the independent country of Canada is called "The Canada Act" (U.K.) (1982), not "The Dominion of Canada Act" thus the British Parliament put the final nail in the Dominion name when the Constitution was patriated. -- Alex756 08:35 May 10, 2003 (UTC)

I've had this argument before. As Alex correctly states, D.o.C. used to be the official name, but is not any more. The full, complete name of Canada is Canada. - Montréalais

According to William Thorsell in today's Globe we are still the Dominion of Canada. I looked it up in the 1982 constitution and he is right, there is no change of name. (And the name of the 'Canada Act' doesn't mean anything Canada's official name after 1867 wasn't British North America) SimonP 18:49 30 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There is a lot of blather about this, some of it even on the Government of Canada website.

Stephen Harper, not particularly bright, even claimed the official name is Federal State of the Dominion of Canada [1].

The actual text of the British North America Act actually says very clearly what is the case. The "Name" is "Canada." The term "Dominion" refers to the type of country it is (i.e. a euphemism for kingdom)

3. It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, to declare by Proclamation that, on and after the passing of this Act, the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick shall form and be One Dominion under the Name of Canada; and on and after that Day those Three Provinces shall form and be One Dominion under that Name accordingly.(4) 

4. Unless it is otherwise expressed or implied, the Name Canada shall be taken to mean Canada as constituted under this Act.(5)

The reason why we have this problem is not just that the wording was confusing. Legally speaking, the name was never Dominion of Canada. Simply, the monarchists amongst us have pushed us to use that term for such a long time. Think of such background parts of the constitution as somehow not law, but really just a document reflecting political positions, not absolutes. In this case, we are simply tossing around the monarchist vs. republic debate in an edge case, the "name" of the country; just like the stupid question about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin was an edge case to prove or disprove the effective power of god. Eventually we dropped the usage because it was impolitic; the monarchists are losing slowly.

But if you want to be legal, the name of the country is "Canada." If you want to be accurate, explain how and why the history of the country changed what it called itself. It's a good reflection of who we are. The title "Dominion" was even chosen by the British over our objections so as to not offend the Americans with our loyalism. -- SunirShah (64.229.25.227 )

"Prime Minister, who is the leader of the political party that holds the most seats in the House of Commons"

As I undertand it, the PM is the person who has the confidence of the Commones to run the government. In practice, this is the leader of the largest party but doesn't have to be. A combination of smaller parties or a brakdown in party discipline could produce a PM who is not the leader of the largest party. User: edmilne 23:47 May 21, 2003

Juno Beach Centre

Why is Juno Beach Centre include in this article? What's its national importance? There are thousands of other memorial sites in Canada. I don't object to it staying, but what do others think? --Menchi 00:57 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I agree it doesn't realy fit. That and the Vimmy Ridge memorial should be linked to from the Military of Canada article. - stewacide

I've moved it to Calvados, after five months. --Menchi 06:02, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Water amount

Moved from article:

Canada has one-half of the world's fresh water.

A (Canadian) friend of mine pointed this sentence out to me. It's completely inaccurate. "Common knowledge" is that Canada has one-fifth of the world's fresh water supply, actual knowledge is that it's half THAT, and possibly even as low as ~6%. -- nknight 21:08 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Both guesstimations are close.

20% in all; 7% renewable.

(Source: Environment Canada's fact # 17.)

--Menchi 21:51 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

HTML code artifact

In both IE6 & Mozilla, it shows <TD>Statutory. right above the Holiday table, but I can't find what's wrong in the table. --Menchi 22:34 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Corrected. One of > sign before a "Statutory" is absent in the html. Wshun

Greenland is further north

I think Greenland is the northernmost country in North America, not Canada. P3d0 21:03, 29 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Greenland is not a country, but a self-governing territory of Denmark. -- Stephen Gilbert

And I don't think Greenland is considered part of North America. - Efghij 22:46, 30 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well, you're free to think that, but a Google search shows that some consider it part of North America. As for the "country" thing, perhaps you're right, but it seems significant to me that the northernmost point in North America is not in Canada, but in Greenland. P3d0 12:51, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oh, here is a map.

