As Canada Day nears, the expected attitude is one of gratitude, for clean air, public health care, relative safety and ketchup chips. But Canadians haven’t been feeling so jovial as of late. And for good reason: the cost of groceries is rising, rent is too high and the future feels less certain than it used to. And according to the latest World Happiness Report, that feeling is in the numbers.
Canada, once comfortably among the happiest countries in the world, ranked 25th in the 2026 World Happiness Report. To put the decline in perspective: in 2025, it ranked 18th; in 2021, it ranked 14th; and in 2015, it ranked a now hard to imagine fifth place. (We rank behind the U.S. now, which sits at a slightly loftier 23rd place.)
