I'm actually VERY well informed about Canada, despite what Canadians might want to believe. However I think you misunderstand the US more than a bit.
For starters, the Canadian military is basically a joke. It DOES produce a lot of fairly well trained people, but then again a lot of their training actually comes from us. Mostly Canada's "military" is only a factor when brought in as token support to other, larger groups. Canada might be able to launch a war of terror if they wanted to, but the Canadian military is incapable of any signifigant, sustained action.
Like it or not, military conflict comes down to the number of boots you can put on the ground, despite what a lot of people might want to think. Yes, perhaps Canada's few full time soldiers train more heavily than the majority of troops in the US, but we have special forces outselves that are probably better and also outnumber Canadas. It's just that our military is designed to be large enough to get things done.
Now during the Clinton Era, there was some thinking that we could go with a smaller, more highly trained force. He managed to make money and lead the US through a fairly prosperous period by basically gutting the American military and intelligence services. One of the things that made Bush less than popular was the way how he revealed the error of this thinking and also had to do some pretty unpleasant things to fix the problem. We basically wound up needing to tap our reserves to do something the regular military should have done, and even then we've had trouble with a police action (admittedly also because of our morality on the field). God forbid we actually had to try and occupy someone for real
right now.
However I repete, when 9/11 went down people were driving through empty Canadian military bases. Canada might have some highly trained troops out in the field somewhere supporting other forces, and a few others at home as a point of national pride, but basically Canada doesn't usually maintain any kind of signifigant military force. It hides behind the US because basically anyone who comes accross the ocean to get to North America has to content with the US Navy, and for anyone coming up from South or Central America they have to come through Mexico and then the US.
As far as the British burning Washington, I believe that was the War of 1812 which is one of the biggest jokes in military history. Yes they did burn down the White House. Basically what happened was Britan decided to come in and teach the US a lesson and try and take parts of it back. They basically decided it wasn't something they could do and left, in part because they were so heavily overextended.
The War of 1812 if I remember was based on the mistaken belief that there were a lot of British loyalists who would rise up to help support the troops. This never happened, in part because all of the "whigs" were murdered shortly after the revolution. The fighting was minimal, and saw wonderful occurances like "The Battle Of Stonington" (which occured not too far from where I live). That was a battle in which an astronomical amount of ammo was fired by both sides, 11 people were injured, and the British basically decided like most of the actual battles in the so-called war "frak this, we're going home". Down here in New England you'll see little plaques and cannons and stuff in front of town halls and stuff that commemerate a lot of "nothing much happened" battles.
This leads to a lot of people saying "The US are idiots for thinking they won that war" and the US pretty much saying "anyone who says we didn't win are idiots because we're still here". In reality it was a lot of idiots posturing and wasting ammo on both sides, the president needing a new house, and people figuring enough people were involved so we might as well try and make it more signifigant than it really was.
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At any rate all jingoism aside, back to the actual subject.
I believe you yourself illustrate why there is a problem. Nations passing laws claiming that they do not have to respect the patents of others and then enriching themselves on someone else's work. Which incidently happens to be wrong and the entire issue before the World Court since there ARE supposed to be international laws that only some people respect to prevent exactly that kind of thing. Nations like China for example becoming world powers due to what amounts to theft.
Saying "hmmm well we toss a pittence to the music companies as part of a sale to cover the copying" just doesn't quite cut it if your going to argue things in an overt fashion. But then again I'm staying away from music and video games (despite what was mentioned directly) specifically because I think those industries are borked, and could resolve a portion of their piracy problems (or at least get more respect) if they amended some of their own policies and such.
Of course if these companies actually AGREED to that with Canada it's something else entirely, but the tone implies that they didn't.
Overall though, the entire point is that Canada is being told to get with the program. How they resolve their issues internally is their matter for the most part. The idea being that as "Little America" if they get their act together on the big issues the little ones will probably be overlooked. Also when the chips fall, America will also wind up protecting Canada from the repercussions so far when it comes to other nations.
See the idea being that when the World Court makes a ruling chances are the East and West go to war. There is little chance of Canada surviving if the East Wins (ie it would have died in the crossfire long before them as an ally). If the West Wins and the world is pretty much intact, it's going to come down to those nations that were violating patents not only being forced to stop, but being held accountable for the losses. If Canada has been playing ball nobody is going to come walking in and say "here's your bill" and the US won't be allowing Euro-Powers do it based on patents of theirs you might have violated (or things you purchused from those that were).
Not the best articulated it can be, but the bottom line is that Canada has been exempt from this treatment, and is not getting a warning. The fact that we treat Canada differantly from other nations doing the same thing being a problem.
See for all comments about independance, when the chips are down nations like China can turn around and basically say "well what point is the US trying to make, their satellite nations are some of our best customers and the US hasn't done anything about that".
The most touchy part about all this of course being my rant about worldwide warfare. But I'm one of those people who genuinely believes we're heading there. The increasingly interwoven nature of business doesn't mean warfare won't happen, simply that when it does occur it's going to be over things like trade and patent rights, rather than resources and politics.
>>>----Therumancer--->
BTW> Also, corperations cannot pass laws. I have no idea where you get that idea. The most they can do is form PACs (Political Action Committees) and spend a lot of money campaigning for something that they want to see. That's part of freedom (the abillity to organize and try and get what you want within the system). The issues involved in this mostly come with abuses where despite prohibations the PACs (corperate or otherwise) lavish gifts and money on the political office holders for specific rulings (rather than simply campaigning), or find ways of donating more to a given politician's campaign for office than is legally allowed.
Now yes, there is a lot of corruption in the system, and we ourselves make a big deal about it andt try and deal with it. Don't even try and tell me that Canada is beyond political corruption. Canadian politics is just as bad as anywhere else, and the US isn't worse than anywhere else. It's just that the dirty laundry of the US gets aired more because everyone is interested as we're the global superpower pretty much playing "hated beat cop" for the world population. Most nations just don't get their crap aired on CNN, and even if it wa most people outside of their area wouldn't care since they aren't as big a factor globally as we are.
