Canada waiting....

Barbra Streisand vowed to emigrate to Canada in 2000 if George Bush were ever elected President, an undertaking she refreshed four years later at the prospect of his re-election. But she was still sufficiently resident in California on September 16 this year to host a $US2500 ($3800) a head fund-raiser for Obama at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The actor Alec Baldwin and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder made similar threats in 2000, as did Robert Redford in 2004, but none has since enriched the Canadian cultural scene.

In fact, Canadian immigration records show that arrivals from the United States actually slowed in the six months after George Bush's re-election in 2004.