Forget reason. Just call it "American" and it is as good as dead in this country. Choice in health care, accessibility to firearms, or any individual freedom for that matter all inherited the "American" stigma and have never quite recovered.

Take for example Molson's "I am Canadian" rant. Touted as bottled Canadian pride, the ad best illustrates how nationalism is rooted in the mockery of all things south of the border. "I speak English and French, not American. And it is pronounced zed, not zee, zed."

Even tax relief was passed-off as an American peculiarity. Not long ago, the Prime Minister told Canadians to move to the US if they want tax cuts. Many did just that. And the brain drain continues.

So you would expect that the guardians of Canadian political thought would embrace non-American ideas like the flat tax. Republican leader George Bush and even Newt Gingrich kiboshed the tax reform model in the US primaries. "Even their right wing NRA friends, Charlton Heston, and their televangalist friends in the United States, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye and all the other ones of that ilk, reject the flat tax," said Liberal MP Lynn Myers.

By Canadian standards, if Americans reject an idea like the flat tax, socialized health care or gun registration, then low and behold there must be something to it. Instead of taking a serious look at the flat tax or single tax, the Liberals now dismiss it on the spurious grounds that even the Americans reject it. If that were the test, the Liberals would have long ago forsaken those non-American traditions like Medicare, bilingualism and the letter zed.

The single tax is commonly mistaken for a flat tax. Under a flat tax, all income is taxed equally, with no special deductions, credits or different tax rates for different scales of income.

The single tax, now championed by Alliance leader Stockwell Day and in the past by Liberal MP Dennis Mills, is less ambitious than the flat tax but light years ahead in simplicity and fairness over the current three-tier income tax system. The centerpiece of the plan calls for a single 17 per cent tax, instead of the three existing rates of 17, 25 and 29 per cent. Under the single tax, all Canadians would get personal tax relief.

One repeated criticism of the plan is that it fails the "progressive" test. Wrong. The Alliance's single tax purports to lift nearly 2 million low-income earners off the tax roll. It practically exempts minimum wage earners from paying any federal tax as well.

The plan calls for a generous $10,000 personal and spousal deduction and a $3,000 child deduction for all families. For a family of four, their first $26,000 would be tax-free.

Behind the rhetoric lurks the real reason why the single tax is feared by the so-called champions of the downtrodden - envy. Their major objection is that a single-rate tax gives a larger tax cut to the wealthy. True, but look at it another way.

A family of four earning $60,000, or twice the amount of a low-income family will pay nearly $6,000 in federal tax or ten times more than the family with only a $30,000 income. The tax is still progressive because the wealth creators are still paying a proportionately greater share of their income in tax.

To the Liberals, it doesn't matter how much low-income families benefit from the single tax so long as the well heeled are paying through the nose.

Canadians should flat-out embrace a single tax or a flat tax solution. Not only is it good for Canada but it is one idea we can call our own.