Canadian blogger Chris Almeny has advice for milblogger Citizen Smash – “*Some* Americans need to learn that the United States is not and need not be the “Superman” of the world.”.
Smash takes it to heart.

Twice in the past hundred years, the United States sent troops to Western Europe to fight for “freedom.” To the people of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Austria, we offer our most heartfelt apologies for interfering in your affairs. Please rest assured that it won�t happen again.
To the peoples of Polynesia, Micronesia, Indonesia, Indochina, the Philippines (again), China, and Korea, for whom America spent so much blood and treasure to free from the “oppression” of the Japanese Empire, we’re sorry. We�re sure that you could have handled the matter much better without our “assistance.”
After subjecting their citizens to all-out war, the United States forced Germany, Japan, and Italy to “democratize.” We apologize for being so presumptuous. In retrospect, we should have trusted you to come up with your own form of government — we�re certain you would have been much better off in the long run, left to your own devices.
We apologize to the people of South Korea for “defending” you from your brothers to the north. This was clearly an internal matter for Koreans to decide, and we had no business meddling in your affairs.

The Trudeaupian left’s vision for Canada has come to fruition – from “punching above our weight” to “peacekeeper nation” to punchline.
update I crossposted this at the Shotgun, where “EssEm” commented;

I am American-born, but lived in Toronto for 17 years and became a (dual) Canadian citizen while there. I returned to the US some 13 years ago. I recommend people take a second look at Pierre Burton’s “Why We Act Like Canadians”. It gave me a way to value the Canajan –which is often, I suspect, confused with the Ontario Liberal– way of looking at the world. Yet I have come to see that while it might be advantageous to Canada to act more like America in relation to the rest of the world (though hardly possible now), it would not be advantageous to America, or the world, for the US to act like Canada does.
Even while I was living in TO, I realized that I had moved to the “sidelines of empire”. Even if you are picturesque, well-behaved and have a sense of social responsibility, that cannot replace being enormous, dynamic to the point of unstable, restless, driven and successful. And the world treats you very differently. Canada is like a planetary Mr. Rogers (forgive the American cultural reference). It might be nice if everyone were more like him, but…they ain’t. In fact, most of the world is run by and has always been run by the Sopranos (again, the cultural ref). To handle that, you need a combination of decency, cunning self-confidence and explosive power.
In my long discovery of what made Canadians and Americans different, despite superficial similarities, I did discover in Ontario something that I still can detect in Canadian life: “a pre-disposition to disapprove”. I recall the cold power behind a word I often heard in my 17 years: “inappropriate”.
It seems to me that the rigid moralism of old Scots Toronto the Good has not disappeared, but has morphed into the multiculty quasi-pacificist Euroid self-righteousness of post-Trudeaupia. From here, in the heart of the Empire, in the Belly of the Beast, with Tony Soprano vividly imagined not just as “another voice in the global symphony”, but as “The Crips and the Bloods Do Sharia” it sounds distant and tinny. Sad. Some of my best friends are still in Canada.

An unnamed source is credited in the WAshington Post with leaking some details – and blunt talk – covered in the meeting between Paul Martin and George W. Bush during his visit.

“(Bush) leaned across the table and said: `I’m not taking this position, but some future president is going to say, Why are we paying to defend Canada?’ “

It takes an American president to say what no Canadian politician has ever had the guts to admit.

TZ at Heart Of Canada, on Canada’s health care safety seive;

For example, in some Canadian provinces, if you don’t pay health premiums, you don’t get health care. In other provinces, you don’t have to pay health premiums, but you still don’t get health care, well, unless you travel a few hundred miles first. Provincial health insurance cards are not always honoured in other provinces’ health care facilities, where only cash produces results. Ah, Canada.
In the United States, I always got health care, and some of it was free. My physicians sent me thank you notes and had welcoming open houses once per year for their patients. You see, experience can tell a very different story. I now wonder, if I were living in the USA today, would I have had the insurance necessary to cover my present needs, and, based on past experience, I would say, probably, yes.

The real problems arise when you actually have to access the Canadian system for surgery.

Great Moments In Socialism, Jan.8, 2005

A hospital administrator in Detroit offers free back surgery to an Ontario woman, as a gesture of appreciation for the 700 Canadian health professionals on his staff.