This blog has been edited due to Bill C-59
This year’s version of the Social Progress Index (SPI) is out, and to no surprise, Canada has once again received top marks! Placing 15th out of 170, Canada dropped from 10th in the SPI 2022 edition but still remains ahead of many of its Western counterparts such as France, Spain, and the United States.
The SPI is one of the world’s largest curations of social and other such data, a comprehensive measurement to evaluate a country's performance in these categories. It goes beyond using gross domestic product (GDP) to measure a country's progress and provides a more complete picture of human, societal, and environmental needs. The SPI 2024 utilizes 12 categories and 60 sub-indicators to assess the social performance of 170 countries. By focusing on aspects such as basic human needs, foundational well-being, and overall opportunity, the SPI accurately represents a nation's overall development and support for its citizens.
In other words, the SPI and other indices like it are excellent indicators of which countries are the best sources of supply for our natural resources such as energy, food, lumber, and minerals.
Canadians should be proud of our global leadership on the SPI. Our nation’s overall wealth and prosperity – underpinned largely by the natural resources sector – enables us to have quality education, healthcare, infrastructure, and other critical social programs, all of which support our advancement in social initiatives like those measured by the SPI.
