The Best Country In The World? Oh, Really?

That is my usual reaction when I hear fatuous Canadians blather about the True North Strong and Free.  I usually want to grab them by the collar and say something like "And how many countries have you lived in?"  I really have no patience with daft nationalism.  It is a reptilian brain based emotion that is immune to logic or reason.

This is not to say that I don't like my country.  It's just that I don't love it.  Happy Canada Day.  Does that make me a bad Canadian?  No, my hating hockey is what makes me a bad Canadian.  I was born here.  I suppose I have always taken living in this country for granted.  Now that I travel more I am always glad to come home.  I suppose this is a sign that I actually do like it here,  and that I am less inclined these days to take living here for granted.

There are times that I do come close to loving Canada: David Suzuki helps, given everything he has done to raise our awareness of our obligation to protect the environment out of consideration for other life forms and future generations.  When recent immigrants go all wide and teary eyed and gobsmacked about this beautiful new country they have landed in.  When I was in hospital last year for a week, remembering that in the US, even with Obama Care I would be in hock for hundreds of thousands of dollars.  The way we do multiculturalism.  Here, we don't merely tolerate cultural diversity, we embrace and celebrate it.  We are the world's most successful nation at multiculturalism and every time I hear the dreadful voice of Donald Trump or the growing anti-immigrant right in Europe I get all warm and fuzzy about my beloved country.

We need to improve.  We need to work on our public health care system, particularly integrate dental treatment and pharmaceuticals into our national care plan so that no one, regardless of lack of funds, should have to go without dental care and medication.  We need to step up going off fossil fuels and accelerate the process at becoming completely renewable energy dependent.  And something needs to be done, fast, to address the growing gap between rich and poor.  That my city, Vancouver, has the most robust economy and also the greatest homelessness crisis in Canada should give us pause.  And there's our awful climate, and I mean winter, and no I don't think it's a good idea to wait for global warming to turn this country into a subtropical paradise.

I imagine that on a global scale we are doing pretty good.  We've recently been rated second after Germany by one of the UN think tanks as the best country in the world so we must be doing something right.  We only need to guard against complacency, work harder on our environment and on protecting the poor and we will be one step closer to heaven.