Mark Bryon looks at the USS Clueless post on the annexation of Canada. It’s always facinating to see how Americans perceive our provincial/federal relationships and our peculiar discontent.
I do agree that Canadians tend to first perceive themselves as not American, but I think we can bring a lot of positives to our identity as a people. I’m staying out of the debate, it’s been around longer than we’ve been a country, but there are some good links to follow if you are interested.

Stats Canada released its Canadian Social Trends study this week for the year 2001.

41% of Canadians aged 20-29 live with their parents in 2001, up from 27 per cent in 1981.

1 in 12 Canadians aged 20 or over live in separate homes from their partner. Of these, 56 per cent were in their 20s, 19 per cent in their 30s, 14 per cent in their 40s, and 11 per cent were aged 50 and over.

36 percent of people live with their parents while living away from their partner. While young adults tend to live with their parents to save money, older adults may be living with their parents to provide some form of parental care.

16 percent of households are single parent families up from 11 percent in 1981.

19 percent of children do not live with both parents. 1 percent of these live with a relative.

8 percent of males aged 20-34 say they don’t want children and 7 percent of females in the same age group agree.

Common law relationships are up from 6 percent in 1981 to 16 percent in 2001.
Quebec has 30 percent of it’s couples in common law arrangements.

2 percent of couples aged 20 to 34 cannot have children.

46 percent of common law relationships have children, either born in a previous relationship or the current one.

I also noticed some blogs picked up on the Ontario court ruling on same sex marriages with varying opinions.
Given the statistics up above, I think the church has a great deal more to address. The federal court will have to make a decision for the country, but they aren’t known to rush anything.
Meantime, John Campea sums up the current outcry well.

Look, I don’t agree with the ruling of the Ontario court. But at the same time it’s not that big a deal. The people who decide to get “married” are no further from God than where they are right now. So what would be the point in preventing them from doing it? How does it affect anything? From a spiritual and physical perspective, how does a gay couple being married effect me, my church, my faith or anyone else for that matter?

Perhaps, as I mentioned in my post 2 days ago, if we spent less time yelling at the world, telling them what we’re AGAINST, and instead told them more about what we’re FOR we’ll make a bigger impact on the world.

(can’t link up: the net is messed up…Thursday June 12th post…Gay couples can now marry in Canada. What does this mean? NOTHING.)

For those of you who fight your battles politically and legally, here is a report from this afternoons Commons Committe on Justice and Human Rights. (not Hansard)

Japan
This trend in Japan is disturbing. Young people are meeting on line and not only forming suicide pacts, but carrying them out. It is also interesting that the only suicide hotline in Japan is run by a Methodist minister. Lonely and isolated in life, they choose to die together.