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After over an hour spent on the horrors of the United States, Moore switches to the peaceful utopian poppy field and candy cane tolerant and docile society of Canada. He begins by arguing that Canada and the United States are very similar — except that Canada has a generous welfare state, and no culture of fear.
It is quite apparent to anyone that Canada is a fairly decent, pleasant and safe place to live*. However, Moore makes this argument under the comparison of saying that the US is not, and often distorts both sides to make each point. Indeed the largest critics of Moore's Canadian Utopia are average Canadian citizens who have to put up with the Canadian government, something he, as an American millionaire doesn't have to do. I get their e-mails every week, and a lot of Canadian citizens are responsible for pointing me towards the facts I learned on this page.
Most people don't know that Bowling for Columbine was produced by a Canadian company out of Halifax, Nova Scotia called Salter Street Films. This company is awash in Canadian Government funding, so it may or may not be interesting information to you that this anti-American film was produced with Canadian government money. It is no mistake that the film goes out of its way to praise Canada and blame America.
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Guns in Canada
A key Canadian comparison argument of Moore's is that Canada is a country dripping with guns guns guns, and still don't have anywhere near our rate of gun murder. While it's true that Canada does have a lot of guns compared to England or Japan, Canada's per-capita gun ownership rate is about a third of the American level. An impression few would gather from Moore's constant depiction of Canada being such a 'nation of hunters' and his interviews with gun owners where he does not point out that they are not as abundant as the impression he's conveying.
Comparing U.S. gun-death totals with Canada's, Moore offers a U.S. total that includes death by legal intervention (i.e., a violent felon being shot by a police officer) which is totally dishonest to the argument he's making. But what is more important to this distortion is that he omits this same category from the Canadian total to further stack thedeck in his favor. -Not very honest.
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Race in Canada
Moore says there are lots of black people in Canada and to prove it - he shows us!!
Yes, Moore actually shows 3 ethnic minority women walking down the street with the caption 'Toronto Canada' as if to say "SEE! I told you they're here!" Not something that catches one's attention on the first view, the shot displays the juvenile thought process of Michael Moore in a very unintentionally amusing shot.
In fact - this theme is continued in the ensuing scene about Canada. Moore tells us that Canada's black population is the same as the US, but it's not. So how then did he run into so many that we saw on camera there? Well, while it is true that Canada has very few black people, in the province of Ontario (which borders Michigan, where Moore visited for that scene) there are actually high amounts of blacks. Ontario even had a black Lt. Governor at one time. Almost all of Canada's 3% black population lives in the province of Ontario.
The rest of Canada isn't so diverse. In places like British Columbia for example, there are virtually no blacks. In fact, pretty much anywhere outside of the province of Ontario, Canada has barely any significant black population. But this isn't the impression we were given, because Moore only visited ONE part of the country during this part of the movie and judged the entire nation on it.
Think for a second just how ridiculous that is... Michael Moore based his entire assessment of Canada's race by visiting one city of one province... Canada is the second-biggest country in the world, and has a very diverse range of cities. The idea that Moore could accurately racially profile the entire nation of Canada, and its attitudes and culture, by visiting one province and one city makes about as much sense as it would for me to visit one city in New Mexico and draw all my conclusiions about United States society based solely on what I saw there. But then again - he DOES show us that picture of those 3 women in Toronto, so I guess he must be right after all...
Race & Crime
Moore says we're being tricked by a racist media into fearing minorities when there's nothing to be afraid of and also brags about Canada's tiny crime rate. However, blacks and Hispanics, who are involved in well over 50 percent of American homicides (both as victims and as perpetrators) make up about 2.5 percent of the Canadian population. In the United States, each group makes up about one-eighth of the U.S. population.
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Unlocked doors
We see Moore, in Toronto, expressing his amazement that people in this city don't lock their doors. He even goes to a few doors, tries them, and, sure enough, they are not locked. But if Moore wanted to find places where you can leave the door unlocked, he didn't need to leave the U.S. I do that now. David Hardy in his own dissection of BFC says he does as well and did so when he lived in the Washington DC metropolitan area, at a time when it was the homicide capital of the U.S. Hardy says:
"I lived in a suburb where crime was close to unknown, and locking the doors when you were home was just an obstacle to going outside. And, no, it wasn't a fancy gated community populated by millionaires. A Hispanic family lived across the street, a fellow government worker next to me, a Navy vet diagonally across from me."
But the point is that we see here that Toronto is a safe haven. Only problem is that it isn't.
An article in the London Free Press (11/2/02) refers to "Bloody Sunday" in Toronto in which there were, recently, "four frightening fatal shootings.... four shocking murders" in one night. Did I just say shootings?! Yep, these murders were committed with guns.
An article in Canada's National Post (11/28/02) says:
Toronto's recent wave of street murders -- more than 40 since the beginning of 2001 -- debunks the claim that Ottawa's gun registry is making Canadians safer from crime.... Nearly all of the Toronto murders have been committed with handguns. Yet the guns have been subject to registration since 1934. In fact, registration has done nothing to stem the use of handguns in murder: In the past 15 years, the proportion of all firearm murders committed with handguns has nearly doubled in Canada from just over one-third to nearly two-thirds.