Well some consider it part of North America, some consider it part of Europe, some consider it part of the "North Atlantic", etc. The northernmost point on the actual contenent (as oppossed to any arbitrarily diffined "region") is Boothia Peninsula in Canada. - Efghij 16:43, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

You mean on the mainland I suppose. That would be like excluding Iceland when determining the westernmost country in Europe. I suppose it depends on exactly what claim you want to make.

For the record, Boothia Peninsula in Canada is at 71 degrees 58 minutes north latitude, just edging out Point Barrow in Alaska at 71 degrees 18 minutes. Cape Columbia in Canada is at 83 degrees 7 minutes, while Cape Morris Jesup in Greenland is at 83 degrees 39 minutes. So while Canada may be the northernmost country in North America (at least until Greenland's 2005 referendum), Greenland arguably contains North America's northernmost point. P3d0 13:19, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If you're so hung up about this, I guess there's no harm in having a footnote saying something like: "Greenland, an overseas territory (or whatever) of Denmark sometimes considered part of North America, reaches farther north than Canada's northernmost point". - Efghij 23:25, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, when you put it that way, it does sound kind of silly I guess. Plus, the fact that the current text is technically correct, really makes this moot. So I give up. Thanks for humouring me. :-) P3d0 16:06, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The name "Canada" in different languages no longer appears at the bottom of the page. Anyone know how to fix this? Edmilne 11:05, Nov 16, 2003 (UTC)

Yeah they do. --Menchi 11:07, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I see them now. Since they appear after the menu at the bottom of the page, they do not show when you do a preview of an edited page. So I assumed that this also applied to the main page. Edmilne 02:56, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

I was reading this page and thinking that the official date of independence should be changed to April 17th, 1982, as that was the day the Queen came to Canada to give her consent to the Canada Act 1982. SD6-Agent 03:07, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Re: my last edit

The current formatting is the standard prescribed as Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries. If we are to change it here, we must also change it on the country template and everywhere. The new formatting used, however, is problematic for countries with mixed presidential-parliamentary systems where there is no clear-cut head of state and head of government. There's nothing wrong with the current format. --Jiang 18:54, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Discussion continued at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries#Continued from Talk:Canada.

2nd or 3rd largest

The article claims that Canada has the second largest land area, after Russia. I thought China was ahead of Canada. The CIA world factbook lists China's land area as 9,326,410 km^2 and Canada's as 9,093,507 km^2. Is the wiki page incorrect? Based on the CIA's numbers Canada would be second in TOTAL area, but third in LAND area.

Oil reserves in Canada

There are 311 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Alberta oil sands compared to 240 billion barrels in Saudi Arabia. Canada as a whole has 366 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The total amount of oil reserves in Alberta alone,which is oil that is recoverable and that which is not currntly economically recoverable is in the range of 1.5 to 2.5 trillion barrels.

Juno Beach Centre

The Juno Beach Centre is more than just a memorial,its a museam, its located in Normandy,very close to the beach where Canadian soldiers landed on D-Day.Its national importance is in displaying the role that Canadas military played during world war 2.

Canadas size

The total area of Canada is 2nd in the world. The ranking of 3rd comes when the area of the inland water is not included,although that is usually included in the area of a nation.

I don't think so. According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States has a land size of 9,158,960 sq km, making Canada 4th after subtracting inland water.

Four provinces joined in Confederation.

In the history article,it says that at the time of confederation,three provinces joined,but it was actually four that joined on July 1,1867: New Brunswick,Nova Scotia,Ontario,Quebec.

