What We Love About Canada | Canada Day Special 2026

Happy Canada Day!

In this special Canada Day episode of The Missing Middle Podcast, the team takes a break from focusing on Canada's challenges to share what makes them optimistic about the country's future. From housing reforms and immigration to education, community, nature, and Canadian values, each member reflects on what they love most about Canada and why they remain hopeful.

Topics covered:

• Housing reform and recent progress on zoning and development charges
• Canada's sense of community and belonging
• Education affordability and student experiences
• Immigration and Canada's multicultural identity
• Nature, cities, and public spaces
• Canadian humour, humility, and culture
• Canadian values, civic engagement, and democracy
• Why constructive criticism is a form of patriotism
• What gives Canadians reason for optimism heading into the future

What makes you optimistic about Canada? Let us know in the comments below. 

#CanadaDay #Canada #TheMissingMiddle #CanadaHousing #CanadianEconomy #CanadianValues

Chapters:

YouTube Chapters (8:52)

00:00 Why We're Talking About Optimism This Canada Day
00:40 Cara Stern: Summers, Housing & Reasons for Optimism
01:43 Sean Foreman: Canada's Secret Weapon is Humour
02:57 Kelly Hoban: An American's Perspective on Canada
03:52 Meredith Martin: Nature, Immigration & Hope
05:36 Sabrina Maddeaux: Canadian Values, Kindness & Common Sense
07:48 Mike Moffatt: Why Criticism Is Patriotism

Research/Links:

A History of Tommy Thompson Park

https://trca.ca/news/tommy-thompson-park-history/

Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux

Produced by Meredith Martin

Funded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Happy Canada Day, everyone.

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Yes, happy Canada Day. Today we're doing something a little different. We often spend a lot of time on the show talking about the country's challenges, but since it's Canada Day, we're taking a moment to focus on what makes Canada great and what's making us feel optimistic about the country.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

So you'll be hearing from the whole team, and we'd also love to hear from you. Tell us in the comments what you love about Canada and what's making you feel hopeful.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Summer is finally here, and I love summer in Canada. There's something about having four seasons that makes the summertime extra special. I find our cities really come alive with people who know that they cannot take the warmth for granted. So we're all going to soak it up. And every year it reminds me how lucky I am to live in somewhere that has all four seasons, and I just can't imagine living anywhere else. And I think there's a lot to be optimistic about living in Canada. If you told me a few years ago that we'd be seeing citywide upzoning to fourplexes, sixplexes, even eightplexes in this country, I would not have believed you. But we've seen it happen. And we're now seeing meaningful change on the development charge front, on the taxes applied to new homes. And these are temporary measures, but the fact that they're happening at all shows the politicians are starting to understand how dire the housing crisis is to an extent that was just unthinkable a few years ago. There's a long way to go before the housing crisis is resolved, and a lot more changes that need to come to make these projects viable, not just legal on paper, but there's progress. And it's slow, but it's happening, and that gives me optimism for the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Hello, everybody. I am Sean Foreman. I am the technical director here at Missing Middle. Happy Canada Day. Uh, what do I love about Canada? I I love a lot about Canada, but something I've been thinking a lot about is the Canadian sense of humor. We have created some of the funniest people on the planet, and we are proud of it. Some of our prime ministers have also been kind of funny, some on purpose and others not so much. But I think that this quality goes beyond just laughs. I think humor is connected to humility. And that's a good thing, right? We are a humble country. We are certainly not the most uh powerful country in the world. There is a guy just south of the border who keeps reminding us of that. And uh, we are not perfect, but that is uh okay because if you are humble, you're capable of self-reflection and you can change. And I think Canada has the potential to change for the better. And while we all love Canada, there are some things that need changing. So have a great Canada Day. Maybe you're listening to this at a barbecue. I don't think it's weird to listen to a podcast at a barbecue at all. So don't listen to your friends and have a great Canada Day.

SPEAKER_04 2:56

I'm Kelly, missing middle summer co-op student. I'm currently in university and being originally from the United States with dual citizenship, one of the things I appreciate most about Canada is the accessibility of education here. There's a big difference in university costs and student debt between the US and Canada, and moving here has made me see education as more attainable rather than overwhelming or out of reach. Beyond that, I think the universities here feel very community-oriented. I've built a lot of close friendships since I moved here for school. And since then, Canada has stopped feeling like somewhere I visited when I was younger and started feeling more like home. This is what makes me optimistic about Canada's future. When people feel supported and connected to their communities, it creates a more welcoming country. While there's always room to improve, the support and sense of community I've experienced living here gives me hope for the future.

