72. A typical young professional in Boston or SF lives in a somewhat-renovated multi-family building built between 1890 and 1930. The same professional in Toronto probably lives in CityPlace: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CityPlace
Is CityPlace especially inspiring? No. But...
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A cookie cutter CityPlace condo probably has elevator access, in-unit laundry, and heat pump air conditioning, none of which are common in the old multi-family housing that dominate American cites.
These things don't show up in housing prices, but still matter.
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[That's all for today. I should be able to finish this giant thread up tomorrow. 😄]
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[My past few days were unexpectedly busy re-arranging travel plans around Omicron. Topically, a primary concern was making sure that I don't get caught in a potential border closure! Should have time to finish this up soon. 🤞]
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[Whew, long delay due to, uh, world events. Let's see if I can wrap this up in 2021!]
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73. One the starkest difference in Canadian vs. American housing is insulation.
When I lived in LA I thought that bad insulation was a California thing, but the Boston area is full of $1 million+ homes that are... completely uninsulated?!?
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I'm not sure if this is because of different building standards, older housing stock, or... tradition?
My previous apartment (build in 2007 or so) had drafty double-hung windows, whereas most Toronto housing built after ~1970 is 100% casement windows.
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In Massachusetts, it's not uncommon to put giant pieces of cling wrap over windows to provide some additional insulation/draft protection.
I suppose that this probably exists in Canada, but I've never encountered it there, presumably because most people have much better windows.
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74. Both Canada and the United States are highly suburban but the standard style of suburban development is pretty different.
In particular, even remote Canadian suburbs tend to be denser than American ones.
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This picture reminds me of why new Canadian suburbs are so great. Very high lot coverage, real grids so they can be served by transit, and ADUs are generally legal so in the long run they’re all duplexes. I like the customizations/additions too twitter.com/globeandmail/s…
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Canadian suburbs, especially new ones, tend to place really large single-family homes on small lots, with tiny setbacks and high lot coverage compared to American suburbs.
Here's an example near where I grew up in Pickering, Ontario:
google.com/maps/@43.82961
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And here's another one that I stayed in while visiting relatives in East Gwillimbury (nearly 60 km from downtown!).
google.com/maps/@44.08621
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75. Despite this, the central parts of Anglo-Canadian cities (Quebec is totally different) feel much less dense than central American cities, despite having high nominal density.
Check out the vibe of Cityplace, Toronto (left) vs. Back Bay, Boston (right):
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The big difference is height! Zoning makes it difficult to build taller than four or five stories even in Central parts of Boston, but Toronto is full of highrises.
Building taller means you can fit the same number of people, but leave much more space for things like sidewalks.
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Enough about housing! Let's talk about healthcare!
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76. If you talk to Canadians and Americans about the differences between their countries, it's nearly certain that healthcare will come up, even though Canadians basically don't understand the American system, and Americans basically don't understand the Canadian system.
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77. Canadian healthcare is extremely overrated by both Canadians and (left/liberal) Americans.
Healthcare is a point of national pride for Canadians, so it's nigh impossible to even have a discussion about these shortcomings without offending someone.
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24. In some cases, this fuzzy thing creates serious real-world consequences.
I think that Canadians are unwilling to address the shortcomings in their healthcare system in part because "we have 'free' healthcare and Americans don't" is such an integral part of national identity.
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78. The Canadian healthcare system provides, on average, similar-to-modestly better outcomes than the American one, at ~2/3 the cost as a fraction of GDP.
This is decent, but hardly a point of national pride.
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79. For Americans: the Canadian healthcare system functions sort of like a mediocre HMO. A government bureaucrat decides what care is/isn't worth it, and then that's the care that gets provided. Everything that the bureaucrat decides to cover is ~free at the point-of-care.
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80. This analogy tells you basically all the pros and cons:
Pros:
- Predictable pricing
- Good quality median care
- Egalitarian: your healthcare quality won't depend on your ability to "work the system"
- Good cost control with "utilitarian" aesthetic
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(Re: that last point: American hospitals can be bizarrely fancy.
I once accompanied a friend to Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. The emergency room had crown molding. The surgical recovery room had *plush carpeting*. I was stunned; this is not what Canadian hospitals look like.)
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81. On the other hand, the cons are pretty significant, at least for me.
