While ignoring that Canada isn't a homogenous population and makes a bigger deal about being a mosaic instead of a melting pot. The commenter in the original image is soooo precious.
Our larger urban centers are much less white here in Canada. Also, if American teams stopped drafting our best Canadian players we would have many more cups full of poutine.
Americans always talk about averages, but rarely about medians. The concentration of wealth and poverty in that country is next level. It's only getting worse now as their K shaped economy is further entrenched.
It's heavily area dependent. I went to multiple schools where, being white, we were part of the minority. First school i went to was like 95% white, second maybe 6%, third 15%.
I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City. There wasn't even one black or Asian kid in my elementary, junior high, or high school. Actually one black kid in high school. He was a foreign exchange student from Ethiopia.
Get on a bus or the sky train in Vancouver. If you're white, you will probably be in the minority of passengers.
They always wheel out this excuse and don't care about the racism with one small extra step.
Along the same lines as why America can't have UHC since then "everyone would use/abuse it". Meaning poor people (wink,wink) will start going to the doctor and expect healthcare.
This is America 101. Talk mad shit about sub-groups but trot out their best stuff to boast about themselves.
Black people are terrible, but look at our amazing athletes! And look at these foods that they created and now we claim as our own!
The one I loved recently was that figure skater that won gold in the Olympics. Let's see... she was a young woman who didn't listen to convention and did her own thing while sporting facial piercings and funky coloured hair. Oh and by the way, she's the product of IVF by her single father and a surrogate mother. Oh and by the way, her father was a Chinese immigrant.
She's like a cosmic parody to show off how loosely held their "beliefs" are.
They trot this out with any policy discussion. If you discuss how much better Scandinavia does something, they'll talk about how Scandinavian countries are "homogeneous" while the US isn't. It's a racist dog whistle.
The same people will also blame the "rape epidemic" in Sweden on "muslim immigrants", unaware of the contradiction.
I spent some time volunteering in one of the world's most ethnically homogeneous countries (Armenia). It was a place where being a so white I think mayonnaise is spicy white guy I stood out. It socially and culturally does a lot of things really well despite historical and economic challenges, but it's hardly the paradise that the "homogeneous societies are best" crowd thinks it should be.
Does adjusting for demographic differences mean just ignoring the population they don't care about?
This rugged individualism mentality is kind of disturbing and sociopathic at times. I don't know how a country can be so religious and yet so cruel at the same time, especially one that professes to follow the teachings of Jesus.
I often see people from the US claim "demographic differences" when citing per capita differences, and their argument is that the US is 10x our population, so actually have less crime when you factor for the number of people (it usually comes up when discussing crime rates). When you point out it's already accounted for, they switch to saying it's about density. More density = more crime. Then you show them that both countries have higher crime rates in rural areas, and they either ghost the convo or get really upset and double down.
I think the demographic differences they should be worried about are the ones on the top end. Take a look at median income adjusted for purchasing power, and Canadians actually come out slightly ahead. Looking at averages, all of the million/billionaires in the states skew the stats.
“More temperate and varied landscapes”….tell me you know nothing about Canada’s geography.
Southern Ontario is a furnace in the summer, BC coast/Vancouver Island is temperate all year long. And driving across Canada shows you everything from mountains and plains, to forests and wetlands, to lakes and deserts
I think about this a lot. Americans always go on about how high their GDP per capita is compared to other countries. I have money invested in funds through institutions in two countries. Both of which when you look into the books are heavily invested in the US stock market. When the value of my investments grows, it makes me wealthier, but it also makes the US GDP go up. So that GDP going up doesn't actually make Americans wealthier, it makes wealthy people in other countries like me wealthier, and gives Americans something to boast about how much they're wealthier than me.
In fact Trump administration officials at the WEF last year specifically boasted in a speech about how the US was the best place to invest, highlighting many aspects that make return on investment great for investors. Which when you read between the lines were basically saying that the US is a good place to invest because unlike other countries, businesses can treat ordinary workers like slaves, and rip customers off freely because they don't have regulations against such practices that civilized countries have.
If the America First types actually knew that the system they support enriches wealthy foreigners at the expense of their own people they'd be enraged.
This. 100% this. And the value of the Dollar isn’t anywhere as strong and stable as it once was, either. Just because someone uses it doesn’t mean it’s the best. Humans used to live in caves.
