SVG is a series of drawing commands (with transformations, filters, and so on). Which is exactly what canvas is. With appropriate layer caching of course it can be 100% as fast if the rudiments are similar and in the same context[1], and on many platforms it is. Chromium derivatives have a particularly slow implementation of SVG and it has tainted the whole realm.
[1] Obviously if you're zooming and transforming and animating layers there is going to be a cost, but that should be compared with doing the same with a canvas.
Canvas is a pixel buffer...and a set of drawing rudiments to imperatively actually make that pixel buffer useful. If you were actually just using canvas as a pixel buffer it would be catastrophically slow.
SVG is a pixel buffer and a set of drawing rudiments to imperatively or declaratively actually make that pixel buffer useful.
The distinction you are drawing between these is sophistry.
No the distinction is important and directly related to performance. Supporting the canvas API requires fewer CPU instructions to get to pixels on the screen. The browser has to do a lot more work to turn SVG into pixels
[1] Obviously if you're zooming and transforming and animating layers there is going to be a cost, but that should be compared with doing the same with a canvas.