Thursday, May 28, 2026

Canada lands behind the U.S. in new global ranking. Here’s why

Published: May 28, 2026

Canada has dropped to 19th on a new best countries ranking list, one position behind the U.S.

The results, U.S. News Best Countries ranking, appears dramatic when compared with Canada’s previous placements – fourth in 2024 and second in 2023 – but the rankings themselves have changed significantly, according to U.S. News.

Rather than relying primarily on perception surveys, the new model evaluates countries using 100 statistical indicators grouped into eight broader categories to evaluate 100 countries.

The measures draw on data provided by international organizations such as the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

“There’s been a lot of significant movement compared to past years and we would certainly encourage people not to compare them,” U.S. News & World Report managing editor Eric Litke said in a Zoom interview with CTVNews.ca Tuesday.

Litke says Canada’s shift should not be viewed as a decline. “We built the methodology from the ground up this year.”

Litke described the shift as moving from “reputation to reality.”

“The idea is to give stakeholders across the board the ability to see where countries are actually at - essentially creating a national progress report,” he said.

The results reveal where Canada continues to perform well and where the nation needs to fill the cracks.

Canada strongest in culture and tourism

Canada’s highest ranking came in culture and tourism, where it placed eighth globally. The category examines factors such as creative influence, heritage, tourism appeal, and linguistic diversity.

Litke said Canada and the U.S. shares similarities in this area because of their international presence.

“In both cases we have countries that have significant international influence,” he said.

According to the U.S. News’ country profile on Canada, the country’s multicultural framework, first adopted in 1971, continues to shape Canada’s identity and immigration approach.

Recent reporting around federal immigration adjustments has highlighted efforts to tighten immigration rules and accept fewer new residents, students and temporary workers in 2026. According to the federal government, these measures are meant to reduce Canada’s unemployment rate, address housing affordability and ease pressures on public services like health care.

According to Litke, Canada’s results show a country with broad strengths rather than one dominant characteristic.

Canada gets credit for stability

Canada ranked 18th in governance, one of the most heavily weighted categories in the new methodology. Governance measures factors linked to institutional effectiveness and national stability.

In this category, public trust in institutions intersect with issues that affect everyday life from housing and health care access to public services and economic confidence.

Meanwhile, the U.S., which finished one spot ahead of Canada overall, performed unevenly across categories despite strong economic development and culture rankings. The U.S. struggled in areas such as health and infrastructure. Here’s how the U.S. ranked:

No. 1 in culture and tourism
No. 2 in economic development
No. 15 in opportunity
No. 17 in governance
No. 33 in health
No. 39 in infrastructure
No. 41 in civic health
No. 72 in natural environment

Opportunity and economic development

Canada placed 18th in opportunity and 21st in economic development.

These categories spotlight Canadians facing persistent affordability concerns. While Canada maintained relatively balanced results across multiple categories, it did not place among the top tier in areas connected to economic performance.

Recent housing outlooks suggest affordability challenges continue extending beyond major cities like Toronto and Vancouver into places once considered accessible including Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax.

Housing forecasts also suggest slower construction activity and weaker market demand may continue in some regions despite persistent affordability pressures.

Infrastructure and health

Canada placed 20th in infrastructure and 27th in health. It also landed at 27th in the civic health ranking.

For Canadians, these categories touch some of the country’s most visible domestic debates – health care access, transit systems, population growth and the capacity of public services.

Litke said a category looked beyond whether health care coverage exists.

“In health, for example, we’re looking at not only coverage and cost, but also access and availability,” he said.

Canada scored particularly stronger in some measures.

“Universal health coverage got 100 out of 100,” Litke said. “It was 90 or higher in life expectancy.”

But other indicators lowered the overall score, including hospital beds per capita and physicians per capita.

“There are spots where access can be a struggle but the outcomes are very solid,” Litke said.

Environment result may raise eyebrows

Canada’s weakest category was natural environment, where it ranked 63rd globally. The category measures efforts tied to protecting natural resources and environmental conditions such as air quality and biodiversity.

Litke said the category extends beyond scenic landscapes or natural resources alone.

“Canada rates very highly, for example, for air quality or light pollution but much lower for species richness,” he said.

The category also includes factors such as carbon emissions, urban green space and sustainable trade.

“We try to take a holistic view of natural environment,” Litke said. “It’s not only what are the natural resources in terms of land and water but what types of protections are in place.”

Litke emphasized the rankings take into account measurable indicators rather than perception – meaning a country’s reputation no longer translates into a stronger score.

‘Europe-heavy’

“Our ranking was overall pretty Europe-heavy,” Litke said with Switzerland placing first, Sweden ranking third and Norway at sixth overall.

According to Litke, those countries tended to perform consistently across multiple categories rather than relying on one or two exceptionally high scores.

