Canada

Canada lags behind in everything because our only bar is "slightly better than the USA"

our healthcare lags, but its slightly better than the US

Education lags, but still slightly better than the US (is it?)

We lag behind in resisting populism and facism, but slightly better than the US

The list goes on...

Where does the US have high speed rail?

Plenty of other places to buy cheap panels from. Including Canada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Solar

Solar is so stupid cheap to maintain. Just sit and watch to see if a sensor reads bad values. No moving parts. No water boiling. Works best when it's hot too (when lots of AC is being used).

Probably because it's so uncommon. The only commercially viable tidal generator ever built in Canada (and one of the few in the world) was the one on the Bay of Fundy, and it didn't produce all that much electricity in grid terms (20MW, thank you Wikipedia). You need a lot of tidal water level change to get decent power out of tidal generation, so there are likely fewer sites than you think. Plus, one reason the Bay of Fundy station was shut down was that it was rather hard on the local sea life, although I expect some of the same mitigation strategies used on inland hydro dams could help with that if they wanted to replace it with a new station.

The Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) was a planned community in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada, equipped with a central solar heating system and other energy efficient technologies. This heating system is the first of its kind in North America, although much larger systems have been built in northern Europe. The 52 homes (few variation of size and style, with average above-grade floor area of 145m2) in the community are heated with a solar district heating system that is charged with heat originating from solar collectors on the garage roofs and is enabled for year-round heating by underground seasonal thermal energy storage (STES).[1]

The system was designed to model a way of addressing global warming and the burning of fossil fuels. The solar energy is captured by 800 solar thermal collectors[2] located on the roofs of all 52 houses' garages.[3] It is billed as the first solar powered subdivision in North America,[4] although its electricity and transportation needs are provided by conventional sources.

In 2012 the installation achieved a world record solar fraction of 97%; that is, providing that amount of the community's heating requirements with solar energy over a one-year time span.[5][6]

In 2015–2016 season the installation achieved a solar fraction of 100%.[7][8] This was achieved by the borehole thermal storage system (BTES) finally reaching high temperature after years of charging, as well as improving control methods, operating pumps at lower speed most of the time, reducing extra energy need as well using weather forecasts to optimize transfer of heat between different storage tanks and loops. During some other years, auxiliary gas heaters are used for a small fraction of the year to provide heat to a district loop. The systems operate at coefficient of performance of 30.

But it died after 17 successful years (was only a pilot for 4 years) because Alberta.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Landing_Solar_Community

Canada also has a lot of hydro power. In theory we could use excess solar from the day to pump water up into the reservoir to be used for hydro generation at night or during peak use. It may not be the most energy effecient, but it could be effective at scale and cheap enough to implement before building and investing in physical batteries. I may be wrong but i think there are some places that already do this.

Cold weather does not freeze and destroy batteries. Millions of Canadian car owners have known that since the 50's.

Can the battery not be in the house away from the elements?

Hybrid solar and geothermal is the way to go.