The Toronto Globe and Mail was all over this Canadian angle, quoting approvingly from the New York Times that “American policy makers might learn a thing or two from Canada’s patient, hysteria-free pruning.”

“But it isn’t just spending cuts that dug Canada out of debt trouble,” added the Globe, Canada’s newspaper of record. “Tax reform, including the contentious introduction of the goods and services tax in 1991, provided Ottawa with a surge of revenue, without hitting up wage earners and businesses.”

Canadians remember their own S&P downgrade