TORONTO, Canada — Usually, you hear stories of people fleeing to America, not the other way around.
But the jittery state of the U.S. economy is driving an increasing number of its citizens to seek better prospects north of the border.
Americans are the latest economic refugees, and they’re heading to Canada.
As he prepares to campaign for re-election, U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to make a speech Thursday night that calls for immediate stimulus spending to create jobs and improve infrastructure.
But those reforms will be difficult to make. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, have resisted any efforts to boost the economy through additional spending.
As life in the U.S. worsens, prospects in Canada seem all the brighter.
Canadian officials say the number of Americans applying for temporary work visas doubled between 2008 and 2010.
Immigration lawyers in Toronto and the border city of Windsor, right across from job-starved Detroit, say they’re seeing a dramatic growth in clients seeking to come to Canada to work, or even as permanent residents.
So, is this a reversal of fortunes on an historic scale? Has Canada become “el Norte”?
Well, not quite. The number of U.S. citizens working in Canada is, at least by global migration standards, relatively small with some 30,000 at the beginning of last year.
Still, Americans make up the second-largest group of temporary workers in Canada, behind only Filipinos, most of whom work as nannies.
Canada was one of the few to escape the 2008 financial meltdown relatively unscathed, a turn of events largely attributed to Ottawa’s long-standing refusal to deregulate the banking sector.
“I’m looking for a quiet, calm, sane, civilized society to start the next phase of my life,” said Michael, an out-of-work, white-collar professional from Michigan who is seeking a temporary visa to come to Canada.
Like several others interviewed for this article, he did not want his full name used for fear of drawing unwanted scrutiny to his application.
Though he describes himself as both patriotic and a conservative, Michael says he’s lost faith in U.S. leadership — “on both sides of the aisle” — for failing to stem the excesses that led to the collapse of Wall Street, and for the current political brinkmanship over the debt ceiling.
“I’m looking for a country where the first role of the government is to protect its citizens,” he said. “It looks to me like all [of Canada's] three major political parties seem to have proven that they are much more responsible than our leadership.”
Workers like Michael are drawn to Canada’s lower unemployment rate — 7 percent in July compared to 9.1 in the U.S. — and sustained economic strength in major centers such as Toronto, which alone attracts an estimated 100,000 new arrivals a year.
These include not only people with temporary work visas, or those seeking permanent residency, but also increasing numbers of university students, drawn by highly-ranked Canadian schools where tuition, even at 3 or 4 times the rates for Canadians, is still a fraction of what it costs to attend many colleges in the U.S.
John Cameron’s mother lost her senior position at a bank branch in Maine in 2009 at the same time he was trying to finalize his choices for his freshman year in college.
He had his eye on American universities such as Loyola, University of Maryland, Columbia and Fordham.
His father, thinking about the finances, suggested the University of Toronto. Cameron was reluctant, but now he’s a Canadian convert.
“I really love it,” he said. “[It's] hands-down one of the best schools in North America.”
Toronto has also become home to a couple in their mid-30s from New York City who both lost their full-time jobs in Manhattan in the wake of the 2008 crash. They now live in Canada on temporary visas.
“It’s important for us to live in a place with a lot of diversity and a good cultural sector,” said the woman, who asked that their names be withheld to avoid compromising their residency status in Canada. She says she was surprised at how quickly and efficiently they were able to qualify for Ontario health care.
Some Canadians who had considered America their adopted home are going back.
Al Brickman recently gave up on the United States after 30 years of running a Canadian-owned construction-supply business in Atlanta, Ga.
“I really did hold out for about two years,” he said, but business had bottomed-out in the economy. Brickman said that his billings, once around $100,000, had dropped on some months by as much as 95 percent.
Brickman moved home to Toronto to work at his company there, where he has a steady job as a general manager. His American wife and their 11-week-old baby, are now trying to emigrate to join him.
Since he got back, Brickman said he’s been fielding calls from American friends hoping he can get them a job up north, too.
Shawn Shepard, a legal software supervisor who was among hundreds laid off by his Manhattan law firm in 2008, is hoping a Canadian employer will sponsor him.
Shepard, who lives in Jersey City, N.J., is a regular visitor to Canada, with friends in Montreal and Toronto. With 20 years of experience, and, he admitted, “the arrogance of being a U.S. citizen,” he figured it would be a snap.
