AN OPEN LETTER TO MY AMERICAN ACQUAINTANCES

　
My ‘take-away’ from yesterday’s election is this: old white men will never again decide who will become President of the United States of America!

Exit polls show that the guy who won got more votes from women, young people, visible minorities, gays, lesbians, and people who do not attend church regularly. Those who say the Republicans lost because of Romney’s gaffes are, in my view, ignoring some very important facts. Many people don’t like what the Republicans stand for. Those people came out in droves and stood in line for hours to make their views known through that most important democratic institution, the ballot box.

Up here in the Great White North, we once had a party that called itself the ‘Natural Governing Party’. It was in power for so many years that it believed it could do no wrong. The opposition was split and disorganized, so the Natural Governing Party was able to govern badly and get away with it.

One day, along came a few brave souls who wanted to form a party of the right. But their main problem was that they only appealed to old white men. The Natural Governing Party knew this and took advantage at every turn.

Well, lo and behold, the party of old white men transformed itself. It got rid of the fringe element that pissed off women, young people, visible minorities, gays, lesbians, and people who do not attend church regularly. And, guess what, it’s been in power for quite a while now and, despite a few annoying traits, is not doing that bad a job of governing us through challenging times that have crippled other countries.

We have stable financial institutions, universal medicare, and a well-funded social security system. Interest rates are low, our dollar is strong, and we have lots of natural resources. And, what I’m most proud of, we do a decent job of redistributing income between rich and poor, both at the provincial level and at the individual level.

We’re happy your election is over. But we wish you hadn’t spent so much money needlessly on a campaign which seemed to do nothing to bring about meaningful change.

We know you’re facing a fiscal cliff, and we’re hoping your leaders will put aside their differences and get on with the job of bringing your deficit under control and addressing the critical issues facing your economy. We say this because, in economic terms, when you sneeze, we catch cold!

When it comes to priorities in the months and years to come, we hope you’ll focus on what‘s important. Your young people need to be innovating and producing wealth, not fighting in far-off wars. People cry when someone is killed by an IED; no one cries when a drone is shot down in the middle of nowhere. By the way, the guy you elected is a master at killing those you hate from a distance, and with minimal loss of American lives. He's come out looking a lot smarter than the guy who declared, from the deck of that aircraft carrier, that you’d won the war in Iraq.

And, oh, by the way, if called upon, we’ll be there to fight beside you. But it’ll be on our terms and when we feel it’s just and necessary. No one fights better than a Canadian soldier. Don Cherry says so, and I believe him!

American innovation and know-how have brought me many of the things I value most: cinema, rock and roll, sitcoms and reality shows, world-class institutions like the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Disneyworld, wonderful books, your particular take on freedom of speech, technological advancements and, of course, NASCAR. I want you to succeed because I want more of this.  Americans are, quite simply, the greatest innovators in the world.

Please learn from what happened yesterday.

Good luck, my friends!