Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW)

Adapted from: http://www.atkinsonfoundation.ca/ciw

The CIW is a measuring stick for gauging the wellbeing of Canadians.

Most existing measuring sticks – such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) index – tend to focus on a narrow set of economic indicators. By relying on such a limited perspective, they fail to capture many of the things that really matter to Canadians. As our natural environment is depleted, the gap between rich and poor grows, chronic diseases skyrocket, life for Canada’s Aboriginal peoples fails to improve, and the pressures of time stress drive us to distraction, it’s no wonder so many of us are feeling that the rosy economic picture we see in the news is at odds with what we know to be our everyday reality.

Even within the limited scope of the economy, the GDP fails to distinguish between economic activities that are beneficial and those that are harmful to our overall wellbeing. The sale of cigarettes and trans-fat-loaded fast foods, for example, causes the GDP to go up, but no one would really argue that this is good for our wellbeing. We count timber cutting as an economic gain, but we don’t subtract the depreciation of our forests as a loss. Fish stocks decline and soil erodes, but the national balance sheets do not track the health of natural capital.

The CIW will treat beneficial activities as assets and harmful ones as deficits. It will, for example:

• distinguish between good things like health and clean air, and bad things, like sickness and pollution;
• promote volunteer work and unpaid care-giving as social goods, and overwork and stress as social deficits;
• put a value on educational achievement, early childhood learning, economic and personal security, a clean environment, and social and health equity; and,
• encourage a better balance between investment in health promotion and spending on illness treatment.

The CIW Network’s vision is:

To enable Canadians to share in the highest wellbeing status by identifying, developing and publicizing measures that offer clear, valid and regular reporting on progress toward that goal and wellbeing outcomes Canadians seek as a nation.

The specific  goals are to:

• build a foundation to articulate a shared vision of what really constitutes sustainable wellbeing;
  
• measure national progress toward, or movement away from, achieving that vision;
  
• understand and promote awareness of why society is moving in the direction it is moving;
  
• stimulate discussion about the types of policies, programs, and activities that would move us closer and faster toward achieving wellbeing;
  
• give Canadians tools to promote wellbeing with policy shapers and decision makers;
  
• inform policy by helping policy shapers and decision makers to understand the consequences of their actions for Canadian wellbeing;
  
• empower Canadians to compare their wellbeing both with others within Canada and those around the world; and,
  
• add momentum to the global movement for a more holistic way of measuring societal progress.