Public Statements

Stop whinging, Canada

Being No. 3 in the UN's quality-of-life index isn't so bad, says STEVE MASON. Try trailing the pack.

Printed in the Globe and Mail, July 24, 2002.

Today, the United Nations Association in Canada will launch the 2002 edition of the Human Development Report. The annual report, commissioned by the UN Development Program, is best known for its index ranking the world's countries in terms of general quality of life. While Canada topped the ranking for six years running, we slipped to third place last year. For those, like our government, who wish fervently to reclaim the title of "The Best Place to Live in the World," the 2002 report will bring a disappointment: We are holding steady at No. 3, behind Norway and Sweden, and ahead of the United States, in the No. 6 spot.

The rankings always generate a fair amount of attention, but what do they really imply? In truth, not all that much. The Human Development Index (HDI), while interesting and moderately instructive, reflects only three measurable statistics -- life expectancy, educational attainment and gross domestic product per person -- leaving out potentially more interesting factors, such as a country's treatment of minorities, health-care coverage, environmental quality, political freedoms and physical security.

Moreover, while the rankings illustrate the stark contrast between those countries at the top of the heap and those at the bottom, the differences between one country and its neighbours in the index are minute. Life expectancy for a Swede at birth is 79.7 years, and 78.8 for a Canadian; contrast this with the fact that, on average, Canadians live 37 years longer than Zambians, whose country ranks as No. 153. (Sierra Leone is still in last place; in fact, the bottom-ranked 24 countries on the UN index of 173 countries are all found in sub-Saharan Africa.)

The narrowness of the HDI has even led the director and lead author of the report, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, to say that it has "obscured the broader, more complex concept of human development as the expansion of capabilities that widen people's choices to lead lives that they value."

In essence, the index is a clever public relations tool used by UNDP to draw attention to a worthwhile and informative report that might not otherwise receive coverage. This year's report focuses on the links between the depth of democracy and the level of human development in a country, and argues that only when countries have governance systems that are fully accountable to all people can true human development be realized. A truly democratic system can trigger a "virtuous" cycle of development, where political freedoms enable people to push for policies that expand their social and economic opportunities and where open debates help communities shape their priorities.

True democracy, then, is about much more than a vote cast every four or five years. It relies on several other key institutions, including political parties and interest associations that function well, a system of checks and balances based on the separation of powers, a free and independent media, effective civilian control over the military, and a vibrant civil society able to monitor government and business and provide alternative forms of political participation. In this view, antiglobalization protests that take issue with both the corporate and governmental approach to trade and the alleviation of poverty do not undermine democracy, as some critics would suggest, but rather are an essential component of it.

The 2002 Human Development Report also outlines several interesting trends. It shows, for example, that in almost all cases the amount of aid that has flowed from rich countries to poorer ones has decreased dramatically during the past decade, while the GDP per capita of donor countries has grown at a faster rate. Canada's aid to developing countries was 0.44 per cent of GDP in 1990; in 2000, it was only 0.25 per cent of GDP -- well below our internationally agreed-on commitment and placing us 16 out of 22 donor countries. At the same time, the report also demonstrates that most of the world's countries are not on track to meet the millennium development goals targeted to be attained by 2015 -- crucial goals such as reducing infant mortality by an acceptable percentage and eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

Perhaps more than anything else, the 2002 Human Development Report demonstrates how, in an era of unprecedented globalization, there is also increasing fragmentation. Wealthy countries have never been richer, and the poor are only getting poorer. We can spend a great deal of time dissecting Canada's relative position in the rankings, but our bronze-medal finish loses much of its meaning when you consider that the majority of runners never got past the starting line.

Steve Mason is Executive Director of the United Nations Association in Canada, which is launching the Human Development Report in Ottawa today and will host a seminar on its findings Sept. 19.