Canada ranked the most ‘socially progressive’ among G7 nations
Posted April 9, 2015 10:02 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It turns out Canada is about more than maple syrup and hockey; our country is the sixth-most socially advanced nation in the world, according to the Social Progress Index 2015.
The Index is meant to compliment the GDP and ranked 133 countries on 52 social factors, none of which involve money.
“Canada is in a solid position. It’s leading the G7 and it’s 10 points above the United States. And the US is one of the big under-performers in the rankings as it was last year,” explains Michael Green with Deloitte.
“Canada’s got a pretty strong performance across most of the indicators and comes out number one in the world for opportunity. So on these issues of rights, freedom of choice, tolerance and access to higher education, Canada is number one in the world and pretty good across the board everywhere else.”
But it’s not all great news.
“Canada is actually under-performing in terms of access to information and communications. And that seems to be driven from the fact that Canada has a very low rate of mobile phone subscriptions. That’s 101st in the world,” says Green.
Canada also faces challenges on ecosystem sustainability.
Overall, Norway came in first, followed by Sweden, Switzerland, Iceland and New Zealand.
The Index is published by US-based non-profit, the Social Progress Imperative.
