Posted on 07/05/2003 6:21:34 AM PDT by Loyalist
Canada has fallen to eighth place from third on the United Nations list of the most desirable places to live in the world, leaving an embarrassing legacy for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who came to power when Canada ranked No. 1, the Citizen has learned.
Senior government officials confirmed yesterday that the annual ranking of nations by the UN Development Program, a measure of the overall quality of life in 175 nations, will place Canada behind Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Australia and even the U.S., which Canada has consistently led in the past.
Canada had been No. 1 for seven years in a row for the best quality of life until 2001, when it was edged out by Norway, which still holds the top spot in the 2003 Human Development Report to be released Tuesday.
Federal bureaucrats at Foreign Affairs and Human Resources Development have been working hard behind the scenes to define a positive response for the prime minister who was always quick to crow in the past when Canada held the top ranking.
The prime minister often referred to the report in speeches and during election campaigns, quoting the UN as saying that this is "the best country in the world in which to live."
Cabinet ministers also used the UN report card as a foil in the House of Commons when opposition MPs attacked the Liberal government over lagging productivity compared to the U.S. economy.
The first time Canada was at the top of the list was in 1992 when Brian Mulroney's Conservative government was in office. Mr. Mulroney also used the ranking to boast about his government's achievements, even though the UN report is not to be used as an endorsement of the countries involved.
Sources who have seen the 2003 report card would not provide the ranking of the seven countries ahead of Canada other than to say that Norway remains at No. 1, but they stressed "the differentials between the Top 10 are so minor that it becomes, how do you decide on the minor differences in data?"
The survey ranks countries on a scale based on four criteria: life expectancy, adult literacy, school enrolment and economic prosperity as measured by per capita gross domestic product or GDP.
Canada's drop in the ranking is due in part to the scales that measure poverty by which the plight of aboriginals has not improved despite $7 billion annually of federal spending, sources say.
"That is going to be part of what brings down some of our statistics. They are not going to differentiate between native and non-native, but in the compilation, those (native poverty, life expectancy and education) figures obviously bring down our stats," an official said.
Under the human development index, literacy and enrolment indices are grafted onto each other and the resulting education index gets a one-third weight, along with life expectancy and GDP.
Last year, Sweden ranked No. 2, Belgium was fourth, followed by Australia, the U.S., Iceland, the Netherlands, Japan and Finland.
The bottom 24 countries on the development index are all from sub-Saharan Africa, with Sierra Leone the lowest. Many of these countries have a lower index today than at the start of the 1990s and, in some, cases, lower than the mid-1970s.
Robert Fife is Parliamentary Bureau Chief
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