Canada, as a nation, has a curse. Well, probably many, given how it is basically an entire nation built on Native graves, but there is one in particular that makes my bonnet buzz. That curse is our proximity to a somewhat more built-over complex of indigenous burial grounds. The "somewhat" is the crux of this hex with which we are so afflicted.
Here in Canada, we pride ourselves on being nice, reasonable people who are very proud of our universal health care. These are lies. I offer the obligatory apology for pointing this out. But, they are. We are no nicer, no more reasonable than our neighbours to the south, and our health care can only look like a public universal plan when contrasted with the no-holds-barred orgy of morbid greed that is the American system. So, better? Yes. Good? Eeennhh....
But, there's a sort of complacency that comes with being Canadian. However bad our governments, at least they're not like they are Down South; however bloated and ineffective our medical systems, at least we have it better than the Americans; however deeply and inherently racist our laws, at least we abolished slavery before the Americans. I've heard Canadian identity described before as "not American", and I feel that rings true. And it's something many of us seem to be self-congratulatory about.
I know I've been there. My puberty and the War on Terror started at about the same time. I described myself as a Communist, I listened to Godspeed You! Black Emperor (saw them live, even), I grew my hair long, and I once stuck a sign critical of capitalism on a vending machine. And the American Empire was the antithesis of everything I wanted to believe in. How dare they elect Bush? Damn them and their Coca-Cola! Their McDonalds! Their bad politics, paid-for medicine, and judgement of people with darker skin tones! Damn them all! Oh, yes: I've been there.
But, I learned something. And I don't know if you know this, but, apparently, Americans... are people, too. Quel choc. And I'd argue people far more similar to Canadians than we'd care to admit. Sure, things seem to get pretty wild down there, but if you had ten times more neighbours than you do now, and an extra 5 to 10 degrees on the daily temperature, you might go a bit loopy, too.[1]Or you are possibly from Mumbai and are more well-adjusted. Admittedly, I'm not sure how prevalent the I-Am-Canadian-type smugness is among Canadians who were least likely to be represented in a Molson ad before Gen Z invented wokeness.
Sure, they like (American-style rugby) football and we like hockey, but subjecting young men to head injuries for our entertainment in exchange for millions of dollars is something we still agree on.
That can't stop us feeling superior, though. And that is a curse. I worry at how much injustice Canadians will tolerate, especially given the galling freefall of the Overton window in American politics. Because we are far from immune. We, too, have fascist movements; we, too, have antisocial billionaires pushing legislators into removing legal safeguards. And at least the diffuse nature of American policing offers some small protections. Here, your local police are pretty likely to also be the federal police. And if you think a close-knit group of big Wall Street firms are dangerous, imagine how easy collusion is for half-a-dozen banks controlling 90+% of the market.
But, what about the universal health care? Why, that's as Canadian as maple syrup, and is surely objectively better than the American way of doing things. That second bit is at least true, but it's a low bar to pass. In a 2021 comparison of the 11 most "developed" countries' health care performance, the United States ranked dead last. Canada ranked, of course, second-last. And, yes, it's fairly distant, but we don't hear parliamentarians talking about outdoing the Swiss on health care. So we permit ourselves the inadequacies, nonetheless. "I may have waited 6 hours in a crowded ER to get a handful of codeine-lace paracetemol for a twisted ankle, but at least I didn't have to pay for it like some dumb American!"
How far does our tolerance of being second-worst (so long as "worst" is the United States) go? Will we permit authoritarian grift if it has a better haircut? Will we sit idly by as our police harass innocent people, so long as they occasionally pull out their fancy red serges? Will we watch braindead cable news feeds of our military murdering innocent foreigners so long as the channel is run by a Crown corporation and the maple leaf shines brighter than the blood spilled in its name? How far, Canada, will we fall, so long as we can see we haven't yet hit the bottom?
I love Canada. At least, I love the things I was taught about this country, even if they were lies. I want to live in a welcoming, multicultural country that offers freedom and prosperity to all people. I want to live in a country with progressive values but conservative caution toward destabilising change. I want to live in a country with a proud history of keeping the peace and protecting the innocent from injustice. That country doesn't have to be a lie. A country is just a set of ideas, not some fixed, unchanging shape on a map. We can choose which ideas we want, instead of letting extractivist corporations and their ideologically-empty stooges in Parliament choose for us. I am Canadian, and I want that to mean something.