Canada and the United States: Alternate Realities?

The Editors of The Sociological Quarterly invited the author to reflect on how Canada and the USA may differ, particularly as the American Sociological Association is meeting in Canada in August 2017. This article argues that, while the USA and Canada are in many ways alike, the fundamental ‘social contract’, defined here as the obligation of the state to its citizens, differs in Canada from that in the USA. It also focuses on the emphasis on accommodation of cultural differences and trust in governance institutions that are strongly held dimensions of Canadian society. The analysis uses the perspective of “possessive individualism”, articulated first by Canadian political scientist C. B. MacPherson, as a guide to understand the way that individual rights versus individual responsibilities are often understood differently in the two countries.