Is Canada Really an Environmental Laggard?

With Earth Day fresh in our mind, it’s an appropriate time to reflect on several widely-circulated reports that paint Canada as such an environmental laggard that we supposedly rank 28th out of 29 among developed countries.

One such study, Canada vs. the OECD: An Environmental Comparison, concludes that Canada has one of the poorest environmental records in the industrialized world. The report rankings have subsequently been used to support policy recommendations, without reference to the limitations and biases of the methodology.

Such rankings have been widely publicized as proof of Canada’s dismal environmental record. Yet the validity of these rankings has never been independently analyzed and the studies in which these rankings appear rely on an underdeveloped methodology that unfavorably distorts Canada’s environmental record.

The first methodological failing of Canada vs. the OECD is that countries were ranked according to per capita measures where such measures are environmentally meaningless.

For example, Canada ranked 27th in forestry based on its annual per capita harvest of trees, whereas Iceland, which has virtually no trees, ranked first. The size of a country’s population is irrelevant to the environmental impact of its logging industry. If the rankings had been based on harvest per hectare of forested area, Canada would have ranked sixth rather than 27th.

Similarly, Canada ranked 25th in fertilizer use based on its annual per capita consumption, compared to first-ranked Switzerland, which has one percent of Canada’s cropland area. If the ranking had been based on fertilizer use per hectare of cropland, Canada would have ranked third and Switzerland would have ranked 18th.

In pesticide use, Canada ranked 22nd based on its annual per capita consumption, but on a per hectare basis Canada would have ranked fourth. In fisheries Canada ranked 20th on its per capita catch, but this ignores the relative size of fishing grounds and fish stocks. The best rankings were awarded to four landlocked countries with no marine and negligible fresh water fisheries: Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

The second methodological failing consists of ignoring the influence of factors such as population density, immigration rates, transportation distances, climate, and economic structure on measures of environmental quality.

For instance, Canada ranked 27th in population increase (the country’s population rose 24.4 per cent between 1980 and 1998). But with a population density of only 3.1 people per square kilometer, Canada is able to absorb this increase. In contrast, Belgium, with a population increase of just 3.6 per cent over the same time, ranked sixth. But Belgium already has 334 people per square kilometer. With that population density, all 32 million Canadians would fit onto Newfoundland.

Canada ranked 27th in energy consumption per capita with the best rankings awarded to three of the least developed OECD countries: Turkey, Mexico and Portugal. Of course each country’s energy demands are influenced by a number of factors; some of them, like climate, geography, resource endowment, and the existing population, cannot be altered easily, or at all. Countries with largely resource-based economies, like Canada, will necessarily and legitimately have greater energy demands than resource-importing countries.

For the overall ranking, the same weight was applied to all indicators and countries were ordered by their averages. The “best” country, with the lowest average, was Switzerland, followed by two of the least developed OECD countries, Turkey and Mexico. The worst ranked countries were Australia, Canada, and the United States.

The David Suzuki Foundation used the claim that Canada ranked 28th out of 29 OECD countries as one of the main arguments for its document Fostering a Sustainable Canada: Recommendation for 2005 Federal Budget, which was submitted to the Federal Government’s Standing Committee on Finance.

In 2005 the David Suzuki Foundation published another study that also found that Canada has a purportedly dismal environmental record: The Maple Leaf in the OECD, Comparing Progress toward Sustainability. Although this report attempted to make some methodological improvements to its analysis, it was not consistent and it too concluded that Canada’s overall environmental performance (on 29 indicators) is far behind that of other OECD countries, with a rank of 28 out of 30.

It’s unfortunate that some groups continue to use these flawed studies to persuade the public that Canada is an environmental laggard, ranking near the bottom of the list of OECD countries. Sadly, this questionable conclusion has influenced the current public debate about environmental issues in Canada.

Canada has much to be proud about when it comes to our record on the environment. What’s needed now is a new, methodologically sound ranking that fairly evaluates Canada’s environmental performance, one that can be used to by policymakers to create realistic and effective environmental policy.