But now, he’s found himself in the classic migrant dilemma: “In order to get a work visa, you need a job offer. In order to get a job offer, you need a work visa.” And even if he were to interest a prospective employer, a visa would only be issued if the employer can show that no Canadian was qualified for the job.
“The economy up there is doing very well, despite the global slump,” Shepard wistfully told this reporter, a gainfully employed Canadian. “Your politicians didn’t put you in the same mess that ours did.”
The climate problem has moved from the abstract to the very real in the last 18 months. Instead of charts and graphs about what will happen someday, we’ve got real-time video: first Russia burning, then Texas and Arizona on fire. First Pakistan suffered a deluge, then Queensland, Australia, went underwater, and this spring and summer, it’s the Midwest that’s flooding at historic levels.
The year 2010 saw the lowest volume of Arctic ice since scientists started to measure, more rainfall on land than any year in recorded history, and the lowest barometric pressure ever registered in the continental United States. Measured on a planetary scale, 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest year in history. Jeff Masters, probably the world’s most widely read meteorologist, calculated that the year featured the most extreme weather since at least 1816, when a giant volcano blew its top.
Since we’re the volcano now, and likely to keep blowing, here’s his prognosis: “The ever-increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases humans are emitting into the air put tremendous pressure on the climate system to shift to a new, radically different, warmer state, and the extreme weather of 2010-2011 suggests that the transition is already well underway.”
There’s another shift, too, and that’s in the response from climate-change activists. For the first two decades of the global-warming era, the suggested solutions to the problem had been as abstract as the science that went with it: complicated schemes like the Kyoto Protocol, or the cap-and-trade agreement that died in Congress in 2010. These were attempts to solve the problem of climate change via complicated backstage maneuvers and manipulations of prices or regulations. They failed in large part because the fossil-fuel industry managed, at every turn, to dilute or defang them.
Clearly the current Congress is in no mood for real regulation, so — for the moment anyway — the complicated planning is being replaced by a simpler rallying cry. When it comes to coal, oil, and natural gas, the new mantra of activists is simple, straightforward, and hard to defang: Keep it in the ground!
Two weeks ago, for instance, a few veteran environmentalists, myself included, issued a call for protest against Canada’s plans to massively expand oil imports from the tar sands regions of Alberta. We set up a new website, tarsandsaction.org, and judging from the early response, it could result in the largest civil disobedience actions in the climate-change movement’s history on this continent, as hundreds, possibly thousands, of concerned activists converge on the White House in August. They’ll risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico that would vastly increase the flow of tar sands oil through the U.S., ensuring that the exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands will only increase.
Forget the abstract and consider the down-and-dirty instead. You can undoubtedly guess some of the reasons for opposition to such a pipeline. It’s wrecking native lands in Canada, and potential spills from that pipeline could pollute some of the most important ranchlands and aquifers in America. (Last week’s Yellowstone River spill was seen by many as a sign of what to expect.)
There’s an even bigger reason to oppose the pipeline, one that should be on the minds of even those of us who live thousands of miles away: Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb. Indeed, they’re the second largest pool of carbon on planet Earth, following only Saudi Arabia’s slowly dwindling oilfields.
If you could burn all the oil in those tar sands, you’d run the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide from its current 390 parts per million (enough to cause the climate havoc we’re currently seeing) to nearly 600 parts per million, which would mean if not hell, then at least a world with a similar temperature. It won’t happen overnight, thank God, but according to the planet’s most important climatologist, James Hansen, burning even a substantial portion of that oil would mean it was “essentially game over” for the climate of this planet.
Halting that pipeline wouldn’t solve all tar sands problems. The Canadians will keep trying to get it out to market, but it would definitely ensure that more of that oil will stay in the ground longer and that, at least, would be a start. Even better, the politics of it are simple. For once, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives can’t get in the way. The president alone decides if the pipeline is “in the national interest.” There are, however, already worrisome signs within the Obama administration. Just this week, based on a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, Neela Banerjee of the Los Angeles Times reported that, in 2009, the State Department’s “energy envoy” was already instructing Alberta’s fossil-fuel barons in how to improve their “oil sands messaging,” including “increasing visibility and accessibility of more positive news stories.” This is the government version of Murdochian-style enviro-hacking, and it leads many to think that the new pipeline is already a done deal.