The article is correct: three provinces agreed to Confederation: (1) Canada, (2) Nova Scotia, and (3) New Bruswick. On the same day as Confederation, the Province of Canada was divided into two provinces, Ontario and Quebec, so on and after that date there were four provinces in the Dominion of Canada.--Indefatigable 19:48, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Besides it was three colonies that joined together and became four provinces, as stated in the article. GreatWhiteNortherner 20:11, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

Canada was independent before 1982. The repatriation of the constitution while important, was really a formality. As well the Statute of Westminister of 1931 put on paper what was already reality,that Canada made its own desicions,as shown in Canadas refusal to send troops for the planned capture of Turkish ports in the 1920,s. As well Canada signed the Versailles treaty ending ww1 for itself and held its own seat in the League of Nations. The sacrifice made by Canada during ww1 pushed Canada into more true independence than any piece of paper. Even during ww1,Field Marshall Haig would ask General Currie to take on an attack rather than just order him as he would a British general,and Currie would reply to him in a manner that a British officer would not dare to. Even Australia refused to allow the British to execute any of its soldiers.

The northernmost point on the North American mainland is Point Zenith,on the Boothia Peninsula at 72 degrees 1 minute.

French in Manitoba..

The article would seem to infer that French in Manitoba is restricted to a section (not a town) of Winnipeg called St. Boniface. While it is true that St. Boniface is the "French Quarter" of Winnipeg, I can personally assure you that French language and culture is alive and well outside of Winnipeg. Southern Manitoba is full of French communities, as a cursory examination of town and R.M. names will reveal. Between French and German, English is considered a secondary language for a large percentage of rural Manitoba. Statistics taken over the years, by various social, commercial, and political concerns have placed the French-speaking (and bi-lingual?) population of Manitoba at anywhere from 15% to 25% of the population. These numbers (unfortunately) do not often reflect the Métis population, who also speak a dialect of French, which today has been homogenized into French in any case.

In summary, this article would gain accuracy simply replacing "the town of Saint Boniface, Manitoba" with "southern Manitoba."

--phrawzty 22:54, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Canadians knowing about U.S. currency

It appears that there are about 5/6 times as many Canadian Wikipedians as American, although only about 1/9 times as many general Canadians as Americans. Of all Canadians of no particular kind, what percentage currently knows a lot about U.S. currency?? Wikipedia now talks a lot about U.S. currency that it certainly sounds like a good way to get Canadians to know about U.S. currency. In fact, it is now easier than it used to be because many articles now have a Media Wiki for U.S. currency articles at Wikipedia.

In contrast "Canada dollar" isn't a valid Wikipedia article and there are no Wikipedia articles that link there.

66.32.251.152 23:55, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like there are already articles for both Canadian dollar and Loonie, both linked from the current article. I'm not quite understanding what you are asking about in regards to Canadians knowing about U.S. currency. U.S. coins and paper money are fairly common in many parts of Canada due to tourism -- here in Vancouver many stores and hotels have alternate cash register drawers for accepting payment directly in U.S. currency -- and it is common to find the occasional bit of U.S. small change mixed in with collections of Canadian coins. Does any of this help, or have I misunderstood your comments? Saucepan 03:49, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I think the problem was that 66.32.251.152 searched for Canada dollar and was surprised to find nothing. The official name of our currency is the Canadian dollar. --Caliper 04:27, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever you call it, an article for the Canadian twenty dollar bill has now been created and linked. Do you think RickK might soon create an article titled Canada and U.S. currency compared?? 66.245.12.82 23:25, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Number of Canadians vs Population of Canada

Regarding the statement in the third paragraph that Canada "has a low population density, there being just 32 million Canadians", is this figure the population of Canada, or is it the number of Canadians? I suspect that many more foreigners live in Canada (like me!) than Canadians live abroad, in which case there could be a substantial difference between the two figures. Even if there is not much numerical difference, it is not strictly accurate to conflate the two groups.... Cambyses 01:36, 19 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I expect the number was taken from Statistics Canada census data. Do they ask not-Canadian residents to complete the census? Do they ask Canadian non-residents to complete the census? My impression has always been that it's the number of Canadians living in Canada. --Caliper 04:11, 19 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Messages

Some time in the past few days, someone removed the following from the bottom of the article:

