A new poll says the world thinks a lot less highly of Canada than last year, thanks in large part to our poor showing at the Copenhagen climate change conference and a problematic prime ministerial trip to China.

A BBC World Service poll of public opinion across 18 countries released this week found that people's view of Canada's influence has worsened during the last year, particularly in the U.S., Britain and China.

The poll of more than 20,000 people, which was conducted by international polling firm GlobeScan, showed a decline in Canada's reputation around the world for the first time since tracking began in 2005.

"Canada still has a very favorable rating overall," Oliver Martin, a GlobeScan spokesman based in Toronto, told CTV.ca on Thursday. "But that's largely driven by lack of knowledge of Canada."

"We're seen as Mounties, snow and polar bears -- we're the warm and fuzzy Great White North," he added.

But that changed after Canada came under widespread criticism, from environmentalists and other nations, at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Martin said.

There were sharp drops in positive ratings of Canada in several countries included in the survey, including some of our most important trading partners. In the U.S., the proportion of people who rated Canadian influence as positive fell from 82 per cent to 67 per cent.

In the U.K., those who saw Canada as a positive influence fell from 74 per cent to 62 per cent, and in Australia from 77 per cent to 72 per cent.

Overall, comparing views in 15 of the countries that were surveyed last year, the proportion rating Canadian influence in the world as mainly positive has fallen on average from 57 per cent to 53 per cent.

Martin said the most likely explanation was that the survey was taken in December and January, when the Copenhagen summit was taking place.

"There was a lot of negative media coverage of Canada's performance in Copenhagen," he said.

Our reputation took the most serious dive in China, which went from 75 per cent to 54 per cent. Martin attributed the slide to widely negative coverage of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's visit in the Chinese media.

"The rhetoric was really dialed up in terms of Canada's record," he said. "And all the Chinese media was negative."

The numbers of people giving Canada a negative rating remained broadly steady compared to last year, but those saying that Canada's influence was neither negative nor positive overall increased.

Canadians themselves are also less positive about their country's influence than in 2009, with 75 per cent now rating Canada's influence in the world as positive, compared to 86 per cent last year.

France, the Philippines, and South Korea emerged as the nations most positive about Canadian influence in the survey, while Pakistan, Turkey, India, and Mexico were among the most negative.

Until this year, perceptions of Canadian influence had been on the rise in many countries. Results last year showed higher positive ratings for Canada in China, the Philippines, Britain and the U.S. -- but in all these cases, positive ratings have now fallen.

Martin said some surprising factors may have been responsible for our steady improvement, including the Canadian military's ongoing deployment to Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan didn't hurt Canada's image at all," said Martin. "Quite the opposite. There was a lot of good coverage (internationally) about Canada doing its part there and doing its bit as a NATO partner."

Views of Canada improved in a few countries in the most recent survey -- in Germany 73 per cent told the pollster they had positive views of Canada, up from 63 per cent last year; while in Russia positive views rose from 36 per cent to 44 per cent.

Despite this recent drop in our popularity, Canada is expected to remain among the most positively viewed countries when results on the way other major nations are perceived are released by the BBC in April.

In last year's poll conducted in 22 countries, only Germany was felt to have a more positive influence in the world than Canada.

The results are drawn from a survey of 20,176 adult citizens across 18 countries, conducted for BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan, together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.