The Great Right North?

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I don't agree with his take on it all, but it's funnier than reading rabble.ca.

By Colby Cosh, COLBY COSH is a columnist for Canada's National Post.

ON MONDAY, Canada held its second national election in 18 months, choosing a new prime minister from a resurgent Conservative Party. Americans — or maybe just the zillion or so Canadians living in California — may well be wondering: Is Canada still the progressive, socially liberal neighbor of Democratic dreams and Republican nightmares?

Can our mythic reputation as a cleaner, politer Europe survive incoming Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative regime?

Here's your thumbnail guide:

• The A-Word: Canada currently has no laws in force concerning abortion; you can legally perform one in a shop window, though it's hell on lunchtime pedestrian traffic. When asked whether he intends to challenge this status quo, the new prime minister has often been quoted as saying, "Whoa! Look at the time! Hair appointment!" OK, he hasn't said exactly that, but he has tried hard to avoid the question. When he finally couldn't duck it any longer, he promised no new bills on abortion during his first term. And now, with a minority of seats in the House of Commons, Harper couldn't pass one if he wanted to.

• Nouvelle Domesticity: The late Liberal government legalized same-sex marriage, but the new PM opposes it, if only because of the unbearable American gay-marriage tourists flooding our cities. (Gay Americans, recognized here as an oppressed class, can expect to be greeted with filial embraces. But they're still Americans, so we'll also be fumbling around in vain for the volume knob.)

Harper is committed to holding a parliamentary vote on the issue; if his side wins, "civil unions" will replace "same-sex marriages," but existing gay marriages and legal privileges for homosexual couples would still be respected. Because he's outnumbered in the House by liberals and socialists, he's unlikely to win.

• Other Intimate Matters: In modern Canada, sexual mores are largely determined by the courts, which are dominated by buck-wild, porn-loving Liberal appointees. Even as the election campaign raged, our Supreme Court was ruling that private swingers' clubs pose no appreciable harm to society.

In the U.S., one often hears that the Bill of Rights cannot logically apply to matters the founders never imagined; our Charter of Rights was passed in 1982, when 77% of legislators kept in their desks well-thumbed copies of Oui or Screw magazine. We're in the clear.

• Cheap (in Every Sense of the Word) Healthcare: The Conservatives have raised painful moral questions about a Medicare system in which all Canadian politicians profess undying pride until the day they get cancer and haul themselves across the border to the Mayo Clinic. Nonetheless, under our Constitution, healthcare regulation is handled at the provincial level, not federally. Harper may use his control of tax flows to discourage Liberal suppression of private medicine, but he has pledged to protect the monumental social contract under which every sick Canadian, rich or poor, can be stonewalled, misdiagnosed and exposed to hospital infections in any part of our great land.

• Abundant Pot: The new regime is likely to end the recent drift toward decriminalization of soft drugs, so visitors will still have to consume marijuana with discretion. On the other hand, Liberal proposals to apply special taxes on junk food are also dead. For frequent pot users, it sounds like a wash.

In sum: Canada remains in 2006 largely what it was in 2005 — a country where cigarettes are taxed 300% to 400% but heroin is free to addicts; where gay widowers have an easier time obtaining their pension entitlements than World War II veterans; and where a woman can go topless in public unless she has hate literature tattooed on her breasts.