According to a Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection (BHTP) report released in late 2023, Canada is considered the world’s safest country for travellers in 2023-2024.
BHTP notes that the overall rankings are based on an average of “all measures from [BHTP’s] State of Travel Insurance research”, which combines “six sub-category scores as the basis” for the rankings.
Furthermore, BHTP notes that it balances its own surveyed “ratings with other indices and information, including the Global Peace Index and the State Department’s own travel safety ratings”, adding that BHTP “also [averages] the GeoSure Global scores of the major cities in each country.”
Together BHTP uses this variety of measures to “calculate a weighted score that reflects each country’s overall safety.”
Canada’s ranking is up five spots from a year ago
Up from sixth place in BHTP’s rankings last year, Canada has ascended to the top spot in the rankings for the world’s safest places to travel this year.
According to the report, key reasons for Canada’s high ranking include “cold weather and low population density, [which] make for safe travels.”
Further, each of the top 15 countries in BHTP’s rankings was given a dedicated section in this year’s report, which included a section titled “what you need to watch out for.”
For Canada, this section identified wildfires as an area of concern for travellers, noting that “Canada’s plethora of forests were seemingly all burning, which has reduced air quality in most major Canadian cities. This made travel to Canada difficult for people with respiratory conditions.”
Still, the quote included in Canada’s dedicated section of the report (from Gap Year Travel Store) sums up travel safety across the coun