• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Can you Pass the Canadian Citizenship Test?

Wildy said:
16/20 for Canada. I was really confused by the Senate one. You guys don't vote for Senators? What sort of madness is that?
Click to expand...
No we don't vote for senators. They are appointed basically for life, selected by the government of the day. (so you can have a senate composed of party hacks left over from decades ago.) It used to be more or less a direct selection of the prime minister/cabinet, but I think they have since created a committee to make recommendations.

On the other hand, our senate has very little real power. (It's not like the US, where your senate confirms judges and cabinet ministers, crafts bills, etc.) in Canada the senate largely functions to review legislation created by the house of commons. They might slow things down a little (which can mess up the government's plans( but it is rare that they would actually block anything.)

So our senators get full pay (with a housing allowance), guaranteed employment , and no real responsibility. Good work if you can get it
 
Last edited:
Segnosaur said:
No we don't vote for senators. They are appointed basically for life, selected by the government of the day. (so you can have a senate composed of party hacks left over from decades ago.) It used to be more or less a direct selection of the prime minister/cabinet, but I think they have since created a committee to make recommendations.

On the other hand, our senate has very little real power. (It's not like the US, where your senate confirms judges and cabinet ministers, crafts bills, etc.) in Canada the senate largely functions to review legislation created by the house of commons. They might slow things down a little (which can mess up the government's plans( but it is rare that they would actually block anything.)

So our senators get full pay (with a housing allowance), guaranteed employment , and no real responsibility. Good work if you can get it
Click to expand...

That still seems odd to me, but I guess it's not as bad when they don't have that much power?

(Not my Senate. I'm Australian, we have a hybrid Senate made up of concepts from the UK House of Lords and the US Senate)

Segnosaur said:
Plot twist... The Australian test is all about "what Australian animals are dangerous and want to kill you".

Which of course you should get 100% because the answer is "all of them".
Click to expand...

At one point one of the questions on the Australian test was asking what Don Bradman's test average was.
 
Wildy said:
At one point one of the questions on the Australian test was asking what Don Bradman's test average was.
Click to expand...

Knowing that can be useful in guessing pincodes and combination lock codes set by cricket obsessives. Apparently.
 
Wildy said:
16/20 for Canada. I was really confused by the Senate one. You guys don't vote for Senators? What sort of madness is that?
Click to expand...
The USAian kind until 1913?

We don't directly elect them either.
 
jt512 said:
You seem to think that the results would be different in the US. I doubt that many graduates of the public school systems in the US could pass the US citizenship test.
Click to expand...

The curse of Emily's Cat strikes again!

Keep reading the thread. I'm sure the results would be exactly the same in the US, as has been reported often enough in the past. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the results are much the same everywhere.
 
For Australians, just call dollar coins "loonies", use the word "provinces" instead of "states", and change your accent, eh. Then you can be a Canadian.

Btw. Labatt's Blue? That's Fosters.
 
Wildy said:
No we don't vote for senators. They are appointed basically for life, selected by the government of the day.
...
On the other hand, our senate has very little real power. (It's not like the US, where your senate confirms judges and cabinet ministers, crafts bills, etc.) in Canada the senate largely functions to review legislation created by the house of commons. They might slow things down a little (which can mess up the government's plans( but it is rare that they would actually block anything.)
Click to expand...
That still seems odd to me, but I guess it's not as bad when they don't have that much power?
Click to expand...
It is a little odd. In the past they would often use the job of a senator as a "reward" for the party faithful.

There is an occasional scandal that pops over the Senate. Perhaps the biggest embarrassment occurred a couple of decades ago when the Reform party (a right-wing party that later merged with the conservatives) found that a Liberal Senator was actually living in Mexico and had only attended the senate 12 times in 7 years. (Yet he collected regular senate pay.) When the scandal broke, he resigned, but ended up collecting a pension.

See: Wikipedia

Every once in a while some politicians will make noise about reforming the senate. The big rallying cry for a while was "Triple-E: equal (each province or region with the same number of seats), elected and effective", but that type of thing never really goes anywhere. (Probably because it would require amending our constitution, and since that type of thing can trigger conflicts that risk destroying the country, its probably best to avoid it if at all possible.)
 
malbui said:
We had serious discussions about relocating to Toronto around 15 years ago. Mme Malbui had a firm job offer and I could have transferred with my then employer. We were both top of the scale on the immigration points scoring thing. In the end we didn’t go for a variety of reasons but I often wonder how our lives would have played out.
Click to expand...
Some people think that if you're living in Toronto, you're not really living "in canada".

There is a certain undercurrent of resentment that many people feel towards Toronto, viewing the city as somehow "arrogant" and isolated from the rest of Canada. Of course the sports rivalries don't help things much either.
 
A poor 11 (given my wife is Canadian) but where was the question about which is the best Timbit to have with a Double Double, Eh?
Click to expand...
I'm surprised there weren't more questions about hockey.

Heck, they could build a whole test simply around the hand signals the referees use when calling a penalty.
 
arthwollipot said:
Depends on your definition of "useless". You don't even believe that citizens have a civic duty to vote in elections, so I'm not sure that what you consider "useless trivia" is all that relevant.
Click to expand...

You say that, but when was the last time you needed to know the capital of anywhere, or the land mass rankings of various nations, off the top of your head? Or at all, for any practical application? Never, that's when.
 
theprestige said:
You say that, but when was the last time you needed to know the capital of anywhere, or the land mass rankings of various nations, off the top of your head? Or at all, for any practical application? Never, that's when.
Click to expand...
Yeah, why know anything? Knowing stuff about stuff is pointless.

:rolleyes:
 
arthwollipot said:
Yeah, why know anything? Knowing stuff about stuff is pointless.

: rolleyes :
Click to expand...

A lot of times? Yes it is. Certain kinds of knowledge are useful. Like knowing where to find capitals of things if you need them. Knowing how to do certain kinds of math. The grammar of whatever language you're trying to use.

But you're reduced to sneering at me because you know I'm right. You know you'll never need to come up with the capital of anywhere off the top of your head. These citizenship tests are largely useless trivia. At best, they might be measuring whether you're sufficiently assimilated, using trivia retention through cultural osmosis as a proxy, but even that doesn't appear to be the case.
 
theprestige said:
A lot of times? Yes it is. Certain kinds of knowledge are useful. Like knowing where to find capitals of things if you need them. Knowing how to do certain kinds of math. The grammar of whatever language you're trying to use.

But you're reduced to sneering at me because you know I'm right. You know you'll never need to come up with the capital of anywhere off the top of your head. These citizenship tests are largely useless trivia. At best, they might be measuring whether you're sufficiently assimilated, using trivia retention through cultural osmosis as a proxy, but even that doesn't appear to be the case.
Click to expand...
Unless I'm considering emigrating to another country.

Anyway, my point is that knowing stuff is cool. It's its own reward. I don't know stuff because I want to show off to other people, I know stuff because learning new stuff is fun.

I'm sorry you can't see it like that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom