Canada is one of the richest countries in the world. But you wouldn’t know it looking at how we protect people’s most basic economic and social rights.

Our own data tells us poverty, homelessness and food insecurity are getting worse. At Maytree, a Toronto-based human rights organization, we produce an annual analysis of Statistics Canada’s poverty data that documents part of that decline. So does our yearly compilation of welfare incomes across every province and territory. The evidence is also visible in communities across the country: more people relying on food banks, more people living in encampments and more households unable to afford the essentials.

What this data doesn’t tell us is how well Canada should be doing given the size and strength of our economy. Are these outcomes an unavoidable reflection of difficult circumstances?

The latest global scorecard from the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) gives us an answer.

Measuring what Canada should be able to achieve

Why should we care about another international index? Because measuring outcomes alone can encourage complacency. A government can point to a small improvement or blame a bad result on economic conditions without addressing the more important question: Is the government doing everything it reasonably can with the resources available to it?

That question is central to international human rights law. Under Article 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Canada has committed to using the maximum of its available resources to realize economic and social rights. Those include the right to food, housing, health, education, work and an adequate standard of living.

HRMI turns that obligation into something we can measure. Rather than comparing raw outcome, it assesses how well each country performs against the achievements of countries at a similar income level. In effect, it asks whether a country is delivering the level of rights protection its resources should make possible.

Each country receives an income-adjusted score out of 100 for every metric HRMI tracks. A score of 100 means........

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