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Unless you've been in Hawaii most of this spring, you've probably heard about the hottest TV ad in Canada, a spot dubbed "The Rant" by Molson Inc. It's a plug for Molson's "Canadian" beer, which vies with Labatt Blue as the top-selling brew in Canada. But the ad's blatant "Canada good, U.S. bad" pitch has a lot of commentators on both sides of the border waxing about the "wave" of anti-Americanism and nationalism sweeping Canada (see BW Online, 5/5/00, "Oh Canada -- What's with Joe Molson?"). Twenty-something beer drinkers in Canada actually chant along when the ad comes on the TV in bars. It has even come up in Parliamentary debate.
But hold on. Most commentators are missing the point. How do I know? I lived in Toronto for two years and drank a lot of beer there. Plus, I was once engaged to a French-Canadian woman. I even know how many provinces Canada has. Here's what I think this ad mainly shows: Just how nervous Canadians are about their future.
First, let's recap what the Rant is all about (you can see it on a site called www.adcritic.com). The ad starts off with a lone young man on a stage, clad in a flannel shirt, quietly addressing an audience. "Hey, I'm, uh, I'm not a lumberjack or a fur trader," he says with what's meant to be typical Canadian diffidence. "And I don't have an igloo or eat blubber or own a dogsled. And I don't know Jimmy or Sally or Suzie from Canada, although I'm certain they're really, really nice."
Gradually, the speech gets more strident: "I have a Prime Minister, not a President. I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it 'about,' not 'aboot.' I can proudly sew my country's flag on my backpack. I believe in peacekeeping, not policing, diversity, not assimilation...."
By the end, he's shouting out the nationalistic rant that gives the 60-second ad it's nickname: "AND IT IS PRONOUNCED 'ZED.' NOT 'ZEE.' ZED! CANADA IS THE SECOND-LARGEST LAND MASS AND THE FIRST NATION OF HOCKEY AND THE BEST PART OF NORTH AMERICA. MY NAME IS JOE, AND I ... AM ... CANADIAN!" Ever the polite English Canadian, he then signs off with "Thank you."
Here are a few points that may help my fellow citizens south of the north decode the Rant's underlying meaning:
-- Canada is geographically immense, but really, it's a very long, skinny country. Nearly 90% of the population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border, so for most practical purposes Canada is 3,000 miles long and 100 miles wide. It is, as Joe Canada says, second only to Russia in land mass, but the other 5.7 million square miles of Canada is forest, tundra, oil reserves, and minerals -- mainly populated by moose
and beaver.
This is impractical. Canada has only 30.5 million citizens, and they could never defend their vast territory if a more populous country -- say, Russia, China, or India -- decided to invade. Canada maintains only a small army and a desultory navy that spends most of its time in dry dock. It spends 1.2% of gross domestic product on defense, vs. 3.4% for America.
The point here is that Canadians depend on Americans to defend them. This keeps many Canadians on edge because the only foreign power that ever invaded Canada was the U.S. But that was almost 200 years ago, and I'm relatively sure it won't happen again -- unless there's a really bad energy crisis, maybe.
Worse, many of Canada's leading journalists and political thinkers grew up in Toronto, which means they've gotten many of their ideas about the U.S. by watching Buffalo TV stations. As a result, they constantly fret that Americans are going to suddenly pour over the border and shoot them, or run over them with a sport-utility vehicles. That's why Joe Canada says he believes in "peacekeeping, not policing." Many Canadians secretly hope U.N. forces will be brought in to patrol the border to assure their safety.
-- The reason Joe says he believes in "diversity, not assimilation" is that many Canadians don't really relate well to the rest of Canada. For example, there's no French version of the Rant. The ad isn't even being aired in Quebec. When I asked a Molson spokesman why, he mumbled vaguely about "marketing priorities."
In fact, Molson Canadian isn't sold in Quebec, even though the province is home to a quarter of Canada's population. Stephen L. Beaumont, a Toronto beer guru who runs the worldofbeer.com Web site, explains why: "In Quebec, with its nationalism and separatism, a beer called Canadian just wouldn't sell." (Curiously, Quebecers will buy a product known as Labatt Bleu, which is French for Labatt Bruise.)
Canadian also doesn't sell all that well in British Columbia, where people tend to like Budweiser and Kokanee beer. Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, and Prince Edward Island also have their own favorite brands.
-- English Canadians think they're the only "real" Canadians, but they're not, of course. Many Americans think English Canadians are English. Wrong. Oh, their ancestors came from the British Isles. But English Canada was settled by Royalists after the American Revolution, and descendants of this bunch have historically dominated Canada's political and economic life. That's why Canadians are still technically subjects of Queen Elizabeth II.
These people are even more nervous than other Canadians. English Canadians are now a minority, representing only about 40% of the population. And they're constantly obsessing that some American will notice that they were on the wrong side of the American Revolution. Plus, it doesn't really sit well with French Canadians to be subjects of the British Crown. Nor with Italian, German, and other Euro Canadians who make up 20% of the population. Nor with the Asian (mainly Chinese) minority that now tops 10% of the population.
English Canadians try to obscure this issue by complaining about Americans. Trouble is, other Canadians love America. Three-quarters of Quebec, for instance, happily migrates to Florida in the winter. When Joe Canada brags that he can "proudly sew my flag on my backpack," sniping at American students who slap Canadian Mapleleafs on their packs to avoid anti-American jibes when they travel, he's not talking about Quebec. Sew on the Stars and Stripes when you travel there! You'll get a warmer reception because Quebecers will know right away that you're not English Canadian. It won't hurt in the Maritimes, either, where they like New Englanders. Nor in Alberta, which has tight ties with the Western U.S.
-- Talented Canadians emigrate to the U.S. It's not just Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox, and Leslie Nielsen. Did you know Raymond Burr was born in Canada? Or Peter Jennings? Or Colleen Dewhurst? This trend is a another thing that makes many Canadians nervous because they wonder what they're still doing there.
-- Canadians are often the worst offenders when it comes to underestimating the best things about Canada. This includes Canadian beer. One of the most distressing recent trends is that Budweiser, which is brewed under license by Labatt, is the No. 3 beer brand in Canada and rising fast. Let's just say this must be a marketing phenomenon. Almost any Canadian beer is better than Bud. I once participated in a blind taste test of 10 American beers. I ranked Bud dead last.
The bottom line is that Canadians have so little in common with one another that the main thing that unites them is that they're not Americans. So, they want to make sure whatever they're thinking is different from what Americans are thinking. And here's where it gets weird: The Rant is about the misconceptions Canadians think Americans would have about Canada if Americans ever thought about Canada, which they don't.
Glen Hunt, the ad genius in Toronto with Bensimon Byrne D'Arcy, which created the Rant, explains it perfectly: "We [Canadians] can't define exactly what we are, but we can say what we aren't. Once we've done that, we still can't define what we are, but at least we've defined what we're not."
I hope that makes things perfectly clear.
Peterson is a contributing editor for Business Week EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT
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