Canada, long a country people came to, is becoming the place where the gap between newcomers and the native-born is on open display, where discontent keeps spreading, and where everyone ends up looking for someone to blame. But look closer. The trained doctor driving a taxi because no one will recognize his credentials, and the family born here waiting months for an appointment, lose at the same counter. The problem is not the other person. It is a public machine that no longer delivers.
Housing out of reach, emergency rooms overwhelmed, wages that stall, queues everywhere: these are not accidents. They are the recurring symptoms of a state that no longer turns its decisions into results. Mwanack K. Matina refuses the two easy options of the moment - blame, or promise the moon. His thesis unsettles by its plainness: happiness is not a mood, it is a capacity - to be housed without being pushed out, to get care without burning out, to work without breaking down, to trust that the rules apply to everyone. And a country that can protect everyday life without tearing itself apart does not just become happier. It becomes influential.
Ten levers, and only ten. Every chapter opens with real lives, names the true causes and the losers, and - rarely - says in advance what would prove it wrong. Nothing is declared true.
A book that looks Canada in the eye. Read it before the next election.