Still, the president can say no. If he does, then no pipeline — and in the words of Alberta’s oil minister, his province will be “landlocked in bitumen” (the basic substance from which tar-sands oil is extracted). Even energy-hungry China, eager as it is for new sources of fossil fuels, may not be able to save him, since native tribes are doing a remarkable job of blocking another proposed pipeline to the Canadian Pacific. Oil, oil everywhere, and nary a drop to sell. (Unfortunately that’s not quite true, but at least there won’t be a big new straw in this milkshake.)
An Obama thumbs-down on the pipeline could change the economics of the tar sands in striking ways. “Unless we get increased [market] access, like with Keystone XL, we’re going to be stuck,” said Ralph Glass, an economist and vice-president at AJM Petroleum Consultants in Calgary.
Faced with that prospect, Canada’s oilmen are growing desperate. Earlier this month, in a classic sleight of hand, they announced plans for a giant “carbon capture and sequestration” scheme at the tar sands. That’s because when it comes to global warming, tar sands oil is even worse than, say, Saudi oil because it’s a tarry muck, not a liquid, and so you have to burn a lot of natural gas to make it flow in the first place.
Now, the oil industry is proposing to capture some of the extra carbon from that cooking process and store it underground. This is an untested method, and the accounting scheme Alberta has adopted for it may actually increase the province’s emissions. Even if it turns out to work perfectly and captures the carbon from that natural gas that would have escaped into the atmosphere, the oil they’re proposing to ship south for use in our gas tanks would still be exactly as bad for the atmosphere as Saudi crude. In other words, in the long run it would still be “essentially game over” for the climate.
The Saudis, of course, built their oil empire long before we knew that there was anything wrong with burning oil. The Canadians — with American help, if Obama obliges the oil lobby — are building theirs in the teeth of the greatest threat the world has ever faced. We can’t unbuild those Saudi Arabian fields, though happily their supplies are starting to slowly dwindle. What we can still do, though, is prevent North America from becoming the next Middle East.
So there will be a battle, and there will be nothing complicated or abstract about it. It will be based on one question: Does that carbon stay in the earth, or does it pour into the atmosphere? Given the trillions of dollars at stake it will be a hard fight, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But at least there’s no fog here, no maze of technicalities.
The last climate bill, the one the Senate punted on, was thousands of pages long. This time there’s a single sheet of paper, which Obama signs… or not.
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Everyone is saying this Lexi St. George kid is the new Rebecca Black. Some are even saying that her song “Dancing to the Rhythm” is a better Ark Music Factory production than “Friday,” which must be such a proud moment for her and her family.
2. Tim Pawlenty was just born this way
You know, leaving aside his feelings on Lady Gaga’s talent (which starts at 1:50), can we just discuss what it says about the GOP candidate that he is agreeing to interviews with a site called Glittarazi?
3. A whole bunch of “Potter”
Eight new clips were released from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two: No Seriously: This Is the Last One You Guys.” Check out essentially half the movie in minute-long increments.
4. Clear eyes, full hearts, let’s plank
A Canadian football team lies down on the ground after winning a game to prove that they are either hip to Internet culture or very sleepy.
5. Roseanne amuses herself with the double meaning of the word “nuts”
Prince William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, take part in a religious ceremony on HMCS Montreal in Quebec City , Sunday July 3, 2011. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld)(Credit: AP)
Prince William and Kate faced more protests by French-speaking separatists Sunday after arriving in Quebec City on a Canadian navy frigate that sailed down the picturesque St. Lawrence Seaway..
The newlyweds are on the fourth day of a nine-day trip to Canada in what is their first official overseas trip since their April 29 wedding.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge encountered small but vocal protests in Montreal, the French-speaking province’s biggest city, on Saturday after being cheered by tens of thousands the previous day in Canada’s largely English-speaking capital, Ottawa.
Prince William and Kate sang hymns as they took part in a bilingual interfaith prayer service on the deck of the HMCS Montreal which docked in Quebec City after an overnight trip from Montreal. They then headed ashore for a meeting with residents of La Maison Dauphine, a center that helps homeless youths.
Police were out in force in downtown Quebec City. More than 150 protesters, some wearing black and waving flags, demonstrated about two blocks from City Hall, where Prince William was due to make remarks.
