We Were Better Than That

May 27, 2021. The Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar had detected the remains of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.¹

June 24, 2021. The Cowessess First Nation announced 751 unmarked graves at the Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.²

June 30, 2021. The aq'am First Nation announced 182 unmarked graves near the former St. Eugene's Mission School in Cranbrook, British Columbia.³

The Indian Residential School system operated for 113 years. Parliament approved funding for the first three industrial schools in 1883. The last federally funded school, Gordon's Indian Residential School in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, closed in 1996. Approximately 150,000 children passed through the system. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented over 4,100 deaths and called the system cultural genocide.⁴

Throughout the system's entire operation, Canada compared itself to the United States on race. The comparison held.

In the postwar years, while residential schools were still enrolling children, Canadian editorials watched the American civil rights struggle and concluded that this kind of thing did not happen here. The Underground Railroad narrative reinforced Canada as a land of equal opportunity. Ontario's last legally segregated school did not close until 1965. The comparison survived all of it.⁵

When the graves surfaced, the country grieved. Within months, the comparison resumed.

The direction

"At least we have universal healthcare." "At least we don't have their gun problem." "At least we're not that divided." Each sentence follows the same structure. The comparison points down. To the country whose data makes yours look acceptable. The direction is never up. Never inward. The direction is chosen, and the choice determines what you see.

The comparison Canadians make: nobody goes bankrupt from a medical bill here. True. The comparison Canadians never make: Denmark runs a universal system with a median wait of 38 days for hospital treatment. Canada's median wait from GP referral to treatment is 28.6 weeks.⁶

South Korea built universal coverage in twelve years, from 1977 to 1989, and maintains 12.6 hospital beds per 1,000 people. Canada has 2.5. The OECD average is 4.3. Canada ranks 31st of 38 OECD countries on acute care beds.⁷

Six countries outperform Canada on healthcare outcomes in the Commonwealth Fund's most recent ten-country comparison. Canada ranks seventh. The one country it consistently outperforms is the United States.

That is the country a Canadian premier chose when the decision was his own heart. In February 2010, Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams flew to Mount Sinai Medical Centre in Miami for heart surgery.⁸ The minimally invasive mitral valve repair he needed was not offered to him in Canada. "This was my heart, my choice and my health," he said. "I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."

In 2025, an estimated 105,529 Canadians left the country for non-emergency medical treatment. Double the number from a decade earlier.⁸

Canada compares to the one country that performs worst on cost. Six countries with better outcomes operate the same kind of universal system. Canada does not compare itself to any of them.

The comparison runs the same direction on race. "We don't have America's problem." Indigenous people represent approximately 5 percent of Canada's population and 32 percent of the federal prison population. Black Canadians in Toronto represent roughly 9 percent of the city's population and over a third of use-of-force incidents involving Toronto police. Between 2013 and 2022, police-reported hate crimes in Canada more than tripled.⁹

These numbers exist. They are published by Statistics Canada, the Office of the Correctional Investigator, the Ontario Human Rights Commission. They do not circulate the way American numbers do. The comparison absorbs the space where the examination would go.

The European version of the comparison runs the same direction. "We're more enlightened than America." The comparison is always to the six strictest American states on abortion. Never to the thirty moderate ones. And never to Europe's own numbers.

Germany permits elective abortion through twelve weeks, with mandatory counseling and a three-day waiting period. Italy permits it through ninety days, with counseling and a seven-day wait. France extended its limit to fourteen weeks from conception in 2022. Thirty-two of fifty European countries limit elective abortion at twelve weeks or earlier. Forty-seven of fifty limit it at fifteen weeks or earlier.¹⁰

Many moderate American states permit elective abortion through fifteen to twenty-two weeks. That is more permissive than forty-seven of fifty European countries. The comparison never includes these states. The comparison is always to the restriction, never to the median.¹¹

The colonial history comparison runs the same way. Belgium ran the Congo Free State as Leopold II's personal property. The most widely cited estimate is ten million dead. France fought an eight-year war to keep Algeria and tortured tens of thousands of civilians. Britain governed 24 percent of the Earth's land area at the empire's peak, ruling populations on every inhabited continent. The European colonial body count dwarfs anything in American domestic history.¹²

The comparison survived because it only points forward. Never backward.

The mechanism

First, the comparison prevents examination. You do not look at your own data because you are already winning the comparison you chose. Canada's real GDP per capita declined for six consecutive quarters through the third quarter of 2024, falling to levels last seen in 2017. Approximately 85 percent of Canada's GDP growth between 2014 and 2023 was attributable to population expansion, the highest share among G7 countries. Housing reached 11.8 times income in Vancouver and 8.4 times income in Toronto. The national conversation was absorbed by "at least we're not America."¹³

Second, it prevents improvement. You can only improve against an upward comparison or an absolute standard. A downward comparison caps you at one increment above whoever you chose to point at. The All Blacks do not measure against weaker rugby nations. They measure against their own history. Seventy-seven percent win rate across 122 years. The comparison is always internal. Teams that compare downward stay where they are. Teams that compare to their own standard move.¹⁴

The moment a country defines success as "better than them," it has set its ceiling at their floor plus one.

Third, it produces decline. The performance of being better consumes the resource that would address the problem. While Canada performs "better than the US," per-capita GDP falls to 2017 levels and nobody notices because the comparison says "at least." While the institution performs "more aware than previous generations," the primary function degrades. The performance eats the attention that would have caught the deterioration.

The receipt

The performance of being better is how you collect the receipt without doing the work.