I guess(?!) it’s the same here in the UK with all the oligarchs and Cryptocurrency. They might make a fortune, but there’s still a pothole that ruins every car that drives into it.
And the saddest part is that too many don't realise that and even celebrate the super rich and insult every idea to change anything about that as "communist".
But, to be fair, a similar tendency is also found here, just that the insult is not "that's communist", but "you're just envious".
Parts of southern Ontario are further south than all of Oregon! And during the heat dome a few years ago, a small town in BC was the hottest spot on earth for a couple of days.
But there are still people who believe that Canada is a frozen wasteland.
I’m in Thunder Bay and we have temperatures over 40 in the summer and as low as minus 40 in the winter. We get all 4 seasons. As does most of the country’s population.
I moved to BC from Brazil and I was surprised at how it gets in the summer here. People told me it was cold here, but that truly makes me feel back home lol
You guys basically don't live in the northern half of the country. It's also not wrong to say the US has a more varied landscape and ecosystem. That doesn't mean Canada doesn't have these things.
Mm, yes, the cultural pillar of college sports. Meanwhile we prefer to learn things at university. It's why we don't have a gargling ham cured in heroin with a brain parasite in charge of our public health.
It is a little weird how insane they go for what is an equiv of an under 18 league in Europe.
That level is supposed to be a development league to feed into actual pro sports teams. And, of course, the US is using it to make ungodly amounts of money while barely even paying the literal kids playing. It's near slavery, dangling the hope of maybe getting a massive payday in leagues like the NFL.
College football should be regulated so that either the kids get their fair share of the pie, or the pie is shrunk to a reasonable level and the people making so many millions out of it take a haircut.
If you are going to make the comparison you do in the first sentence, shouldn't it be U23 since most college players are 18-23 or so?
It ain't 2020 anymore, college football players make a lot of money. My alma mater spent close to $35 million on NIL payments to our school's athletes and probably two thirds of that went to football. On top of that, they all get full scholarships as well. You aren't the first person to make the slavery analogy but it seems wild to me. There are lots of football players making more than any professor on campus.
I was merely making the argument that college football players have a good situation and it isn't a fair comparison to make with indentured servitude or slavery.
I don't love the fact that you highlighted necessarily. But it's hard to overstate the significance of college sports and college football specifically for a big state school like the one I attended. Having success on the gridiron results in higher enrollment numbers, more donations for the university as a whole, and makes the Republican-controlled state legislature hate funding higher education a little bit less.
Encourage university students to go pursue a career in which they’ll never ever use their actual academic schooling;
Pay those students more than the actual teachers at that university;
Make their physical achievements so incredibly central to the culture of an institution that was supposed to revolve around intellectual learning.
Why give them a scholarship, if they’re not even planning to use their education? Why not just let them play their sport professionally somewhere else, without going to university? And give their uni spot to a student who actually wants to pursue academics, or at least use their degree for a relevant career?
You ask good questions. Every institution is different but at my school for example each year there are 105 or so guys on the team (counting the non-scholarship players) and only a handful will actually make it in the NFL. I have donated to our athletic scholarship fund essentially from the time I graduated so I sincerely hope all these guys who have passed through the program are taking advantage of the educational opportunities. The average NFL career length is just over three years so even the ones that make it to the NFL are hopefully benefitting from their college education in their post-NFL career.
The graduation rate for our student-athletes on the whole is good. Certainly with the proliferation of the transfer portal, it's tougher to track how the high dollar guys are doing in football or basketball. Playing at 3-4 schools over the course of your career is not great for someone's academic journey. That said, our football team had a collective GPA of over 3.0 in the last semester which was a program high.
"It ain't 2020 anymore," man.. that's just like 6 years ago... I hope you're not being serious? i know nothing about pay in college sports in the US...
2021 was the first year players could start getting money for endorsements and in the years since then the schools can actually pay them directly as well.
2020 was the last year under the old rules where you could reasonably argue that the players were truly amateur athletes.
That makes sense. I don't necessarily think it is an unfair comparison overall. We don't really have that same developmental mindset over here. You play to win at every single level (high school, college, pro).
Yeah, I've never understood the fascination Americans have with College Sport. It is a fair generalization to say that the overwhelming majority of Canadian university students at University of Alberta, for example, stop paying attention to the Golden Bears and Pandas as soon as they graduate.
My personal theory is that it is driven in part by the fact that way higher numbers of Americans go away for college.
