Canadians have it pretty easy when it comes to travel — at least in non-pandemic times. With visa-free access to 185 countries, Canadians enjoy one of the best-ranked passports in the world according to the latest ranking from the Henley Passport Index.

Our travel document took the number seven spot worldwide alongside Australia, Czechia, Greece and Malta. The U.S. passport beat out its northern rival by one spot, ranking sixth in a tie with New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Japan and Singapore topped the list. The two countries' passports give their citizens visa-free access to 192 countries. At the bottom was the Afghan passport, which grants visa-free access to just 26 counties.

This is the third straight year that the Canadian passport has risen in the ranking, up from eighth place in 2021 and ninth in 2020. We peaked in 2014 when the Canadian passport was the second most powerful in the world.

In a press release, Henley & Partners, the London-based firm that produces the index, said that "travel freedom levels have expanded significantly" despite COVID-19 restrictions. H&P noted that a person of Earth could on average get to 107 countries without needing a visa in 2022, compared to 57 in 2006.

But this travel freedom has not grown uniformly. The firm said the "overall increase masks a growing disparity between countries in the global north and those in the global south, with nationals from countries such as Sweden and the US able to visit more than 180 destinations visa-free, while passport holders from Angola, Cameroon, and Laos are able to enter only about 50."