How Canada Performs 2008: A Report Card on Canada

This website—How Canada Performs: A Report Card on Canada—assesses Canada’s quality of life compared with that of its peer countries.

We publish an overall report card as well as individual ones that measure performances in six categories: Economy, Innovation, Environment, Education and Skills, Health, and Society. We release the report cards for each category individually throughout the year.

What's New

Canada ranks 14th among 17 peer countries and continues to be a “D” performer on innovation in the latest report card.

On the 12 indicators used to measure innovation performance, Canada gets one “B”, two “C”s and nine “D”s. Canada’s sole “B” is on the number of scientific articles published per one million population.

Canada ranks second to last on a new indicator – the number of international trademarks filed per million population—a measure of services sector innovations and non-technological innovations. Ten of our peer countries had at least twice Canada’s share of trademarks by population.

Countries with the highest overall scores have developed successful national strategies for innovation, giving them global leadership of at least one industry. For example:

Switzerland, the top-ranked country, is a leader in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Ireland is the host of leading innovative companies.
The United States fosters a combination of top science and engineering facilities, broad and deep capital markets, and an entrepreneurial culture.

Upcoming Releases

Did you know...

Innovation
In 2007, almost 17 per cent of all of Canada’s cross-border trademarks were pure services trademarks—the second-highest share of services trademark filings among the 17 peer countries.
Education and Skills
Sweden has a Ph.D. graduation rate three and half times that of Canada.
Health
Canada has the third-highest rate of mortality due to diabetes among its peer countries. An estimated 2 million Canadians suffer from diabetes, a figure that is expected to rise to 3 million in the coming decade.
Society
There is still a 21 per cent gap between the average incomes of men and women in Canada.
Economy
After 15 years of near-consistent unemployment rate reductions, the global recession pushed Canada’s unemployment rate up to 7.2 per cent in December 2008.
Environment
Canada generates more waste per capita than any other country in the Conference Board ranking. Canada is also one of the world’s largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases.