They brought a bunch of police dogs into my Canadian high school for a 'random' search.

I saw the principal come into the class I was in and point out a specific kid that she wanted searched.

The distrust of authority that I learned from that experience is without a doubt the greatest lesson I ever got in high school.

That is for sure suboptimal, but it is not necessarily representative of most Canadians’ experiences.

Why does that matter? The point is that it can happen and it's normal enough that the principal just did it and the police just followed up, no questions asked no eyebrows batted. That it's hidden enough is worse, not better for Canada, if it was outrageous there would be outrage and everyone would know - but nobody cares.

It matters because more than zero bad things happen to people in every single country, so we have no choice but to rely on statistics to get a sense for what countries are like and how to compare them. It's this sense of what countries are like in general, statistically, that allows us to say anything intelligent about things like this.

This is representative of my experience.