While I can't say the plethera of tables particularly improved the article, the purpose of having a message for something like NATO is to put it on the country pages of all the members of NATO. Basically, I'd rather have them there than not. Is there any particular reason these were removed? --Caliper 20:40, 20 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I removed them because they are ugly, useless, take up a great deal of space, and are not in keeping with the consesus reached at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries. - SimonP 21:29, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

fair enough, but I wonder about the change from Confederation to Federation in the article... considering there's a unique entry on this, Canadian_Confederation, I'll change it to point to that... Krupo 05:44, 23 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Visible minorities

I removed this offensive, troll-smelling rant from the Demographics section:

It is worth noting in this connection that patriotism and nationalism exists all throughout the world. One particularly egregious example is the Canadian press [2], which often purports that Canada is more racially diverse than the United States. Many Canadians believe this, when in fact, 87% of Canada is white [3][4]. Many Canadians are also unaware that slavery existed in Canada's history and that discrimination still exists.

POV: a diversity fluff-piece on a City of Toronto web page in a section called "quality_of_life" is a "particularly egregious" example of nationalism in the Canadian press? Please be serious.
Factually incorrect: Canadians pride themselves on multiculturalism (often contrasted with the melting pot approach used most famously by the US), not raw numerical diversity. Although the error of conflating the two is understandable -- Canadian schoolchildren are taught about multiculturalism while the author of the above screed fairly obviously was not -- it is still wrong.
Misleading: to push his agenda, the author of the above is wilfuly misusing the statscan statistics. Some facts:
- The rural population is predominantly white, but the major metropolitan areas are highly mixed [5]
- In 2001, 94% of immigrants who arrived during the 1990s were living in Canada?s census metropolitan areas, compared with 64% of the total population who lived in these areas. (from same link)
- proportion of foreign-born Canadians was 18.4% in 2001, second only to Australia
- "If [the current] trend continues, one in five Canadians will be a visible minority in 2016, up from 13 per cent in 2001. In some places, minorities are already the majority: 59 per cent in Richmond, B.C. and 56 per cent in Markham, Ont."[6]
- Aboriginals are undercounted, although the impact on the overall visible minority count is unknown (and probably relatively minor)[7]
Asserts facts not in evidence: where is there proof that Canadians are unaware that small scale slavery once existed in Canada?
Asserts facts not in evidence: where is there proof for the astonishing claim that Canadians are unaware that discrimination exists?
Irrelevant: Slavery is utterly irrelevant to this overview article (and especially the demographics section). When this was happening in the 1700s there was global slave trading, particularly throughout the British empire, and the extent of slavery in Canada was neither significant nor particularly noteworthy (it still deserves mention in the detailed Canadian History article, of course).
Has nothing to do with Canada: the author of the above is pretty transparently trying to push some agenda in his or her home country. Take it to Usenet or Free Republic or wherever, and leave other countries encyclopedia articles alone. Canada doesn't exist to be your political football.
The link to Black Canadian is a highly non-obvious choice of example to use for discrimination in Canada. Would I be right in guessing that the author is from a country where anti-Black racism is endemic? In any case, I'd fully support an expanded article about Discrimination in Canada, with coverage of issues such as the ongoing outrageous treatment of aboriginal Canadians by some municipal police departments, the disproportionate rate of incarceration of aboriginal Canadians, the late 80s controversy about Sikh RCMP officers being permitted to wear turbans instead of standard headgear, the early 90s concerns about Asian gangs in the BC lower mainland, and similar matters.

