We're Lucky

Another Canada Day has come and gone. Each anniversary should remind us that Confederation is a work in progress -- and that we still have much work to do. But, Susan Delacourt writes, on this anniversary, we should recognize that we are extraordinarily lucky -- because we are not the United States:

The border between this country and the United States has never been this sharply defined, literally and politically. As many states in America are tumbling back into a resurgence of the virus, Canada and its health-care system are slowly emerging from the crisis in much better shape than our neighbour to the south.

There are two big differences between Canada and the United States: We are not Americans and we have medicare:

Those two big identity differences — our not-Americanism and our medicare program — are not just figments of our imaginative pride anymore. It’s a good thing that Canadians are too polite to be smug.

Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan are all in the nearly-there club, with chart curves that look comfortably similar, rising up to late April or early May, then declining. Only the United States is in the red category on this site, its numbers still on a sharp ascent as of the end of June.

COVID-19, in short, is punching a big hole in U.S. claims to superiority with its allies and Americans themselves are noticing.

One former health-care executive in the United States has been getting a lot of attention in this country lately because of a mea culpa he posted on Twitter. Wendell Potter, who used to work with the Cigna health-insurance firm, said he was sorry for all the lies he used to tell about Canada’s health-care system and pointed to the COVID-19 response in our two countries as proof of which one was better.

Potter’s Twitter thread confessed that big money was spent in his business “to push the idea that Canada’s single-payer system was awful & the U.S. system much better.” Now, however, he said it’s clear “it was a lie & the nations’ COVID responses prove it.”

We're far from perfect. We too have a long history of racism. And, likewise, our policing system has to be reformed. But, on this Canada Day just passed, we should be grateful for what we have and for what we have accomplished.

Image: ottawa.ctvnews.ca