By Bill Gallagher

"We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege."
-- Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau

This week, Barack Obama is taking his first foreign trip as President to Canada, and he should use the occasion to take note of a society that, in many important quality of life measurements, offers an example the United States should strive to achieve.

Obama's brief, half-day visit to Ottawa and meetings with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will focus on the economy, energy, the environment and the future of Canadian forces in Afghanistan. There will be no big speeches, troop review or a state dinner.

Canadian business interests, concerned with protectionism, reflected in the "Buy American" provisions found in the Democrats' stimulus package - now the law of the land - bought full page ads in some U.S. newspapers hailing the importance of trade relations between the two nations.

A trade war with Canada would hurt both nations and Obama should ease those fears and encourage more trade and Canadian investment in the U.S., especially since Canada now has the strongest economy of all the G-7 industrialized nations. Obama cannot let some domestic slogans dictate policies for an entire hemisphere.

Obama would be wise to chat with our Canadian friends about their banking system, ranked as the soundest in the world. The latest survey of the World Economic Forum ranked Canada number one, followed by Sweden, Luxembourg and Australia. America's yahoo banking system, built on greed, criminality and "see no evil" government regulation ranked a dismal 40th place.

While American and European banks went through an era of reckless deregulation of financial institutions, the Canadian system remained responsible with regulators insisting on high capital levels and banks, with their own conservative risk management, avoiding huge investments in U.S. mortgage-backed securities.

The short-sighted and insatiably greedy U.S. bankers bet everything on a housing bubble that burst and now they are begging the same government they insisted must stay out of their business to rescue it. The people - the American taxpayers the bankers screwed - will bail them out to prevent more economic free fall.

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria notes the Canadian wisdom and virtue that Obama, Congress and regulators should ram down the throats of the vile, country club bankers who have done enormous harm to the nation. "Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to1-compared with U.S. banks at 26-1 and European banks at a frightening 61-1," Zakaria wrote. "Partly this reflects Canada's more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking."

Certainly, Canada is feeling economic pain from the world-wide recession but the nation has been somewhat cushioned from the plunge in home prices "down 25% in the United States, but only half as much in Canada," Zakaria reports.

The reasons are found in the Canadian tax code that does not encourage over-consumptions and interest on mortgages is not tax deductible. In spite of that, the percentage of Canadians owning their own homes is 68.4%, slightly higher than Americans.

Canadians also are more modest in their housing needs with the average home of only 2000 sq. feet compared to 2500 sq. feet in the U.S. and as a consequence Canadians spend 19% of their annual household expenditures on their homes while Americans spend 34%.

The Newsweek edition containing the ode on Canadian banking read: "We Are All Socialists Now." Calling something "socialist" is the preferred branding right-wing ranters use to denounce anything the government does that they don't like or that benefits people over corporations.

Canada, with its "socialized medience," is a favorite target of conservative shouting classes. They see a country where common sense reigns and collective resources are harnessed to use for the good of the people - a nation like Canada - as a threat to freedom and the sure road to Marxism.

The shrinking Republican Party has been peddling that nonsense for decades but now more than ever. They are irredeemable and will continue to protect the insurance companies and other corporate interests as long as their campaign coffers are regularly filled.

But Obama and the Democrats better stop trying to cajole those dead enders and wake up and smell the maple syrup. A progressive society works and prospers right on our border.

"The numbers are in. Compared to the U.S., we work less, live longer, enjoy better health and have more sex. And get this: now we're wealthier too." That teaser in MacLean's, the Canadian news magazine, certainly caught my eye.

It was in a special report marking Canada Day last summer entitled: "How Canada Stole the American Dream." The report had a modest tone, with none of the Texas style braggadocio found too often in any kind of national comparisons. Americans so accosted to labeling themselves "the best," brashly do that without even thinking about it, let alone recognizing their insufferable arrogance.

The report was an exploration of cold numbers used to compare Canadians and Americans in many key facets of their lives. The authors scoured through "census reports, polls, surveys, scientific studies, policy papers and consumer databases."

The researchers looked at everything from infant mortality rates and life expectancy to drinking habits, leisure time, travel habits and sexual activities. It's clear Canadians live longer and have more fun doing so.

Obama should limit his time with Prime Minister Harper, a George W. Bush wannabe who will be lucky to hang on to office for another year. Instead, the new American President should find the time to talk to ordinary Canadians to learn and understand how they excel in so many ways. Besides, most Canadians are warm and witty, unlike Harper, a haughty, humorless national aberration.

Obama should consider some of the nuggets mined from Maclean's deposit of telling and entertaining demographic research. The most recent numbers show median household income in Canada is about $44,300 in U.S dollars and $46,300 in the United States.

But Canadians save more than Americans and personal debt there is only $23,460 per person, far less than the whopping $40,250 debt for every American. U.S. national debt is out of control and Social Security and Medicare are under funded. Canadian national debt is a much smaller percentage of their gross domestic product and the national pension fund is healthy.

Americans still crave big trucks and luxury cars and gas guzzling SUVs make up 21% of the U.S. market but in Canada they make up only 11%. Canadians recognize global warming as a reality and are taking measures to do something about it. America still has a significant number of members of Congress who are card-carrying members of the Flat Earth Society and consider climate change a left-wing conspiracy.

"A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe," Pierre Berton, the late Canadian author and journalist once quipped. Pierre knew what he was talking about or aboot. Canadians have sex more often and for longer sessions than Americans. The cold weather seems to inspire intimacy.

Canadians want more romance in their lives and desire to spend more time with their lovers than Americans. Canadians, unburdened with America's Puritan heritage and willing to have frank sex education in public schools, have fewer sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancies than in the U.S.

Canadians drink more than Americans and produce Labatt Blue, one of the finest beers on earth and many other fine brands. Millions of Americans, brain-numbed from mass advertising, still thing Bud Light is actually beer.

Canadians use guns for hunting, have significantly less incarceration than the U.S, a lower crime rate and have no death penalty.

Half of the Canadians have passports, fewer than a third of Americans do. Canadians are three times more likely to travel abroad than Americans. Two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 could not find Iraq on a map. 88% could not locate Afghanistan. Canadians have much more knowledge of the world than Americans.

Canadians get more holidays and vacation time than Americans and spend more time with their families and friends. They (and some places in the U.S) have Tim Horton's coffee, better and less expensive than Starbucks.

Encouraged through government education programs, Canadians eat twice as many fruits and vegetables as Americans and they are much healthier than we are. They have fewer cars and walk more than we do.

Canada's single-payer health system costs $3,326 per capita, while private and public spending in the U.S. is $6,401. Canada spends 9.7% of GDP on health care, versus 15.2% in the U.S. Universal health coverage in Canada is an ideal model for the U.S. but entrenched interests and disinformation programs always slur the Canadian system.

Canadians are thinner than Americans and are less likely to have diseases including heart disease, diabetes, asthma and major depression. And here are the most important health measurements in the Maclean's report: "Canadian men now have life expectancies of 77.8 years, compared to 75.2 in the U.S., while our women are living 82.6 years compared to 80.4 years south of the border. Meanwhile we have only 5.3 infant deaths for every 1,000 births, compared to 6.8 in the States."

I hope President Obama brings back a little of Canada from his trip. Obama is the most liberal and intellectually gifted major North American politician since Canada's Pierre Elliott Trudeau served as Prime Minister.

Trudeau was proud of his liberalism and Obama should remember him as he deals with the horrible mess George W. Bush and the Republicans brought upon our nation. Trudeau's words from 40-years ago ring true today: "Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future."

Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News.

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