A message from Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer

The Public Health Agency of Canada has released an update to the Health of People in Canada dashboard, initially launched in March 2023. This collection of public health indicators helps us understand areas where we are doing well and where we need to improve. Ultimately, the dashboard provides a snapshot of the health of our populations, while illustrating the wide range of health, socioeconomic, and environmental factors that interact to keep us healthy and well.

People in Canada generally live long lives. Over the past decade, the incidence of some chronic conditions, like certain cancers, diabetes, and heart disease, has been decreasing, mainly because of improvements in prevention, screening, and treatment. Nonetheless, because of Canada’s aging population, the health system will have to meet the needs of an increasing number of people living with these conditions. Some social factors that underlie good health in Canada have also been improving over the longer term. More people are achieving post-secondary education and compared to a decade ago, overall poverty rates, including childhood poverty, are lower.

Most individuals living in Canada continue to take steps to protect their health and the health of their families by getting vaccinated. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest vaccination campaign in Canadian history substantially reduced rates of serious illness and death. While the 2021 childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey showed that overall vaccine coverage was high for routine childhood and adolescent vaccinations, we must be vigilant on downward trends and be mindful that there are groups or clusters of individuals with much lower vaccine coverage. Cases and outbreaks of some vaccine-preventable diseases still occur domestically and globally. More progress is needed across all age groups to increase vaccine access and uptake as well as prepare for future pandemics.

There are also some worrying health trends. Although most people in Canada report positive mental health, this measure has been decreasing since 2015 and further worsened in 2022, with fewer women continuing to report positive mental health compared to men. Life expectancy in Canada had generally been increasing for the past 4 decades. However, for the third year in a row, life expectancy in Canada declined in 2022. This trend is likely driven by deaths related to COVID-19 and the toxic drug crisis. Apparent opioid toxicity deaths, many of which also involve other substances, began to rise in 2016. Rates further increased significantly at the start of the pandemic and have stayed high, partly driven by an increasingly toxic drug supply. Substance-related harms continue to devastate families and communities across Canada.

We are also seeing an ongoing rise in some infectious diseases, such as sexually-transmitted and blood-borne infections like syphilis, with disproportionate impacts for certain populations. Although national tuberculosis rates have remained unchanged over the last decade, some communities, particularly northern Indigenous communities, still experience much higher transmission. This is due to reasons such as the ongoing impacts of colonialism and a long history of social and economic inequities. This highlights the need to accelerate efforts to eliminate this treatable and curable disease. I remain concerned about persistent health inequities and the unfair barriers to good health experienced by some populations. We need to continue to work together so all people living in Canada can enjoy optimal health and well-being.

The pandemic highlighted the importance of health data for effective decision-making during a public health emergency. It also exposed long-standing gaps in the way we collect and share these data. The lack of socio-demographic information in the dashboard, such as Indigeneity, race, ethnicity, or diverse sex and gender data, reflects the ongoing challenge of collecting and combining local level data through a trusted, coordinated system. We must urgently address these gaps in a secure and ethical way, including honouring principles of data governance for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples.

As we face new and ongoing public health threats, this dashboard continues to be a stepping stone on our way to a modernized health data ecosystem that can help us prepare for, and respond to, the diverse needs of communities across Canada.

Dr. Theresa Tam, October 2024

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer