This summer, while visiting Pacific Rim National Park, a pair of German tourists stopped me to ask about parking. I had a parking permit, but they didn't, and they wanted to know where to get one. All around us were signs indicating fines for failing to display a parking pass. Curious to them -- but not to me -- there were no instructions on where to get one, and all I could tell them was where I got mine, some 20 minutes away.
"That's Canada," I told them. "We make rules, make it really hard to follow the rules, and then fine you for breaking them."
"We have lots of rules in Germany, too," one of them replied. Perhaps he thought I being facetious or a little too hard on my own country.
"That's not what I mean," I replied. "I'm not talking about the number of rules, but the objective of rules. It's different here. You probably think the rules here relate, in some way, to their overt purpose."
I let them know I was indeed familiar with the rule-bound cultures of northern Europe, that I briefly visited Germany and Sweden, and years ago had been an exchange student in Denmark.
Northern Europeans, I observed, are big on rules about lots of things: about how and where to ride your bike (in separated lanes at the side of every road), drink beer (anywhere you like), walk around naked (90 per cent of the beaches), urinate (in washrooms, which are abundant in public places), camp on private property (as long as the owners can't see you), and take ownership of a suite (just by living in it continuously for a certain number of years). In other words, rules over there are all about regulating freedoms and making it easy for people to get along.
The German tourists agreed that, yes, I had given a fair depiction of the purpose for rules in their part of the world, and they expressed interest in learning how Canadians see things differently.
In Canada, I explained, the whole point of rules is to slip people up because, for us, rules don't exist to regulate freedoms, but to create opportunities for punishment -- or at least to collect fines, since we believe in user fees rather than taxation.
The Germans found this very interesting, and asked me to provide specific examples in order to assist them in not making faux pas during the remainder of their journey. Fortunately I was able to oblige their request with ease, and have decided to share here -- for a general audience -- some of what I related.
How we set people up for punishment
When addressing the uninitiated, alcohol is a good starting point in helping to explain Canada's entrapment-like regulatory schemes: alcohol is legal, apparently, but if you go to a park and open a beer, you'll soon find the place surrounded by police cars.
To be sure, our alcohol regulations aren't unique. Similar regulations can be found in a number of countries (mostly other former British Colonies, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a few other places). So if alcohol regulations in isolation don't convey our emphasis on punishment, it is perhaps more convincing to examine a particularly Canadian alcohol related historical event: the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot.
The riot followed a brief period which members of the public were encouraged by the local government to have open-air parties in celebration of a sport in which the players beat on one another. To facilitate the party, liquor stores and bars were kept open, and party-goers began to emulate the sports players -- and that's when the real party, so to speak, got started. After the rioting was completed, upstanding citizens were provided numerous opportunities to feign outrage that rules of public order had been broken. They involved themselves in "community building" exercises through which volunteers collected evidence to have the offenders punished in court trials, called up offenders' employers to have them fired, and stood on street corners displaying photos of the offenders in order to shame them and their families -- among other things.
That was the whole point of the Stanley Cup Parties-cum-Riots, and we can see in many other places, too, how Canadians' regulatory attitudes focus mainly on entrapment and/or creating a venue for sanctimonious outrage. Here are some more examples:
- It's legal for drivers to block traffic in highway passing lanes, but you can get a ticket for reckless driving if you try to get around them.
- It's also legal to sell sex, but illegal to buy it.
- You can get on Vancouver's Skytrain system without purchasing a ticket, but there are fines if you're caught.
- There are hardly any public toilets (and we have the world's only passenger rail service with no toilets), but numerous media outlets willing to help publicize outrage at the depraved behavior of those pissing on the streets.
- We invite people to immigrate and start families here, and then send one of the parents "home" when a government official finds out they once had a leftish political opinion.
- We cut back our prisoners' wages so severely they can't afford even shampoo or a telephone call home, and feign astonishment if they're not socially well adjusted upon release.
- On the diplomatic front, we're the most vocal international supporter of a certain country that locks people of a certain ethnicity in an outdoor prison and bombs them if they complain about it.
Where do we go from here?
Once we understand Canadians' profound interest in punishment, the next step might be to ask the question why we have developed such a cultural tendency. This question is important, however, only if we think there might be some interest in changing the tendency, which clearly there is not. So I'll skip it, and head straight to a few observations and predictions from where we are now, starting with our choice in political leaders.
Canadian politicians show an almost universal tendency toward the "punishment principle," which is a sign, to be sure, of a healthy democracy reflecting the will of the people. If you've been paying attention you'll know our Conservative majority government strongly favours punishment, and the same can be said for our Liberals. Here in B.C. we have a Liberal premier who screamed to have Stanley Cup rioters tried on TV, and her federal counterpart used to be a nightclub bouncer. That is, he used to work at a place where people were encouraged to get drunk, and then manhandled if they acted drunk. In any case, a man with strong Canadian values.
The culture of punishment is clearly alive and well in Canada, and I can only see it getting stronger. Perhaps the next step will be to create even more rules that are even more difficult to follow, with punishments even more severe. The majority of Canadians now support the death penalty, so why not make it so? I'm sure many of our lawmakers would be happy to perform executions if such events could be used to bolster their street cred. They might even sell ringside tickets as fundraisers for charity, once government gets out of the social welfare business for good.
In discussing Canadian culture with our German visitors I tried not to brag about our special inclinations, or exceptionalism, if you will. (That's mainly because I think it's un-Canadian to brag.) However, I do think it would be good for us to acknowledge, in an overt way, our lust for inflicting punishment. Perhaps one day we could establish a National Punishment Day on which all kinds of sadism can be demonstrated and celebrated. Right now it might seem brazen to propose such an event, and you might even suspect I'm being facetious. I assure you, however, that I'm not. Our Canadian values are obvious, and one day you may find that, if anything, my predictions here have been rather modest.
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