A far larger crowd of supporters, chanting “Will and Kate.” were allowed closer to City Hall and greeted the royal motorcade with loud cheers when it arrived.
The protesters chanted “RRQ,” the initials of the anti-monarchist, separatist group, Reseau de Resistance du Quebecois, or Quebecker Resistance Network, which organized the protests in Montreal and Quebec City.
Police set up barriers to keep the protesters away from City Hall, but the demonstrators brought a pickup truck with audio equipment and speakers so their chants could be heard. They carried signs reading “Pay your own way” and “The monarchy, it’s over.”
The visit touches a sensitive nerve among French-speaking separatists because Prince William and Kate later Sunday afternoon were to visit the Citadelle, a fortified residence at the foot of the Plains of Abraham, the site of the pivotal 1759 battle in which British forces defeated the French to seal the conquest of New France.
Vocal yet vastly outnumbered protesters failed to cause any disruption to the royal couple’s events in Montreal on Saturday, other than aggravating some of the pair’s supporters.
About 35 protesters, including members of the Quebecker Resistance Network, stood outside Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre in Montreal. They were outnumbered about 10 to one by William and Kate supporters gathered outside the children’s hospital where the newlyweds visited cancer patients and the hospital’s neonatal care facility.
The protesters were drumming and booing as the royal couple’s motorcade pulled up to the hospital. William was whisked into the hospital as Kate stepped out of the car and smiled at the crowd before going in.
The demonstrations were a rare moment of criticism aimed at the young royals, who have for the most part been welcomed with open arms by Canadians eager to see the glamorous newlyweds.
After leaving the hospital, the royal couple headed to the Institut de Tourisme et D’Hotellerie du Quebec, where they were met again by a handful of protesters dominated by about 150 supporters.
Once inside, Kate and William donned aprons and took part in a cooking workshop at the facility, which is a government agency that conducts training and research in the hotel, tourism and food service industries.
Wearing white cooking jackets, the pair got into the pots and pans to whip up some authentic Quebec fare, including Charlevoix lamb and a lobster souffle. The couple also dined with Quebec Premier Jean Charest and his wife Michele.
A 2009 visit by Prince William’s father, Prince Charles, to Montreal was disrupted by more than 200 separatist protesters. The protesters sat in the street, blocking the prince’s way into a ceremony planned at an armory, and threw eggs at the soldiers who were accompanying him and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall. The couple were forced to enter the building through a back door and missed an elaborate welcoming ceremony that had been planned.
In 1990, Canada Day celebrations were disrupted briefly by protesters from Quebec who booed and turned their back on Queen Elizabeth.
Protesters were angry that Canada still has ties to the monarchy. Queen Elizabeth II is still the country’s figurative head of state and new Canadian citizens still pledge allegiance to the Queen during their swearing-in ceremony. Others said they were angry that taxpayer money is being used to pay for the royal tour.
However, support for the separatists among Quebeckers has been on the decline in recent years as the 80-percent French-speaking province has enjoyed plenty of autonomy even without quitting Canada.
“As far as I’m concerned they’re welcome here anytime. These young people need a chance. If their ancestors messed up, they need a chance to be forgiven,” said John Harbour, 58, a French-Canadian master mariner, who was among dozens of onlookers hoping for a glimpse of the royal couple at the Quebec City waterfront.
The royal couple were to fly later Sunday to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. They leave Canada for a three-day trip to California on July 8.
——
Associated Press Writer Rob Gillies in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, contributed to this story.
Ryan Reynold's big break (and big abs) in "Blade Trinity."
Ryan Reynolds … where did he come from? It seems just yesterday that the most this Canuck was known for was playing Van Wilder in a National Lampoon movie and being engaged to Alanis Morissette, and suddenly he’s the buff, wisecracking superguy from both the “Wolverine” movie and “Green Lantern,” as well as the ex-Mr. Scarlett Johansson. For a guy whose major talent seems to be light banter and non-threatening, bland sexuality, he’s certainly managed to make it far past the other Zach Morrises of this world
So you may be wondering, as we are: Why did Ryan get A-listed over his arguably more talented costars? What gives him that extra spark when he can be, at times, little more than barely, pleasantly watchable. And when did this no-name pretty boy get on the track to becoming the Sexiest Man of the Year?
