Canada is no longer in the top-10 list of freest countries in the world, according to a new report.
Canada fell six rankings, and was overtaken by nations such as Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands on the annual “Human Freedom Index” released Thursday morning by Canadian think-tank the Fraser Institute. Their previous update that looked at Canada came out in 2021.
The report is based on measurements in 12 different areas, including: security and safety, rule of law, freedom of movement, association and assembly, and expression and information.
The liberty that declined the most in Canada, according to the report, was freedom of movement. The metric declined by more than 33% between 2019 and 2020.
Canada had the steepest year-over-year decline in total freedom among its peers, the report said. The peer group of the freest 15 jurisdictions in the world did not have a single country that increased its freedom in 2020.
The index scores countries by measuring the absence of coercive constraint, according to its publisher.
The Fraser Institute said this year’s report saw global freedom at the lowest the institute has reported since it began indexing in 2000. According to Thursday’s release, freedom across the world has been waning since 2007.
