That Canada is a more statist country than the U.S. should be no secret to anyone here, but that being said there is a distict divide within the Liberal Party as to how that manifests itself vis a vis how they approach the rest of the world. I'll try and illustrate...
Canadians by and large favor a strong social safety net. Those of us on the right disagree with much of this on a fundamental level in terms of how far it should go but it's a fact of life we live with. Where the Liberal split occurs is what the result of this "social consience" says about Canada and Canadians to the rest of the world.
Chretien (leftist) Liberals like to run around bragging to the world how compassionate a country Canada is and telling the rest of humanity how they should emulate us, all the while letting the reality on the ground deteriorate for Canadians if any logical fix steps one step outside their little ideological box.
Martin Liberals would seek to build a country that focuses on Canada first, and let everyone else look at Canada and say "Hey...you've got an interesting approach to that problem. Can you tell us how you did it?"
More simply, imagine this:
Chretien is the guy at the bar that makes a point of loudly announcing to everyone else how great a guy he is while in fact he's nothing more than an arrogant buffoon. Martin would be the guy who never says anything but everyone else at the bar knows he would help anyone who asked. Both are still Liberals who believe in the power of the state to affect change but Martin should prove to be far less ideologically rigid. People like that are usually more willing to look at different approaches that are somewhat out of the Liberal box if it appears there's a chance they will actually work better.
People who don't fundamentally believe they have the definitive answer to every question generally are less arrogant and open to the ideas of others. I hope for my country's sake I'm reading this right. Time will tell.
Thanks.