In order to properly assess the Ken Doll from up north’s rise to unlikely action hero fame, we have to go back to his somewhat humble beginnings. He’s been acting since he was a kid, most notably on Nickelodeon’s teen drama series “Hillside” — or, as it was called in the states, “Fifteen” — which was like “90210″ but minus the sex, drugs and valley girl accents:
As you can see, Ryan’s talent didn’t come from being a childhood thespian. He was good, but he didn’t pop off the screen. He was more, well, “adequate” is the word that comes to mind.
As recently as seven years ago, I remember being unable to distinguish the blandly handsome and pithy Reynolds from Michael Rosenbaum (who played Lex Luthor on “Smallville”), or Dane Cook. (Hey, they both were in that “Waiting” movie!) Ryan had cut out a niche for himself playing the smarmy “Saved by the Bell” types, like on ABC’s short-lived series “Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place,” or “Van Wilder,” a role that led to an odd reprise in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.“
Then in 2004, something funny happened. “Blade Trinity” came out, and even though it wasn’t even the best of the “Blade” franchise, something about Ryan’s embodiment of the vampire/vampire hunter Hannibal King struck a chord with audiences. Emphasis on the “body”: Reynold’s abs nearly stole the film. According to his interview in People for the 2010 Sexiest Man cover:
“My body naturally wants to look like Dick Van Dyke,” says the 6’2″ actor …. “When I stop training, I turn into a skin-colored whisper.”
Never before has an actor’s shirtless transformation so entranced audiences with his less-than-stellar performance. After “Trinity” Ryan went back to doing those passable rom-coms, like “Just Friends” and “Definitely, Maybe,” but it wasn’t till he was shirtless (and pants-less) with Sandra Bullock in “The Proposal” in 2009 that he once again garnered more attention. It was also the year that Reynold’s was announced to be getting his own “Deadpool” spin-off based on his other action role to date at the time: a toss-away character in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” whose quippy one-liners and flippant attitude regarding good and evil — along with some totally sweet guns — seemed to have been tailor-made for the actor.
And then there was his marriage to Scarlett Johansson. It’d be a mistake to underplay what this romance did for Ryan’s career; his previous public relationship announced as an engagement in 2004 (the year of “Blade Trinity) to Canadian singer Alanis Morissette, in a move that made us all go, “Who? Oh, that guy? Cool … glad she’s not with Dave Coulier anymore.” At the time of his first engagement, Ryan was still being referred to as “‘Van Wilder’ star.” Five years later, he and his wife were being named (independently) the sexiest people on earth.
When the couple separated late in 2010, I wondered if Ryan would just fade away. Now, about his former marriage, Reynolds will only say that the media wasn’t invited into his relationship, and “I’m a different person than I was six months ago.” And that’s more than apparent: for maybe the first time in his career, Ryan is headlining a blockbuster summer action film. He’s more famous than his costars, and for more than just his good jawline, quick wit and jaw-dropping body. Ryan has finally obtained the unsinkable air of someone with “star power,” despite his seemingly lack of any, and it will be up to his next several career choices to see whether he can keep his momentum. And let’s hope his metabolism holds up too.
1. Riots of the day: The footage from Vancouver after the city lost the Stanley Cup to Boston. Seriously, you guys, get it together. I know it’s hockey, but you’re supposed to be the nicer version of us. Way to make Boston look like a serene little village in comparison.
2. Scent of the day: Que perfume, the only spritz that will have him proposing to you because he can’t marry his smoker.
4. Sexy Canadian news of the day: “Friday Night Lights’” Taylor Kitsch will be playing the title role in an upcoming adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi classic “John Carter from Mars.” (Though Carter wasn’t actually from Mars, he just hooked up with the ladies from there.)
5. Brad Pitt trailer of the day: “Moneyball,” the true-life story of the Oakland A’s general manager who used “math” to put together a team on a shoestring bud … *snooze.*
But the jittery state of the U.S. economy is driving an increasing number of its citizens to seek better prospects north of the border.
Things are getting kind of "Harry!" 
Prince William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, take part in a religious ceremony on HMCS Montreal in Quebec City , Sunday July 3, 2011. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Adrian Wyld)(Credit: AP) 
Ryan Reynold's big break (and big abs) in "Blade Trinity." 
Brad Pitt as coach. 