SPEAKER_05 3:51

My name is Meredith Martin, and I'm the producer of the podcast. And for what I love about Canada, I'm gonna go hyperlocal to Tommy Thompson Park. Like millions of people, I took up bird watching during the pandemic and discovered that I live very close to a migration superhighway for birds. So every spring and every fall, I get to go down and witness thousands of birds migrating into the northern and southern hemispheres. I love it. I also found out that Tommy Thompson was built out of leftover debris from the construction of the Toronto subway system, which I think is pretty wild. It was allowed to rewild over many years, and now it is a phenomenal place to spend time alone in the wilderness and yet within the boundaries of a city that is home to over three million people. If you haven't been, you should go. In terms of what I'm feeling positive about, I am feeling positive about immigration, and I'll explain why. I know this is a topic that we talk about a lot on the show, and some people think of us as being anti-immigrant, and that is the furthest thing from the truth. Canada is a nation of immigrants, and I feel both confident and hopeful that we can figure out a way to align our housing goals with thoughtful immigration policies because that is how we built this country, and we do it better than anywhere else on earth. This summer, my nephew is getting married to an Iranian woman. And three years ago, another nephew of mine got married to a woman from mainland China. So this is very personal for me. I'm now the great aunt of a beautiful baby girl, and what could be more optimistic than babies? Let's have more of them.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

What I love most about Canada isn't the postcard stuff. It's something that I think gets dismissed too easily in the current conversation, which is this country's instinct to look out for people, to try to do right by its citizens and by the world. This isn't a marketing play. You can see it in the way we've shown up historically, whether that's on the world stage as peacekeepers and mediators when other countries weren't willing to play that role, or in the social programs we built because we really believe no one should fall through the floor. There's something in our Canadian culture, an inclination toward kindness, a baseline assumption that your neighbor's well-being is at least partly your business. It does run pretty deep, and I don't think we should just throw it out because it's been taken advantage of lately, or it hasn't always been paired with the rigor it needed to actually work. Because that's really the problem right there. Good intentions without clear thinking, without urgency, without a willingness to take risks or make hard calls, that's not real virtue. It's just comfort. And there are two ways that comfort becomes dangerous. One is external. In an era where those good intentions can be so easily manipulated by private interests, bad actors, or just the incentive structures of social media, kindness without backbone becomes a liability. But the other way is internal. And that's maybe even more corrosive because it turns into complacency. The belief that because we mean well, because we have good values, we're somehow protected from the worst outcomes, that we don't have to do the hard work because we're already on the right side. Our Canadian values should be assets, but we've too often allowed them to be blind spots. Now, what makes me hopeful is I think more and more Canadians are starting to understand this: that holding on to our values doesn't mean being naive about how they get used against us or assuming they'll save us on their own. That work right now that we need to do is to figure out how to actually keep what's inherently good about Canada and its people intact while building the common sense and the spine to act smarter and faster. Now, that's not a small thing to figure out, but I think, in fact, I know we're more than capable of it. And I think the conversation is more serious than it's ever been in my lifetime, including on the missing middle. So today I'm holding on to that and proud of it. Happy Canada Day all.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Here at The Missing Middle, we're often critical of government policies and the people who make them. That's not because we're anti-Canada, it's because we love our country. After all, dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Now we've taken positions that have made those in power uncomfortable, sometimes even angry, and we plan to keep doing it. Yet, despite being a regular thorn in their side, no one in power has ever tried to silence us. The only censorship we face is self-imposed, guided by what we believe is true, appropriate, and helpful. But what makes Canada truly remarkable isn't just the relative lack of government censorship. It's that those same politicians, bureaucrats, and planners that we criticize, they still call us. They subscribe to our Substack, they invite us to meetings, and they seek out our perspective. They want to hear from us precisely because they don't always agree. They see the fundamental value in well-researched, independent opinions. That open-mindedness is what makes Canada great. And I hope we never lose it.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

Thank you so much for watching and listening.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

And if you have any thoughts or questions about what used to be called Dominion Day, please send us an email to missingmiddle podcast at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_03 9:03

And we'll see you next time.