How did COVID-19 affect Canada's rankings on HDI, Liveability, and OECD Better Life in 2020 and subsequent years?

1. HDI — a global dip in 2020 that likely touched Canada, but no Canadian rank series in the sources

The UNDP/HDI story is clear in aggregate: the 2021/22 HDI reporting and related summaries show that more than 90% of countries examined suffered declines in HDI in 2020 or 2021, effects the UNDP attributes largely to the pandemic’s hit to health, education and income components ^[1]. That pattern implies high‑income countries such as Canada were exposed to downward pressure through higher mortality, disrupted schooling and economic losses; however, the provided country‑level HDI page for Canada (countryeconomy) and other supplied sources do not include a documented, sourced year‑by‑year rank change for Canada in 2020 and subsequent years, so a precise numeric statement about Canada’s HDI rank shift cannot be made from these documents alone ^{[7] [1]}.

2. OECD Better Life / “Liveability” — indicators altered, but direct rank movement for Canada not shown

The OECD Better Life Index (BLI) and How’s Life? framework provide an 11‑topic picture of quality of life that the OECD updated with 2020 data, and the Better Life country pages host the component scores used to compare countries ^{[3] [8] [4]}. The pandemic affected many of those components (health, work–life balance, education access, income security), and the OECD’s data tools and monitors were used to track 2020 trends, but the supplied OECD pages and the Wikipedia snapshot provided do not offer a definitive, sourced sequence showing Canada’s overall Better Life position moving up or down after 2020 within these materials ^{[3] [4] [9]}. Historical context is available—older compilations list Canada highly in earlier BLI iterations (Canada = 3 in 2013 per an international comparisons note)—but the sources warn that indicator sets and reporting formats have changed, complicating straight rank comparisons over time ^[10].

3. Domestic measurement and lived impacts — Statistics Canada and federal response

Statistics Canada used OECD‑style frameworks to report on Canadians’ well‑being in the first pandemic year and launched a Quality of Life Hub to assemble about 90 indicators across five domains (prosperity, health, society, environment, good governance) precisely because the COVID shock exposed GDP’s limits for tracking lived reality ^{[6] [5]}. The federal Quality of Life Framework was strengthened and assigned new governance in late 2021 to better inform policy and budgeting, explicitly citing the pandemic as a catalyst for deeper measurement and for using fairness and resilience lenses in assessing outcomes ^[2]. Those moves demonstrate an institutional shift: instead of relying solely on headline ranks, Canada has expanded granular indicators to track pandemic impacts on education, mental health, income and childcare—areas that feed into HDI and Better Life dimensions even if the public sources here stop short of publishing an adjusted overall ranking series ^{[6] [2]}.

4. Bottom line, caveats and what’s missing from the supplied reporting

The supplied sources collectively show that COVID‑19 depressed HDI‑type metrics worldwide in 2020–21 and prompted OECD and Canadian statistical systems to retool and publish richer wellbeing measures, but they do not include a single authoritative table showing Canada’s exact rank trajectory on HDI or the OECD Better Life Index for 2020 and later years; therefore it is supported to say Canada was exposed to the same downward pressures and responded by creating more comprehensive domestic tracking ^{[1] [2] [6]}, but not supported by these documents to state the precise rank changes for Canada without consulting the raw UNDP HDI country tables and the OECD’s country BLI time series or later national releases which are not in the supplied set ^{[7] [4]}.