this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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AskACanadian
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A place to ask Canadians questions and get answers. The most obvious questions would be about Canada, but you can ask about pretty much anything; news, current events, society, etc
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Have Manitoba adopt French as an official language and use more indigenous names for places.
Get rid of mm/dd/yyyy
Switch to ISO A4 paper size.
Reduce American words used in Canadian English.
Switch to the UK keyboard layout.
Switch the roads to left side driving.
Establish independent vehicle testing.
Build roundabouts.
Electrify the rails and bring back reliable passenger service.
Bathroom stalls that actually go down the floor.
Install bidets.
Narrow the streets.
Abolish tipping.
Regulate pickup trucks to be the size they were in the 80s.
Use metric for colloquial measurements.
Switch to type c plug outlets.
Include sales tax in the price.
We can start phasing out English and make French the sole official language of Canada.
(Seriously I would actually be in favour of this but I know I'm in an extreme minority here)
It might be cool to have separate posts to discuss each of these in more detail. Building off of some of these ideas:
I almost always use yyyy-mm-dd because it's the least confusing, while also sorting digital files nicely. I'd prefer if that became the default.
I'm curious what this process would be like. For most end users, there is little difference between receiving a piece of paper that is letter size vs A4. I would use it myself in my printer for anything I'd need to print out. Is it a matter of advocating for stores and suppliers to carry it?
I'd love to hear some discussion on this one, but I'm also worried that people will have very strong feelings about what layout will be best. There are a lot of alternate layouts out there 😄
This one I'm not sure about since a lot of other allies drive on the right side too, including a number of vehicle exporters. This would provide little benefit to us other than to spite the US.
I would expand this to all kinds of certifications and testing, and tie it to a mutual agreement with the EU. We could benefit from the stronger protections established in the EU, while cutting down on repeat work.
Maybe we can share some infographics around from time to time to help people learn their heights and weights in metric.
I don't have much else to add for the rest :)
What an amazing list! I would easily vote for you. All the best.
Canada uses yyyy/mm/dd btw.
We use A sizes, always have my life but people said that was odd. Can confirm I just went notebook shopping and everything was A/B sizing (Ontario). To get imperial out of construction we have to stop exporting it to the US. Canadians don't tip, American chains just ask for it.
Disagree about keyboard layout (should be Dvorak, or a more modern replacement), left handed driving, and switching to French (the US has 1+ million French speakers).
Not a bad list otherwise! I'd probably add mass public transit and carless downtowns.
We do have the CSA, which would also help with the bilingual push 👀
The keyboards on laptops should be required to be as easy to replace (and swap out) as a USB keyboards so that everyone gets the input that works for them.