There is no social safety net. Half my town burned down in a national park, including my own home. You think the Federal government did anything? You think there was any net at all?

The Federal government even had the gall to refuse my 2 year old's passport renewal for example because I only paid the renewal fee, and not an additional fee for the passport getting destroyed before expiration date that was buried under 10 pages of fine print that I missed because we were homeless with a toddler. And they already had my CC# on the application anyway, but because I didn't explicitly mark down the extra fee, the application was refused.

Now we've found a new home in a new town at our own expense, and we can't see a doctor. My 2 year old can't see a doctor. There's not enough doctors and practices won't take on new patients unless you go on a years-long wait list. This is our "free" healthcare. If you're dying, you can go to an emergency room and wait for 8 hours to see a doctor. If you need anything routine you're fucked if you don't have a family doctor. We had one, but our town burnt down and now it'll be years before we have one again.

You know how we access healthcare? We go to Europe. We go to my wife's country of origin twice a year to visit family and get healthcare. I had a surgery there (wait in Canada was 2 years, in the EU I got it done in 2 days), our son has had all his checkups and most of his vaccines done there.

This social safety net is a myth, a theory. It exists until you actually try to access it.

edit - the only help we received was our insurance company, a private corporation. So what's the difference versus the US apart from our much higher taxes and lower wages?

Your first problem is best solved by writing to your MP. Your Conservative MP.

Your second problem is the responsibility of your provincial government. Your Conservative provincial government.

Did you miss the part about it being a Federal park?

I've never really thought we had something resembling a safety net, just a variety of social services that are theoretically available, but only to varying degrees and mostly not in rural areas, which seems to be one of the defining schisms of the last century whether it's suburban -> normal urban or rural -> urban.

On one hand, I guess your tragic situation is exactly what I'd expect private home insurance to cover, aside from burglary and other natural disasters, but on the other it's becoming an annual occurrence anywhere west of Calgary, and like many other tragedies, massive holes are being exposed in the artificially scarce and super inflated stock of available housing in any given area; living in a town in a national park is somewhat exceptional on every front, but having literally no backup plan if a whole town disappears is revealing of comically inept levels of government. I know some Lytton residents! are also basically camping, waiting on help from the province that may never come.

That is to say, some parts of our social service systems and economy work—or at least aren't horribly broken—if and only if nothing unexpected happens or we don't grow or shrink population wise or culturally at all. There's basically no margin.

One could say things would be better with more money, but that's just a matter of degree, it's not like GDP going up would automatically prevent displacement or create more doctors, it would just give individuals a bit more leverage potentially when something bad happens. We desperately require better feedback loops tied into the bedrock of our society, better incentives.

The problem isn't the non-existence of a social safety net per se, the problem is our taxation rate is as high as countries with a functional social safety net, but we don't actually receive those services.

Both the US and European models are valid IMO. But in Canada we get the worst of both.

I don't really understand how the U.S is supposed to work, but I agree with the problem.

Americans on average make nearly 60% more than Canadians right now, not including the massive difference in taxation (you hit like 40% total tax rate at like $70k USD in Canada).

Keep in mind when you google Canadian tax rates, you see the federal rate. The provincial rate is another 10-15% on top, plus sales taxes which can total over 10%.

Family doctor and ER are not your only two options - you can go to a walk-in clinic. Some of them even take appointments.

I know this is true in Alberta (I assume you lived in Jasper?)

There's far fewer walk-in clinics today than 20 years ago. And a total of zero in the town I relocated to.