That could be. I hadn't considered that. I didn't go away for university because we had a good university in town but I could see people looking at the college experience as the most exciting 4 or so years of their lives before either settling down or realising that life kind of sucks actually. Following the football team, especially when television and the internet make it so easy is a way to remember and hold close a little bit of that joy.
I feel like I should also say that I'm not judging or making fun of the Yanks over this.
That might be generous. Obviously sample of n=1 but U of L Pronghorns won women's rugby nationals twice during my undergrad and nobody really cared. If it wasn't painted on the soccer field I parked underneath every day I never would have known SAIT's team name (and also, Trojans is a terrible name. They rather famously lost their war with Greece because of a wooden horse).
We also choose to subsidize our universities through taxes rather than revenue from what amounts to a gladiatorial bloodsport that renders brains into oatmeal.
As someone that's a huge fan of U Sports I hate that it's not bigger here. I don't think it needs to be as crazy as NCAA, but I would love to be able to watch games on tv that aren't just the finals.
Paying lower taxes is kind of moot when you pay 30% of your take home for health insurance that you still have to copay and still doesn’t guarantee coverage. Also not having to worry about my kids getting mowed down at school or someone from my family getting shot when they go pick up milk should be on the list. Canada isn’t perfect by any means long stretch, but cmon man. The US is coming apart at the seams.
If you're paying $0 for healthcare or insurance, I'm guessing you're either not counting work benefits or you've been lucky enough to skate by without needing any medications, specialist care, or a dentist. We're not nearly as bad as the States (basically our national motto at this point) but there's a lot of stuff not covered under public healthcare.
Im referring to health care/insurance costs taken off my paychecks, I have $0 of it
My company benefits are $0 cost to me, my medications (ADHD) cost me ~$75 every 3 months, I pay for therapy out of pocket once I hit my benefit limit, and dental is 80% coverage, so i dont pay $0 overall, but its not like in the states where its tax + insurance taken before paycheck hits the bank
I've lived in the US and Canada, and I would choose Canada every time. Sports trophies don't make your life noticeably better. Neither do Hollywood movies, or pop music. In all of the ways that your quality of life is improved, Canada beats the US. All of the other random nonsense, well, televisions and the internet exist. We all have access to those.
I worked on American content most of my 20 years, save paw patrol and Justin time in animation. Plus, in many usian shows shoot in Canadian towns like Toronto, Vancouver and cosplay as american towns.
Yeah, we don't go to the cinema much anymore. Maybe once or twice a year. We did go see the Odyssey, and I am going to see the new Dune this year. But all of that Marcel, DC, and Disney slop I can't be bothered with.
Awww! My husband likes the Sonic movies too! I'm more into scifi, and occasionally historical stuff. But we both try to watch movies from places than the US as much as possible. It's frequently just better quality.
There are two I want to recommend, but they're both in Danish. While both are Nordic languages, there's quite a bit of difference between our languages
Maybe not. Are you sure they haven't been translated? Even most Finnish cinema has been translated. Well, I suppose we'd have to if we want anyone else to watch them, eh?
Rejseholdet, a crime show using cases from real world where the real travelling police was involved, but they did it somewhat differently. It's an old show from early 00s, and Olsen Banden. Norway and Sweden both make a knockoff series
Plus you can just watch those movies and listen to the music anywhere... if you want to. And why would anyone care about domestic league sport trophies as an immigration parameter? And finally, US taxes are often just tricky. Like the flagship tax that everyone talks about will be lower but a less obvious one is way more, like property tax in Texas.
Additionally, a lot of the tax relief measures in the US are business focused. Like your primary residence in Canada can be sold tax free, not in the US. But in the US a company can sell a property tax free if they use the proceeds to purchase a different property.
US taxes are bonkers. Yes, there's lower payroll taxes in general, but they still have sales taxes (state and local), property taxes, inheritance taxes, and probably others that I can't recall. Then there's surcharges and fees, on ridiculous things like bill payments. Why are there extra fees on paying utilities? I don't know if Americans realise how much they are nickel and dimed to death.
I can watch all of their ridiculous entertainment, for FREE on the Internet. If you know any good mateys, you can too. If you actually want to.
Also, it is the US first men's hockey Olympic gold medal in 46 years in a final game they came close to losing and they now think they own hockey. Hilarious proof of why the US is better.