The broader message, he said, is that the rankings are designed less as a popularity contest and more of a data snapshot.

“Go digging,” Litke said. “If you’re interested in a certain country and governance or health, go see at the individual data set level how those countries scored.”

Here are the top 20 best countries, according to U.S. News:

Switzerland
Denmark
Sweden
Germany
Netherlands
Norway
United Kingdom
Finland
Luxembourg
Austria
Belgium
France
Ireland
Australia
Iceland
Singapore
Japan
United States
Canada
South Korea

Dorcas Marfo

Journalist, CTVNews.ca

Flight attendants union urges government to reject airlines' claims on unpaid work

The Canadian Press

Updated: May 27, 2026

MONTREAL — Canada’s main flight attendants union is crying foul on airline submissions to the federal government for its probe into unpaid work in the sector, as questions persist around what constitutes aviation “work.”

In a letter, the head of the union’s airline division says the self-audits on wages that airlines provided to authorities this month rely on a narrow and “misleading” definition of work in order to prove that cabin crew are paid fairly.

Wesley Lesosky called on Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu to reject the submissions, claiming they fail to reveal that many junior flight attendants effectively work for less than minimum wage when activities such as boarding passengers, passing through security and conducting pre-flight checks are taken into account.

Waiting during delays and commuting between hotels and the airport also amount to time spent at the disposal of the employer, according to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents 20,000 flight attendants at the country’s biggest airlines, as well as some regional ones.

“When calculating the normal hourly rate of pay, all of these hours should be included as working time,” Lesosky wrote.

Because they aren’t, the airline’s audits “overstate earnings, understate hours worked, and produce misleading conclusions” about compliance with the Canada Labour Code, the May 22 letter claims.

In Air Canada’s submission, obtained by The Canadian Press, the country’s largest airline said it found no instances where flight attendants’ hourly rate fell below minimum wage.

“Compensation structures consistently produced effective hourly rates at or above minimum wage requirements,” the summary states.

It found the effective hourly rate amounted to between $19.88 and $28.07 on Air Canada’s mainline and Rouge regional services.

Air Canada did not respond to questions Wednesday.

Under airlines’ credit-based pay structure — common across the continent — flight attendants receive income that seeks to compensate time spent both in the skies and on the ground.

“Rather than paying a lower hourly wage for every hour on duty, the credit hour system combines flight time, ground duties, delays and other required work into a single, higher rate of pay,” WestJet’s website states.

Nonetheless, a copy of the airline’s submission to the government obtained by The Canadian Press showed four instances out of 40 where flight attendants earned less than minimum wage — cases it attributed partly to shift swaps.

“These findings create a concern of minimum wage non-compliance that WestJet is committed to resolving, regardless of the underlying basis for how they came about,” WestJet’s submission reads.

Ottawa launched an investigation of the airline sector in August 2025, when negotiations between Air Canada and the union representing its cabin crew boiled over into a strike that saw planes grounded as workers took to the picket lines.

Central to that work stoppage were allegations from the union that flight attendants are regularly subjected to unpaid work when aircraft are grounded.

In response, Hajdu asked her department to look into whether workers in the sector were being paid below a standard set by the federal minimum wage.

Findings from the first phase of that probe, published in February, found little evidence that unpaid work was widespread in the industry, although investigators flagged some issues with part-time and entry-level flight attendants for a closer look.

Hajdu said at the time the federal government needed more data to fully settle the issue.

“Nobody should work for free in this country. The allegations of unpaid work in the airline industry are deeply concerning, and the government has been clear: we will get to the bottom of this,” the minister’s office said in an email Wednesday.

Unions and airlines remain free to submit additional information pertinent to the probe, it added.

National Airlines Council of Canada CEO Jeff Morrison said current practices already comply with labour laws and pay cabin crew fairly for their work.

“We welcomed the findings released by the federal government in February 2026 that there were no violations of the Canada Labour Code regarding flight attendant compensation,” he said in an emailed statement.

“Ultimately we continue to believe that compensation models are best negotiated in good faith around the bargaining table.”

However, the union pointed to its contract with Air Canada to highlight what it saw as a striking discrepancy in the carrier’s submission.

For their collective agreement, the employer and employees had agreed on a conversion formula that translates paid credit hours — ground time, pre- and post-flight work and layovers all factor in, as well as the trip itself — into hours worked for employment insurance reporting purposes.

The union argued Air Canada should apply the same formula when determining if it complies with minimum wage rules.

“Using this method, all audited junior flight attendants were paid, on average, below minimum wage during the audit,” Lesosky stated.

In an interview, he said he hopes a common understanding of what counts as work emerges from the federal probe, and called on Employment and Social Development Canada to clarify it.

“They haven’t told the airlines what the definition of work is — or they haven’t made it public,” he said of the government.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 27, 2026.

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