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Other nations’ deficiencies say nothing of our own

Many others, including progressive voices, evinced what can only be described as an affronted patriotism. Twitter teemed with helpful links demonstrating what happens in truly broken countries — mostly the United States, naturally, and mostly involving medical bills.

It’s a bit odd. The crimson library of domestic and international commentary circa 2015-2016 congratulating Canada for electing Western democracy’s last great hope in Justin Trudeau, and for being so tremendous in general — everything Donald Trump’s America is not! — should haunt its authors like an arrest warrant. But at the time, it did produce some very healthy and appropriate (if at times also hyperbolic) backlash commentary.

“Better than our dysfunctional neighbour” isn’t a standard anyone would accept from their family members, those commentators noted. Canada has world-class problems that should make us all wince, they properly observed — none more critical than the mostly shrinking but still massive socioeconomic gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and the horrifying outcomes to which those indicators lead in some communities: staggering rates of suicide, homicide and other violent victimization.









No other country has anything to do with any of that. Other nations’ deficiencies say nothing of our own. Yet it’s clear throughout recent history — perhaps most plainly on health care — that America’s perceived failings in particular have been a convenient excuse for self-styled progressive Canadian governments not to aim higher, better and faster.