The vast majority of the world’s population has seen their freedoms erode from 2020-2022 and Canada is not an exception.
The annual Human Freedom Index from the Fraser Institute measures and ranks all of the countries of the world on how much freedom their citizens have based on measures of economic and personal freedom.
2024’s Human Freedom Index measures developments as recent as 2022 and places Canada as the 11th freest country in the world, up from 14th in last year’s index.
Canada’s freedom score strengthened from the year prior, improving from Canada’s lowest score ever of 8.48 to 8.74.
The study scores countries based on 12 metrics including rule of law, security and safety, size of government, sound money, and regulation, with a variety of more granular subcategories.
Before the pandemic, Canada’s freedom score never dropped below 8.78, reaching the highest score on the freedom index in 2000 with a score of 8.96.
On the personal freedom metric, Canada ranks 16/165 countries, reaching a score of 9.28 while Canada ranks 8/165 on economic freedom with a score of 7.99. Canada’s main impediments to achieving a higher score are the rule of law and the size of government, scoring especially poorly on government consumption and top marginal tax rate metrics.
Canada ranks just ahead of notable countries like Japan who have a score of 8.73, Germany with a score of 8.67, and the United States and the United Kingdom which both have a score of 8.64.
The countries that cracked the top ten are Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Luxembourg, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, and Estonia.
The bottom ten countries on the list are Syria, Yemen, Iran, Myanmar, Sudan, Egypt, Venezuela, Somalia, Algeria, and Iraq. Notable jurisdictions ruled by authoritarian regimes that were not assessed include North Korea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Eritrea, and Gaza.
Hong Kong’s score has notably dropped in recent years from a world leader in economic and personal freedoms to a middle-of-the-pack country since the People’s Republic of China reclaimed control over the city.
The report finds that human freedom had deteriorated sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, with the global human freedom index average dropping from 6.98 to 6.73 in 2020.
Overall, the report estimates that 87.4% of the world’s population lives in jurisdictions where human freedom fell from 2019-2022. The drop in freedom affected countries with a variety of government regimes and economic circumstances, from democracies to autocracies, from rich countries to poor countries.
