Article content continued

“I remember the first time he said it, and I thought ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ ” said Barry Cooper, a political science professor at the University of Calgary.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

In 1992, Canada had just earned the top spot on the United Nations human development index, a ranking it would hold for seven of the next eight years.

Faced with a secession-minded Quebec, Chrétien’s Liberals were more than happy to chastise separatists loudly and often with the news that Canada was now the United Nations-sanctioned “best country in the world.”

“People throughout the world wonder why a province like Quebec is not happy to live in the best country of the world,” Chrétien told a Bloc Québécois MP in 1996.

Of course, there are many other countries that would beg to differ with Canada’s characterization of itself as the best.

South of the border, the words “greatest nation on earth” are so common in political speeches that they now function as an effective synonym for “United States.”

In his 2013 State of the Union address, for instance, President Barack Obama warned that “the greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next.”

And most of Obama’s 318.9 million constituents would agree. A 2010 Gallup poll found that 80% of Americans believed their country was better than any other on Earth.

In the U.K., Prime Minister David Cameron can occasionally be seen mounting podiums to declare Great Britain the “greatest country on Earth.” And as it was with Canada, the rhetoric was particularly heated when a large part of the “greatest country” was threatening to leave.