When the Pew Charitable Trusts asked Canadians what they understood
the good and successful life to be—the dimensions of what might thought of as
“The Canadian Dream”—the responses were uncannily similar to how Americans
defined the “American Dream.” In Corak (2010), I report that the citizens
of both countries value the ideal of equality of opportunity and define it—
almost exactly to the very same degree—in terms of individual freedoms. They
also recognize the importance of individual responsibilities, and have an equal
aversion to “equality of outcomes” as a desirable end. The biggest difference in
this comparative analysis of similarly worded public opinion polls concerned the
view of government and public policy. Americans were more inclined to view
government as doing more harm than good in their pursuit of the American
Dream, but at the same time they viewed a whole host of possible public policy
interventions as effective in promoting economic mobility. From this I surmise
that they had less confidence that their federal, state, and local governments
could implement and manage effective policy changes.