Canada dropped from 12th place last year and did far worse in the environmental protection category, where it ranked 27th. Every other country made progress in this area except Canada, the centre said in a report on the rankings.

Canada "has the dubious honor of being the only CDI country with an environment score which has gone down since we first calculated the CDI [in 2003]," the report said. "This reflects rising fossil fuel production and its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, the world's only treaty governing the emissions of heat-trapping gasses. Canada has dropped below the U.S. into bottom place on the environment component."

Owen Barder, a senior fellow at the centre who prepared the index, said in an interview that the environment category has become one of the bright spots in the survey. "Environment is the one part of our index that has really seen improvement and Canada has been the only country that's fallen," he said. "My expectation would have been that Canada is environmentally friendly, Canadians all seem to take the environment seriously."

View October 22, 2014 Huffington Post article
View November 18, 2013 The Globe and Mail article
View November 18, 2013 Epoch Times article
View The Commitment to Development Index