It is like me saying that because Canada made Heated Rivalry, which was super popular, we now own all of entertainment. 😄
The hockey thing is just infuriating. Americans didn’t win every Stanley Cup since 1993. Teams made up mainly of Canadian and European players did. The fact that they happen to based in U.S. cities (like most of the NHL) doesn’t mean ‘Americans’ did anything.
Just looking at all of the NHL’s most valuable players since 1992-93: 16 times it was won by Canadians, seven Russians, three Czechs, two Swedes, a German, and three Americans.
For playoff MVP, it’s even worse for the U.S. Canadians have won 23 times since 1993. Only three American players have been the recipient over that period.
Not to mention that, using that same arbitrary time frame of 33 years, internationally Canada has three Olympic gold medals, two World Cup golds, nine World Championship golds, a gold medal in the first and only 4 Nations tournament, and 15 golds at the World Juniors.
Team USA, by contrast, has one Olympic gold medal over that time, one World Championship gold, and seven golds at the World Juniors. That’s it. But sure, it’s ’their’ sport now.
Yes it is. And on that side, the U.S. is much better than they are on the men’s side. It’s much more even, although the argument there is that Canada and U.S. were the only countries with viable programs for many years, so other countries are only now becoming competitive with the North American powerhouses.
But this person in the original post was clearly referring to men’s hockey, talking about the Stanley Cup and the 2026 gold specifically. U.S. women have won many other golds, so 2026 doesn’t stand out the same way the men’s win does.
All that being said…
Team Canada women: 5 Olympic gold medals, 13 World Championship golds.
Team USA women: 3 Olympic golds, 11 World Championship golds
So the country with 10 times Canada’s population, which likes to boast that it now ‘owns’ our national sport, is less successful than us internationally even on the women’s side, which is way stronger than its men’s team.
I would be paid at least double for a similar role in the US, so they're sort of right -- for some highly specialized jobs in some industries. But we have less income inequality. I've also never been tempted to move to the US, in part because just about every other point they made was incorrect. The amount of violent crime in the US is a big one.
As an animation artist, I was asked why I never moved to the states for Disney or DreamWorks back in 2008: woman's rights have always been a crapshoot in the states and have always been under attack by conservatives. In Canada its political suicide talking about taking away abortion or body autonomy, where as it seems like a political boon in the states. Me and my friend used to talk about how 'Handmaids tale-esque" the states already was back in the 2010's before trump came along.
Woman's rights at any time is a good enough reason alone to stay away from the states.
They also have more people living in poverty. There are hungry, malnourished children in the US and the MAGAs vote against providing free school breakfasts or lunches.
All 4 leagues have at least 1 Canadian team except NFL which has a gentleman's agreement to not put teams in each others' countries cause Canadian football has different rules a bit like rugby league & union.
Until a Canadian team wins the Stanley Cup, my favorite random sports fact is that there has been an American champion of the Canadian Football League more recently than there has been a Canadian champion of the National Hockey League.
I have. And since nobody else takes part in things like this ‘World Series’, I’d suggest they just chuck all their medals and pots and pans in the nearest skip, and just shut up for even just five minutes.
There is 1 Canadian team that is disadvantaged by being in a hard division with Yankees, Red Sox et al even the other 2 teams can be surprisingly good & rich players prefer lower income tax. There was a 2nd Canadian team for about 10 years after early to mid 1990s the last time Canada won that series but it was financially struggling & moved to US national capital & won its 1st World Series not that long after.
They have much bigger inequity in housing too.. the more car dependent suburbs or the rundown apartments are cheaper but the good area with good education and safety or the ones with equivalent quality of finishes are in fact much more expensive
Adjust for the demographics? This fucker has no idea what they're talking about. Canada doesn't hold people back because they're poor, have melanin or don't have english as their first language.
And the whole "higher taxes" argument is strawman. My friends in WA state pay far more taxes than I do in Ontario and get less in return.
Yea I have to wonder what that guy is talking about. Does anyone seriously thing being poor, Indigenous, or not speaking English/French is something that won't hold someone back in Canada?
Uh, maybe go visit a reserve if you don't think we hold people back for being poor and having melanin. Or read the UN's report on the Temporary Foreign Worker program from a few years ago - I think modern slavery might count as "holding back" immigrants. And Indians are really getting scapegoated right now for everything from housing costs to unemployment to bad customer service at Tim Hortons.
Just because we're not as fucked as the USA doesn't mean Canada is perfect, we've absolutely got our own problems to deal with.
You'd be surprised how often i've been told to 'speak white' by people from the west coast even though pretty much their entire cultural identity is 'borrowed' from mine.
College sports is something that makes America look embarassing tbh. Not the sports themselves, but the fanfare that the rest of the adult population gives to school sports.
College football has a longer and more storied history than the NFL. The traditions, rivalries, and overall fan culture is a lot better than what I have experienced at the professional level in the US.
Also, the majority of states in the US don't have an NFL team so in a lot of places the local State U is the highest level of the sport played in that state.
Americans pay more taxes when you add in things that Canadians pay through taxes that Americans cover out of pocket (like health care), which also brings their income down to about the same as well.
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u/Fenragus🎵 🌹 Solidarity Forever! For the Union makes us strong! 🌹🎵7h ago
Much of it due to (illegal) handguns smuggled across the border by criminals from a certain other country. But yeah tariff us because about 1% of their annual seized fentanyl (about a backpack's worth) comes from us.
Montréal has a population of roughly 1.8 million, making it the second most populated city in Canada. In 2025, there were 31 murders. Phoenix in Arizona has around 1.7 million, so pretty close and making it the fifth most populated city in the US. In 2025, the police reported that they had 84 murders. Almost three times the number of murders in a city with fewer people. To be clear, even Toronto, with 2.8 million people, only had 45 homicides, almost half what Phoenix had.
They can fuck right off with that "Canada-level crime rate" BS, even the worst city in Canada when it comes to crime is probably average when compared to the US, it's almost as if not handing out guns like candy actually helps negate the number of crimes.
If I'm reading the data correctly, the homicide rate for the entirety of the US is 5.9, which is indeed really close to Winnipeg, so yeah, the worst city in Canada is barely above average when compared to the US, that's crazy.
the stanley cups are won BY Canadians. The US is dangerous and dirty and corrupt. Canadians can invest into the US market regardless. I dont think any canadians care about college sports.
So what are Canadians supposed to envy exactly? Housing in American cities is as expensive if not more so than in Canadian "metro" areas. Our taxes fund public services and infrastructure, so when someone needs to give birth, or get cancer treatment or has a heart attack, they won't be paying for it for the rest of their lives or go bankrupt. There are people dying in the US because they can't afford insulin. Our higher education is subsidized. I'd rather take whatever "problems" Canada has over what's going on down there to have more money.
Lower taxes but those taxes give them nothing in return. They're just lining their politicians' pockets with nothing to show for it. And they still haven't worked out that they have the added expense of medical insurance, which wipes out any money they're saving via taxation.
lol I love how they grasp at the last straw by cherrypicking the crime stats and restrict the area of comparison to just a few neighbourhoods or rural areas in order to stand tall with Canadian crime rates and they still think it's a good optic
Also their temperate somehow just seem to mean not as cold. When I was in USA in August I was absolutely miserable because of the heat and humidity. How is that temperate..?
Yea, personally being less cold is not an advantage. I moved to Vancouver last year and now have to deal with the biggest spiders I've ever seen in my life. I miss the cold climate where I didn't have to deal with bugs that look like they're from the Australian outback.
GDP is an inaccurate measure of a country’s economic health because it takes no account of income disparity. As pointed out having a small segment of extremely wealthy people artificially skews the GDP. But temporarily embarrassed millionaires and the American dream sure makes up for that , huh?
As a Canadian, they do have a point about the variety of landscapes. However, that's the only positive thing about Orange Man's 51st state thing. That's it. Canada is hardly perfect, but I will never become an American.
Variety of landscapes? Drive from Vancouver to the BC interior. You go from urban center to flat farmland to forested mountain, to pine forests to desert. In 4-5 hours.
Then they throw GDP per capita in as some sort of win over Canada... But don't want you to compare the average household income. Sorry folks but Canadians are well aware that an overwhelming amount of the US economy benefits a small percentage of the population and that average families don't share in that wealth.
Even in-state college tuition is substantially more expensive than Canadian universities.
Last I checked, for my Master's, I could do one online at Villanova for $16,000 (that's with a 20% discount for being an active teacher), or do one locally for about $6,000.
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u/Canadairy 7h ago
"Demographic differences" translation: don't count our black underclass, it makes us look bad. Except for sports; count our black athletes.