They Like Us: 9 out of 10 Americans Have Favourable View Of Canada

Their sports columnists may be eviscerating our Winter Games, their congressional representatives may still not see the harm in “Buy American,” and most of them likely don’t know Ottawa from Moose Jaw.

But nonetheless, Americans love us.

Canada is once again on top in Gallup’s annual country ratings list, with 90 per cent of Americans viewing their northern neighbour favourably.

Britain is right behind Canada at 87 per cent, while Iran is at the bottom of the list with only 10 per cent of U.S. citizens feeling the love.

“What’s not to like about Canada?” Lydia Saad, a senior editor at Gallup, said Friday.

“The two countries that always appear at the top are Canada and Great Britain. Those seem to be two largely English-speaking allies that Americans feel a real kinship to, and of course there are a lot of historical connections that bind them.”

A longtime observer of Canada-U.S. relations says the rave reviews are likely due to Americans viewing Canadians as – well – similar to Americans.

“A lot of people in the United States have met people from Canada,” David Biette, director of the Canadian Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Friday.

“Canadians are respectful and nice when they travel here, they don’t have an accent except for when they say ‘about,’ they look like Americans, they eat the same food as Americans, and so they feel familiar to Americans.”

Canadians may not be flattered by that, Biette added, but indeed it’s a form of high praise coming from Americans.

“When Americans say: ‘Oh, you’re just like us’ to Canadians, that’s a compliment. It’s meant in a kind way, even if Canadians might not take it that way.”

Mexico, on the other hand, America’s neighbour to the south, didn’t fare so well in the Gallup poll conducted from Feb. 1-3. Along with Russia, the country was about as likely to be viewed favourably as it was unfavourably.

“Although the two-percentage-point decline in Mexico’s overall favourable rating between 2009 and today is not significant, the result is that, for the first time since 1993, fewer than half of Americans have a favourable view of the United States’ southern neighbour,” Gallup said in a release on Friday.

Gallup included Yemen on the list for the first time this year in the aftermath of an attempted terrorist attack on a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day. The man in custody for that failed attempt allegedly had ties to a Yemen-based al-Qaida group.

The country’s 21 per cent favourable rating was among the lowest in the survey, though one in four Americans polled had no opinion at all of Yemen.

Gallup says that only Iraq saw a statistically significant drop in favourability over the past year. Most countries’ ratings, including Canada’s, remained unchanged from last year.

The good news for Canada comes as seven Canadian premiers descend upon the U.S. capital to attend the influential National Governors Association meeting. The premiers were also slated to sit down Friday with some key members of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, including his economic czar, Larry Summers, and Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Earlier this month, the U.S. and Canada resolved a yearlong dispute on the Buy American policies in Obama’s US$787 billion economic stimulus package. Canada was exempt from the provisions and is continuing to push for a permanent exemption from all such measures.

Results of the survey are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,025 American adults, aged 18 and older. The margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points.