AT HOME IN TORONTO, I told my friend she was PC.

She got mad, and told me indignantly that she had in fact voted for the New Democratic Party (NDP), Canada's democratic socialist (not in the Revolution Books sense of the phrase) third party.

Even after the hysterical handwringing and gnashing of teeth in the American media spread north of the 49th parallel, PC still meant the same thing to Canadians that it always did: the Progressive Conservative party, also known as the Tories, the party currently running the government.

This is a country where even the conservatives are progressive. Peninsula and AALARM, you think you're surrounded by leftists here?

Take a look north.

THE PREMIERS of three (out of 10) Canadian provinces are unabashed NDP socialists, and no one has shipped them off to vacation in the Crimea for it.

In Ontario, health insurance is socialized (not the same thing as socialized medicine). The universities are semiprivate at most. Orwell and D'Souza, take note: we have a Ministry of Multiculturalism. Taxes are through the roof. Recycling, America's new fad, has been commonplace in Canada for years.

Our minister of external affairs is a woman, and our governor-general's name is Hnatyshyn. The First Nations (ie. Native Canadians) have a seat at Canadian constitutional negotiations.

AND WHY shouldn't we be PC (your PC, not our PC)? Canada, after all, is systematically marginalized by American imperialists.

We have to put up with acid rain from Buffalo, Harvard professors who can't handle it when we spell "colour" as it should be in the Queen's English, Bob and Doug jokes, my Gov professor who suggested invading Canada, mockery if our sentences should trail off with a tell-tale "eh."

We also have to put up with Geraldo Rivera, who claims in his new book to have cavorted with Maggie Trudeau, ex-wife of former Prime Minister Pierre, with one sentence burned into the mind of all Canadians: "And right there, the estranged wife of the Canadian Prime Minister proceeded to give new meaning to the term 'head of state.'

Then there was the yellow bio of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (popularity rating 13%, a new record), which noted that in 1962 the would-be PM had a job as a courier for contraband bull semen.

Has George Bush ever had professional but not entirely platonic relations with four Charolais bulls?

STILL, things are OK up north, with our welfare state politics and Euromalaise. Pierre Trudeau, age 71, just fathered a daughter. Ontario Hydro is raping St. James Bay, which at least gives us all something to talk about.

There's only the minor problem--that we're beginning to look less like Sweden and more like a well-mannered Yugoslavia with excellent beer. It's not just the restless Quebecois, but also the West, the Maritimes, and even the Newfies (but of more ethnic/regional jokes than there are buttheads to tell them) are bickering.

And even in times of Balkanization, we still have plenty of Molson.

North of the border, even the conservatives are PC.