First, wait times. Like the US, Canada has a significant shortage of doctors. I have not dug into this in detail, but I think it has roughly the same source: not enough medical school/residency slots.
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Wait times, especially for "important but not urgent" healthcare like "elective" surgeries are ridiculous.
Canadians mostly think that this is an inevitable consequence of "universal healthcare", when it's really a sign of a mismanaged labour supply.
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As a child, I waited more than 6 months for a tonsillectomy while being ~continuously on antibiotics (!). A relative of mine waited more than a year for a hip replacement, during which time they basically couldn't walk (!!).
Wealthy Canadians travel to the US to avoid this.
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I was once in an American ENT specialist's office on a Thursday afternoon. They recommended that I get an MRI and warned me that it could be "a bit of a wait".
I asked them how many months it would be; they stared back at me and clarified that I'd have to wait until Monday. 🙃
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82. The second disadvantage is subtler: I broadly refer to it as the low agency or gatekeeper model of healthcare.
Broadly, in Canada, if you have a health problem, the doctor decides what to do about it. In the US, if you have a health problem, *you* decide what to do about it.
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83. In the US, the main gatekeeper of healthcare is your insurance company. If you have the resources, though, you can just ignore what they say and get ~whatever healthcare you want. You can easily shop around for a different doctor if you aren't getting the treatment you want.
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84. In Canada (or at least Ontario), the system is much more centralized. If the government hasn't authorized a treatment,there's little you can do to work around it (except go to another country).
Put another way, Canadians mostly look at all health as public health.
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85. All of this means that if you're trying to solve a health problem that's a huge deal *to you*, but not legibly a big deal to a government bureaucrat, the Canadian healthcare system will fail you.
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For example: I'm not qualified to talk about this in detail, but trans friends tell me that the Canadian healthcare bureaucracy took a long time to catch up to international best practices for gender-affirming care.
The costs of that delay are... enormous. :-(
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87. Let's talk a little bit about higher education.
The best universities in Canada are all large, public universities, roughly equivalent to strong flagship state universities. There's no equivalent of the "Ivy League" or "HYPSM" or equivalently elite American schools.
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88. This has profound effects on the right tail of Canadian education. The most talented Canadian students don't spend their undergraduate years embedded in an ultra-elite crowd.
Overall, this is probably good for society but worse for the most talented individuals.
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IMO, the main advantage of a small, elite university is the *density of potential*: you get to know a lot of people who will go on to become famous scientists, CEOs, politicians.... This provides a ton of social capital to those who attend them.
Dunno if this is net good or bad.
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89. Canadian higher ed tends to be much more structured than American higher ed. At most Canadian universities, students are admitted to a program rather than the school as a whole, and programs tend to be pretty specific and structured.
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For example, the University of Waterloo offers separate programs in CS, CS/Math, CS/Business and software engineering. Most of those also come in co-op/non-co-op versions, and you pick the one to attend *when you apply*.
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This also means that Canadian higher education has a distinctly professional flavor. Many Canadians have undergraduate degree in fields like accounting or nursing.
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In contrast, most universities in the US are almost comically flexible by comparison. There's a lot of emphasis on getting a "liberal arts education". Even the more focused tech schools (MIT, Caltech, etc.) provide a lot of flexibility.
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90. The last major difference between Canadian and American higher ed is the admission process.
The Canadian process is simple and permissive. The American process is *ridiculously complex*.
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In Ontario, here's how you get in to most university programs:
Pick your six best grades in Grade 12-level classes, including any required for the program (e.g., Calculus for engineering programs). Average those together, and compare to a cutoff.
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Sometimes, you can raise your effective average with good performance on math contests, or writing a good essay about leadership or something. But the whole process is formulaic and simple.
To correct for bias, the universities over-admit and weed people out in the first year.
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I can't do justice to the American process here. As an applicant, you write essays, solicit letters of recommendation from teachers, tally up your extracurricular activities, and generally try to come ahead in the all-out prestige battle called "holistic admissions".
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There are entire cottage industries of fancy coaches, consultants, etc. etc. As an outsider, I honestly don't know what to make of it.
This article was retracted on factual grounds, but the *vibe* is spot on. Read it as based-on-a-true-story fiction.
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