Lord Dundas. Connected to the slave trade. In July 2021, Toronto City Council voted 17 to 7 to rename Dundas Street. The initial cost estimate was $5.1 million to $6.3 million. By fall 2023, the estimate had risen to $12.7 million. The city shelved the full street renaming and renamed four civic assets instead.¹⁷

In the same fiscal year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that on-reserve infrastructure maintenance was underfunded by $138 million annually on water and wastewater alone. Thirty-eight First Nations communities remained under long-term drinking water advisories, with forty-one advisories active, some in place for over twenty-five years.¹⁸

The renaming is visible. The boil water advisory is not. The receipt was collected.

The same structure operates at the national level. The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Federal statutory holiday since 2021. Schools observe. Companies issue statements. Social media turns orange. In the same year the holiday was established, forty-five long-term drinking water advisories were active across thirty-two First Nations communities.¹⁹

The suicide rate among First Nations people was three times the non-Indigenous rate. Among Inuit, nine times.

Among First Nations females aged fifteen to twenty-four living on reserve, 15.8 times.

My step kids are Indian-Polish and French Canadian. They split time between two households. They already know how to treat people. They do not need a day off school to learn it. They lose a day of instruction so the institution can collect its receipt.

The pattern is the same in entertainment. The Marvel Cinematic Universe averaged $977 million per film across Phases 1 through 3. Phase 5 averaged $609 million. The Marvels grossed $206 million on a $274 million budget. Audiences did not disappear. Top Gun: Maverick made $1.5 billion. Barbie made $1.45 billion. Inside Out 2 made $1.7 billion.¹⁵

The audience moved to films where the protagonist earned the arc. The receipt was collected. The storytelling paid the cost.¹⁶

The cost always lands on the person the performance is supposed to help.

The luxury

"We're better than the US on healthcare" is said most confidently by people who have never waited 22 hours in an emergency room. The people who have waited do not say it.²⁰

"We're more inclusive" is said most confidently in neighborhoods where housing costs have already sorted out who lives there. The belief is free in those neighborhoods. The cost lands in different ones.

The people who say "we've moved past that" have conditions that were fine before and are fine now. The gap between the belief and reality is experienced by someone in a different income bracket, a different postal code, a different waiting room.²¹

The person who says "we're better than that" and the person who pays for the distance between the belief and the ground are never in the same room.

The species

The belief that your civilization evolved past dominance, hierarchy, and brutality is the oldest unchecked belief there is.

The Indian caste system organized society into four varnas, codified in the Rigveda, thousands of years before European contact. In 2022, India's National Crime Records Bureau documented 57,582 crimes against Scheduled Castes, a 13 percent increase from the previous year. On average, more than ten Dalit women and girls were raped per day. The hierarchy predates colonialism by millennia.²²

The Kingdom of Dahomey participated in the Atlantic slave trade as a supplier. Raided neighboring peoples, took captives, sold them to European traders. The Annual Customs were ceremonial events where hundreds of captives were sacrificed. The kingdom's economy ran on the trade. Hierarchy was not imported. It was domestic.²³

The word "slave" derives from "Slav." The Oxford English Dictionary confirms the etymology. Conservative scholarly estimates place the number of Slavic captives exported to the Islamic world at roughly 400,000. The Ottoman devshirme system conscripted between 200,000 and 300,000 Christian boys over three centuries. Europeans were not the only slavers. Slavery was not European.²⁴

Crow Creek, present-day South Dakota. Archaeologists found the remains of at least 486 people dated to approximately 1325, with evidence of scalping and dismemberment. Before European contact. Only 13 percent of indigenous American groups did not engage in warfare with neighbors at least once per year. Scholarly estimates of annual Aztec sacrifice range from several thousand to tens of thousands. The Inca mit'a system compelled each community to send a seventh of its able-bodied adults for state labor.²⁵

Colorism within Black communities. Caste consciousness among South Asian diasporas. Class stratification within every immigrant community. Every group that has been oppressed reproduces hierarchy within itself.

Every civilization in human history has this. The belief that yours evolved past it is the belief nobody checks.

The system designed for humans

James Madison, writing in Federalist No. 51 in February 1788: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."²⁶

The United States Constitution was designed on the assumption that people are not angels. That assumption is the opposite of "we're better than that."

The electoral college forces geographic coalition-building. A candidate cannot win 270 electoral votes by dominating two population centers. The system requires engagement with conditions across regions. In Canada, the House of Commons has 343 seats. Ontario holds 122 and Quebec holds 78. A party that sweeps those two provinces controls 200 seats. The majority threshold is 172. A majority government can be formed without a single seat from Western Canada, the Atlantic provinces, or the territories.²⁷

The American amendment process requires two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of state legislatures. Thirty-three amendments have been proposed. Twenty-seven ratified. Thirteen states can block any change to the constitutional order. The difficulty is the protection. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms contains Section 33, the notwithstanding clause. A provincial government can override fundamental Charter rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of association, and equality rights, for five-year renewable periods. Quebec has used it to ban religious symbols worn by public servants.²⁸

The American system distrusts the people who hold power. The Canadian system trusts them. One was designed for the assumption that people might not be trustworthy. The other was designed for the assumption that they are.

The American system is louder. Uglier. More contentious. More honest about what humans do with power when nobody is watching. The struggle is visible because the system was built to keep it visible. The countries that pretend the struggle is over are the ones where it goes underground. Underground is where it does the most damage.²⁹

The ground

The comparison held for 113 years of residential schools. It held through the last school closing in 1996. It took ground-penetrating radar to break it. Even then, the belief reconstituted within months.

The question was never "are we better than them?"

The question was always whether what we built is good enough for the people who are counting on it.

The ground at Kamloops gave up 215 answers. Marieval gave up 751. Cranbrook gave up 182.

Nobody asked the question. The comparison was easier.