Saucepan 07:14, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Good edits, well done. Krupo 14:11, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)

Heavy reliance on natural resources is incorrect

In the first section of the Canada page, the statement "Its economy relies heavily on its abundance of natural resources" is a (perhaps all too common) misconception. The exact proportion depends on how one adds up national accounts, but Statistics Canada's page on Gross domestic product at basic prices by industry at Statistics Canada GDP tablesuggests that the value of the output of primary industries (Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting + Mining and oil and gas extraction) comprises only about 5.75% of total GDP. The manufacturing sector alone is more than three times the size of the primary industries segment. A more accurate statement would be something like "Its economy is widely diversified. The largest sector is services (comprising segments such as finance & insurance and retail trade); the manufacturing, construction and resource sectors are also important." --papageno 22:50, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

How about the change to: "Its economy traditionally relied heavily on its abundance of natural resources, although the modern Canadian economy has become widely diversified." ? Feel free to add more details, I felt this was nice and quick. :) Krupo 02:33, Jun 6, 2004 (UTC)

Canadian Demographics

Perhaps this is my ignorance as a non-Canadian, but under the demographics section it mentions that 39.2% of the population is "Canadian" ... but what does this mean exactly? Also, the total amount is well over 100% ... I assume that people could answer more than one category? I do not know if anyone besides me finds this confusing, but a breakdown similar to the one in the "Ethnic Groups" section of the Demographics of Canada article is much easier to understand. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Aren't all Canadians "Canadian"? CES 04:39, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think StatsCan goes by self-identification, meaning that 39,2% of the population identified themselves as being Canadian rather than some other name. - Montréalais

The choice of "Canadian" for the origin of Canadian citizens first appeared in the 2001 population census. It is somewhat controversial. I do not know what is the official reason for this change according to Statistics Canada. It would need to be researched on their website. -- Mathieugp 14:44, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There was a major edit that took out the wikilinks to categories and other languages. Should this have been done? I think not but....Trevor macinnis 02:22, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No, that edit should not have been made. I have undone the damage. —No-One Jones 03:18, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

canada's contributions to teh world

i added this section and it was taken out by simonp. is it really an 'unneeded' section? where should this go?

trying to stay out of trouble :-)

eyal katz

I think that the reason that it was taken out was that it looks more like boasting than a sober list of Canadian achievements. Thus it breaks our NPOV policy. If I were you I would try to rewrite it in such a way that it doesn't sound quite so much like an advert. That way people are less likely to object to it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 05:23, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia Eyal, your contributions are very much valued. I do, however, have a number of objections to this section:

All Wikipedia country articles follow a set format, and no other country has a contributions section.
It is almost impossiblefor such a list to be neutral. For instance the British liked our help in the Boer War, most of the rest of the world didn't.
Similarly statements such as us being a "peaceful multicultural nation, with less racial tension than many other places" needs some supporting evidence, otherwise it is just opinion.
This information is already gathered in more complete form elsewhere, e.g. List_of_Canadians#Inventors.

- SimonP 05:27, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

I've removed the addition of "Innovations" and "Being a Living Example for", aside from being heavily biased, most of the information is incorrect or missing (i.e. a very vague statement about "a founder of eBay"?). Also, what makes an 'innovation' Canadian? For example, Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland and most of his work was done in the US. Does a few years spent in Canada and a transatlantic phone call make him or his work 'Canadian'..?Tremblay 17:08, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Melting pot

For example, Canadians see their country as a mosaic of unique immigrant cultures, a large picture made up of many distinct pieces, rather than an American-style melting-pot.

I have heard comments before similar to the above sentence from several Canadians, but personally as an American the word "melting pot" stirs up images of 19th-century campaigns to "re-educate" Native Americans and other minorities and seems as outdated as phrases like the "white man's burden" and "Manifest Destiny". In school, the phrase I learned to describe our multiculturalism is a "salad bowl". The "American-style melting-pot" statement seems POV and an unnecessary jab at the US. We can both be salads, you know =) CES 05:49, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is a term I'd also like to see someone expand upon. I grew up in rural Canada hearing about the American melting pot, while we were multicultural or diverse. I now live in Toronto, the most multicultural city in the world by many standards and I see enclaves of ethnicity everywhere (I live in a neighourhood of Greeks and Asians). But how is this different from, say, New York City? TimothyPilgrim 13:12, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)

