The Canadian View of America

http://www.pewglobal.org/2005/06/23/chapter-1-image-of-the-united-states/

 

Above is a link to the Pew Research Centre Website, which focuses on collecting data, statistics and information on a global basis. I found this website particularly useful in gathering a vast opinion from nearly every country particularly the west.  If you get the chance, I would definitely recommend spending some time just reading through some of the pages.
However I found Canada's view to be one that interested me the most, for what was once one of the supposed traditional American allies, it was intriguing to find that only 59% of Canadians have a favourable view of the U.S. Furthermore only 19% of Canadians believe that the U.S. takes Canadian interests into account when conducting its foreign policy. For a country so close to the United States, and one with a very similar culture, it is astounding to see that Canada dislike the Americans so prominently. However many Americans refer to Canada as ‘the back garden of the states’, this derogatory comment is enough to suggest that once again America sees itself ‘superior’ to its Canadian neighbours and thus could have some relation to the 2005 poll that resulted in 53% of Canadians believe that the Americans are ‘rude’. Furthermore, it is also evident that many Canadians feel that America takes Canada and its resources for granted. One of many, but perhaps the most significant growing issue, is that many American’s illegally cross the border to Canada just to exploit their free health care system. This website is very useful in providing statistics, and thus providing a general consensus of Canada’s opinion regarding its American Neighbours. However, its latest statistics were gathered in 2005, and thus provides some limitations when discussing Canada’s CURRENT view of America, which could have differed dramatically since 2005, if it mirrors anything like the changes seen from 2002 to 2005.