New Canadian Index of Wellbeing reveals how Canadians are really faring

By the measure of a sophisticated new yardstick to be released Thursday, Canadian prosperity is poorly shared, our workers are run ragged, and we generally “are not having as much fun” as we once did.

The Canadian Index of Wellbeing, a dozen years in the making, is intended to do what standard economic tools such as Gross Domestic Product cannot — namely, to measure not just the economy, but how people and communities, the environment and our democracy are faring.

Roy Romanow, former Saskatchewan premier and chair of the CIW advisory board, told the Star the project puts “scientific underpinning” to a widespread, intuitive sense that though the GDP might rise, circumstances for the majority of Canadians have not been keeping pace.

In fact, the report says that while the GDP increased by 31 per cent from 1994 to 2008, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing rose just 11 per cent. Moreover, the wealthiest 20 per cent of people received the lion's share of that growth, while the gap to the bottom 20 per cent grew even larger.

The discrepancy between GDP and CIW growth “tells us emphatically that we have not been making the right investments in our people and in our communities,” the report says. “And we have not been doing it for a long time. It is time public policy focused more on the quality of our lives.”

The project is a citizens' initiative that originated with the Atkinson Charitable Foundation and is now based at the University of Waterloo, where researchers from across Canada helped research and shape the CIW.

The comprehensive index is based on 64 indicators from eight broad domains: living standards, community vitality, democratic engagement, education, healthy populations, environment, time use (the impact, say, of 24/7 commercial operations and the workplace leash of new technology), leisure and culture.

The report says quality of life actually decreased over the period measured — in the environment, leisure and culture, and time use. In health, there have been only modest gains.

Romanow says most Canadians are “running so fast, and basically standing still, that we do not have the opportunity to enjoy things that really matter in life.

“As individuals, we're switching more of our time away from family life, away from community involvement, arts, political activity. We're being affected in our health.”

He called the report a “major wake-up call” to governments at all levels that “we've got to rebalance our social and economic programs in order to give more meaning to individual lives.”

The GDP — that statistical star and the defining economic indicator for more than half a century — was never intended, its inventor said, to measure “the welfare of a nation.”

For instance, spending on tobacco, war, cleaning up man-made disasters, building prisons — hardly measures of human progress — all cause the GDP to rise. Meanwhile, caring for an ailing relative, unpaid housework, volunteer work — all obvious goods — don't show up.

“GDP up, people think that's good,” Romanow says. “GDP down, people think that's bad. But you get a Hurricane Katrina, GDP goes up. And a hurricane is not a very healthy thing for society.”

By comparison, the CIW takes into account the complexity and interconnectedness of human society. It offers a deeper understanding of what constitutes social and individual good. It speaks about relationships, social isolation enjoyment of life.

Young people, especially, are “struggling to get schooling, struggling to get jobs,” Romanow says. “The GDP keeps going up, but they don't see much of the benefit. So frustration sets in and they drop out.”

Things like the record low voter turnout in this month's Ontario election — on which the GDP is silent — are “symptomatic of something,” he adds.

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Source: Toronto Star