Recently, much of the English-speaking world has been enjoying the sport of Canada-bashing, with comment's like "Canada is the poor slob's UK" on the Internet. I recall the song from the movie South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, that goes: "Blame Canada / Shame on Canada". But the next lien is very telling: "We must blame them and cause a fuss / Before someone thinks of blaming us." This has never been more true.

America-bashing will always be more popular, but when an American walks by, the bashing stops. When a Canadian walks by, the bashing gets louder. Why? Because we do the right thing. It is not the Candian way to stoop to mud-slinging and fisticuffs, even when provoked. A Canadian can walk calmly on by, for a Canadian has nothing to prove.

A lack of swagger, boasting, and hot air does not, as many would be believe, signal a lack of identity. Saying that the Canadian identity is to not have an identity is not a witty joke. It's trite, it's old, and it's simply wrong.

On 9/11 we let planes land here, sent money to bereaved American families, and suggested the tragedy may have been due to America's fraternizing with dictators. We followed Americans to Afghanistan, complained when they bombed our soldiers, then refused to follow them to Iraq. We let their studios shoot films here using our cheap dollar, then we cheered as our dollar rose. In all cases, we did the right thing. Sometimes America loves for it, sometimes they hate us. So who has the identity problem? Regarding the tiresome blather about Canadian non-identity, as the French say, "J'en ai ras le bol!" I quote David Berlin, co-founder of The Walrus Magazine: "Identity is something you do rather than obsess about." So what have we done?

We have preserved our sovereignty under tremndous pressure to merge with our elephantine neighbour. We fight when it is necessary, and make peace when peace is called for. We combine opportunity for the individual with socialized medicine, public education, and subsidies to arts and cultural groups. Also, we once burned down the White House.

In the World Wars, Canadians took the surrender of the Boers at Paardeburg, ousted the Germans at Vimy Ridge and Amiens, and convoyed half of all maritime traffic across the Atlantic. Also, Canadian infantrymen held the line at Kapyong in Korea.

During the October crisis, Pierre Trudeau declared martial law, deployed tanks in the streets of Montreal, arrested hundreds without trial, and vanquished the FLQ. We once forcefully seized a Spanish fishing boat, then flaunted its illegal nets in front of a UN building.

We dismissed talk about "weapons of mass destruction", and now have been proven right.

We almost single-handedly, against enormous global resistance, convinced world leaders to ban landmines.

Our debt management makes the United States look mathmatically illiterate. Of course, so do our education levels.

In 2001, twenty percent of Canadians attended weekly religious services (www.statcan.ca). This year three of the four finalists for the Booker Prize (for best novel in the Commonwealth or Republic of Ireland) were Canadian.

Pat Buchanan called Canada "Soviet Canuckistan". This hurts: surely, after all this, we deserve mroe eloquent an insult. Similarly, an attention-starved wise-cracker once dressed as me for Halloween when I was in Grade eleven.

Anyone can go through life without causing offence. When one attracts the scorn of the world's miscreants, jokes about non-identity are a crutch no longer needed. If Canadians have no identity, then why are we like no one else? Because it's lonely at the top.