I mean in Canada if I understand this correctly, for the most part--save for a few prestigious universities (University of British Columbia, University of Toronto, University of Alberta, etc.), most of them aren't particularly selective right?

I mean that's the thing, in fact, many of my classmates in high school appeared to have aspirations to go to/went to those universities you just listed, or even ones in the US. So those prestigious Canadian universities aren't just an asterix.

Not to mention the fact that schools primarily, if not exclusively centre their attention on grades.

What? Doesn't that contradict the first part I quoted? (unless you're talking about US colleges/universities)

Canadians certainly do care about their grades, lol. Sure, you can pass high school and university courses with a 50%+1 (or that usually equates to a "D" in the syllabus for the course), but I think the vast majority of students feel like shit if they got 55% on a final. I've seen classmates (and tbh, myself included) freak out about getting >85% on a test because you want to get that symbolic "A-" at least, and I guess that's not all that symbolic, as usually an "A-" is a 3.7 on the GPA scale (yes, Canada uses GPAs too) while a "B+" is a 3.3.

I digress. The point is that people here still definitely freak out over their grades because of what they see future employers might think about them. While I'm certainly glad to be attending post-secondary in Canada over the US, I don't want to oversell us as a utopia. Canada has much to improve too. In general, I feel that Nordic countries > mainland Europe > New Zealand > United Kingdom > Canada > Australia >>> the United States

and I hope that's not a controversial thing to state on a social democratic subreddit lol.