I have a feeling there's no difference between what you see in Toronto and New York City. Although the New Yorkers would probably consider themselves to be the "most multicultural city in the world". =) I think in general this type of issue is raised by misunderstandings on both sides ... there seems to be the perception in Canada that America is a melting pot that forces minorities/immigrants to assimilate into some kind of mainstream culture, but on the other side I think many Americans would be surprised to know that there even are minorities in Canada, let alone that Canada claims to be the more "multicultural" of the two countries. I'm going to remove the word American-style from the article, although I think the whole sentence should be replaced by an example of a more recognized difference between the two countries, or a discussion on why Canada is a salad and America a pot (personally I think anyone would be hard pressed to find a large difference between the two countries). It seems like the goal of both governments is the same: to foster diversity and encourage multiculturalism, but at the same time have a collective identity as "Canadian" or "American". The word "multicultural" focuses on the former part of the plan and "melting pot" on the latter, but in practice it seems like the result is the same. CES 01:33, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Some clarification issues: the opening sentence describes Canada as "a decentralized federation". In terms of decentralized, is it refering to a decentralized federal government? Another note: The Liberal party is centre-left, not centrist. - anon

That's pretty POV. Except on certain social issues, I don't see the Liberals as left-wing at all. - Montréalais 17:18, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

GDP Check

The article List of countries by GDP is wrong, completely wrong. I live in Mexico (and I'm Mexican) and according to the official stats, the GDP of Mexico is 1/1000th (it'ld be great to have that rank and GDP :-P) of the shown there, so the ranking is wrong. The same happens to Spain, and many others, so it would be great to re-make the ranks and the list itself, or remove the rank of every country. Re-making probably taking the GDP from the Human Development Report 2004 of United Nations for the Development Programme UNDP, which features the GDP of 2002 for most of the countries with official numbers. --phil_websurfer 06:55, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah, the pride

Canada is the greatest country. Ever.

Very un-Canadian to brag the way the anon person did, but amusing nevertheless. Krupo 02:59, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

If only we could fit this into the article as attributed POV. . . :) —No-One Jones ^m 04:29, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Largest Canadian city

I have read various websites referring to Timmins, Ontario as the largest city in Canada although both Canada and Ontario's pages refer to Toronto, Ontario as such. One such source was an Ontario government website that made this claim. I would change the referrences to largest cities on both pages but I wouldn't want conflict because I think many people just assume Toronto is. SD6-Agent 15:14, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I had never even heard of Timmins until seeing your note. A quick peek at its page here suggests it is relatively small population-wise at under 50,000 people, but that its land area is quite large (perhaps due to some quirk of the regions geography, or the way the city was incorporated). When people speak of the "largest city" I always assumed that they were speaking of population, but I'd be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. Saucepan 15:22, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Largest city," unmodified, is almost always understood to refer to population. Toronto is Canada's most populous city. Timmins is (or was) Canada's largest municipality in land area, though I seem to recall hearing it's Greater Sudbury, Ontario now. - Montréalais 15:44, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Needs a heavy hand

Geez, i just returned from a nice visit to your country and went here to read up on it. This article isn't up to par. I made a few obvious minor edits, and then realized it needs a bold and more knowing (native) hand to whack all the (good) info into shape, starting with the meandering introductory paragraph.Sfahey 21:49, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What exactly do you find lacking? I am Canadian and see nothing not up to par --Will2k 22:22, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

As Sfahey noted, the introduction could be worked over. Compare to the United States entry, for example. Having said that, the major sections are all 'hit' in the entry; how much more can you add before spilling over into the sub-articles, eh? So aside from fleshing out the intro with a bit more, it looks alright. The population factoid at the end is such a little orphan, I'll tidy that up... Krupo 02:05, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

As a result, the country has mixed results on the world stage: its artists achieve world renown, while the under-funded military is stretched thin.

This seems rather POV to me. Also, is the bit about the economy supposed to suggest that our economy is larger or smaller than might be expected? It's unclear. - Montréalais 04:28, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)