Moreover, by all measures, it appears that Canada's handgun registry is a dismal failure in solving crimes. As in the States, cops find guns used in crime when they find the criminals.
Canada's glorious healthcare system
Moore likes it. Should you? Do they? Moore says so. In an interview with Tim Russert on CNBC (10/19/02), Moore says that, unlike in America,
"there's a Canadian ethic that says that if one of us gets sick, we have a collective responsibility to help that person, make sure they have a doctor... they have a society that's not based on a mean-spiritedness or a punishment factor, especially when you become poor."
Larry Pratt on Gunowners.org:
It's this alleged American attitude, he adds, which creates "a climate that allows for an enormous amount of violence."
To, supposedly, show the greatness of Canada's health care system, BFC shows Moore talking to a man, somewhere in Canada, coming out of an emergency room. His face is banged up, stitches in his scalp. Moore asks him: How much were you charged? The man says he had to pay nothing.
Sounds pretty good. Looks pretty good. What are we missing here? Pratt continues with some testimonials:
A little more in-depth look at Canada's health care system by people who know what they are talking about, gives us a slightly different picture than does Moore's wretched movie. A National Public Radio report (12/4/2002) tells us that health care in Canada is "in somewhat of a crisis." Says Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute For Market Studies: "We have created in Canada a health care system which is a public sector monopoly. Monopolies don't care whether you get good service, and they don't care whether they get good value because you don't have any choice as to where you go."
A column by Andrew Coyne in the Halifax Daily News (12/1/02) quotes Roy Romanow as admitting that "Canada spends $100 billion a year on health care, but no one really knows if that money is used effectively." Romanow, the former premier of Saskatchewan, headed a group that recently issued a Royal Commission report on Canada's health care system.
The Calgary Herald (11/29/02) quotes Gerry Nicholls, vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, as saying: "As long as health care is a government monopoly, the problems of long waiting lists, outdated equipment and a shortage of doctors will continue. Canada doesn't need more of the same. We need fresh answers that inject competition and choice into our health care system."
Wrong on poverty
Moore dismisses typical liberal concerns about poverty creating crime, noting that:
"Liberals contend [gun violence is a result of] all the poverty we have here. But the unemployment rate in Canada is twice what we have here."
But by every measure of international comparison however, Canada's poverty rate is significantly lower than that of the U.S., thanks to the generous social insurance programs that he repeatedly praises in the film.
Crime in Canada
In Bowling Michael Moore would have you believe that Canada is a crime free utopia. Larry Pratt from Gunowners.org looks at a shot where Moore asks a policeman in Windsor, Ontario, if he's ever heard of anyone shot in Windsor? Answer: "No." Any murders-by-gun? Answer: "Fifteen to 20 years ago." Says Moore: Therefore, there are "no Canadians shooting other Canadians" in the Windsor area which has about 400,000 people.
But, as Pratt details on his website, once again, this is wrong. The Canadian Press Newswire (3/17/2000), datelined Windsor, Ontario, reports two convictions for murder and one for attempted murder. The weapon used in these murders and attempted murder on December 4, 1997, was "a silver revolver."
But perhaps that's a little nit-picky. Mr. Pratt's research just proves that policeman didn't remember that incident. With all reasonability, Moore's generalization is essentially correct. However, the generalized representation is either very dishonest or very uninformed.
The conversation and comment is about guns, but the argument of the scene is that Canadians aren't killing each other - not that they aren't shooting each other. After all, the dead don't care what killed them. Moore illustrates this point in the unlocked doors sequence and makes it clear when he says the reasons Americans kill each other is because they are pumped with fear from the media and Canadians aren't (what he really means is 'the news' not 'the media' because of course he admits that Canadians watch our movies, listen to our music and play our same video games).
But reality in Canada is a little different than Moore's fictitious portrayal. Indeed There have been other horrible crimes of violence in Windsor besides a 1997 shooting, but Moore doesn't count or mention them, because they did not involve guns - which, as I said, is a very dishonest manipulation since his thesis here is really on violence in general; guns just being an example. In another Canadian Press Newswire story (3/2/2000), also datelined Windsor, Ontario, we're told of a woman who killed her abusive husband by plunging a 7.5 centimeter paring knife into his chest.
Yet another Canadian Press Newswire story (2/2/01), datelined Windsor, Ontario, we're told of a man convicted of second degree murder for torturing and killing a co-worker who he beat, hog-tied and nearly decapitated with a serrated knife - yikes.
The truth is that the nation of Canada indeed has a very high crime rate, and in some places, has some of the worst drug problems in North America. They have real slums, with real poverty and real violence with real dead people in every bit of abundance as the States below them.
Unfortunately for the world, the Canada in Bowling For Columbine simply does not exist.
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