How Canada's Aging Population Is Impacting Healthcare

Canada is getting older. Faster than at almost any point in its modern history. The country that built one of the world's most admired universal healthcare systems in the 20th century is now confronting a demographic reality that threatens to strain that system beyond its original design capacity. By 2030, one in four Canadians will be over 65. By 2040, the number of Canadians over 80 will have doubled. The implications for healthcare are profound, immediate, and already visible in emergency waiting rooms, long-term care facilities, and provincial health budgets from Victoria to St. John's.

This is not a future problem. It is a present one. And understanding how Canada's aging population is reshaping healthcare — its funding, its workforce, its infrastructure, its priorities, and its politics — is essential for every Canadian: patients, caregivers, healthcare workers, taxpayers, and policymakers alike.

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Quick Answer

Canada's aging population is increasing healthcare demand, raising costs, worsening staffing shortages, expanding long-term care needs, and putting pressure on hospitals, family doctors, and provincial healthcare budgets. By 2035, nearly one in four Canadians will be over 65, making healthcare reform one of Canada's biggest policy challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Nearly 20% of Canadians are over 65 in 2026.
• Healthcare spending is projected to reach 14–16% of GDP by 2035.
• Canada faces shortages of nurses, doctors, and personal support workers.
• Long-term care demand is expected to rise sharply.
• Home care expansion may help reduce healthcare costs.
• Technology and healthcare immigration are becoming critical solutions.

The Demographic Shift: By the Numbers

Canada's population aging is the result of two converging forces that have been building since the 1960s: the retirement of the Baby Boom generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) and sustained increases in life expectancy driven by improvements in nutrition, medicine, and living standards.

Canada's Aging Population at a Glance (2026)

*Old-age dependency ratio: number of people 65+ per 100 working-age adults (15 to 64)

What These Numbers Mean

The old-age dependency ratio is perhaps the most consequential statistic for healthcare. In 2000, there were roughly 18 seniors for every 100 working-age Canadians. By 2026, there are nearly 29. By 2035, there will be over 35. This means fewer working-age taxpayers are funding the healthcare costs of a larger and growing senior population.

The fiscal math is challenging because healthcare costs are not evenly distributed across age groups. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), per-capita healthcare spending for Canadians over 65 is approximately 4.5 times higher than for working-age adults. For Canadians over 85, it is nearly 8 times higher. As the proportion of older Canadians increases, total healthcare spending rises even if per-person costs remain constant — and per-person costs for seniors are not remaining constant; they are increasing alongside medical advancement and rising expectations.

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The Healthcare Cost Surge

Canada spent approximately $372 billion on healthcare in 2025, representing roughly 12.9% of GDP. This is up from 10.2% of GDP in 2010 and 9.1% in 2000. The upward trajectory is expected to continue, with projections suggesting healthcare spending could reach 14 to 16% of GDP by 2035 if structural reforms are not implemented.

Where Senior Healthcare Costs Are Concentrated

The Long-Term Care Crisis

Long-term care is where Canada's aging population crisis is most visibly and painfully concentrated. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the catastrophic inadequacy of Canada's long-term care system, with over 70% of Canada's early COVID-19 deaths occurring in long-term care facilities — a proportion that shocked the country and prompted national debate about the state of elder care.

Even before COVID-19, the system was under severe pressure:

• Wait lists: In 2026, approximately 38,000 Canadians are on wait lists for long-term care placement across the country. Average wait times range from 6 months in less-populated provinces to over 27 months in Ontario
• Staffing shortages: Long-term care facilities across Canada report vacancy rates of 15 to 30% for Personal Support Workers (PSWs) and Care Aides, the front-line workers who provide the majority of hands-on care
• Infrastructure deficit: A significant proportion of Canada's long-term care beds are in facilities built in the 1960s and 1970s, with shared rooms, inadequate ventilation, and physical layouts that were designed for a different era of care
• Funding gaps: Provincial per-diem funding rates for long-term care in many provinces have not kept pace with inflation, staffing costs, or evolving care complexity
• Private vs. public divide: The role of for-profit operators in long-term care has become intensely politicized, with evidence suggesting that for-profit facilities had significantly worse COVID-19 outcomes, leading to calls for expanded public and non-profit delivery

Canada needs to build approximately 250,000 new long-term care beds by 2035 to meet projected demand. The federal and provincial governments have committed to varying degrees of expansion, but capital investment, land availability, construction costs, and staffing capacity remain significant constraints.

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The Healthcare Workforce Crisis

Canada cannot care for its aging population without the healthcare workers to deliver that care. And the healthcare workforce is facing its own aging crisis simultaneously.

Nursing: The Most Acute Shortage

Canada had a pre-existing nursing shortage that was dramatically worsened by COVID-19 burnout, early retirements, and pandemic-related career changes. Current estimates suggest Canada is short approximately 60,000 nurses nationally, with projections indicating this gap could grow to 117,000 by 2030 without significant intervention.

The nursing shortage has multiple causes, all of which are worsened by an aging population:

An aging nursing workforce: The average age of a Canadian Registered Nurse is 44. Over 30% of Canada's nurses are over 50, with a significant wave of retirements projected between 2025 and 2032. As the population ages and demands more care, the nurses who provide that care are themselves aging out of the workforce.

Pandemic burnout and attrition: Surveys by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) found that over 45% of Canadian nurses reported experiencing severe burnout in 2023 and 2024. Actual resignation rates among nurses under 40 have been significantly elevated since 2021, with many leaving clinical roles for administrative, education, or industry positions.

Training pipeline constraints: Canadian nursing schools have a structural capacity problem. Despite growing demand, many schools are unable to expand enrollment due to insufficient clinical placement sites, faculty shortages, and physical infrastructure limits. In 2025, Canadian nursing programs rejected approximately 80,000 qualified applicants for approximately 18,000 available seats — a ratio of nearly 5:1.

Immigration as a partial solution: Canada's response to the nursing shortage has relied increasingly on internationally educated nurses (IENs). In 2025, approximately 22% of new nurse registrations in Canada were internationally educated nurses. Provinces like BC, Ontario, and Alberta have established streamlined credential recognition processes and dedicated immigration streams to accelerate IEN integration. For a detailed breakdown of the BC pathway, see our complete guide to BC Nurse PR.

Physician Shortage and Maldistribution

Canada faces a physician shortage that is distinct from but related to its nursing crisis. The problem is both numerical and geographic: Canada does not have enough physicians overall, and the physicians it does have are disproportionately concentrated in urban centers.

Family medicine collapse: The most critical physician shortage is in family medicine. An estimated 6.5 million Canadians currently have no family doctor. This number is growing, driven by:

• Family physicians retiring faster than graduates choose family medicine
• Medical graduates preferring specialties over family practice (higher compensation, more defined hours, less administrative burden)
• Bureaucratic and regulatory burden making family practice increasingly unattractive
• Fee structures in many provinces that undercompensate longitudinal, comprehensive primary care

The impact on seniors is disproportionate: Seniors without family doctors lose continuity of care, leading to fragmented specialist-driven care, inappropriate emergency department use, medication mismanagement, preventable hospitalizations, and significantly worse health outcomes. A senior with multiple chronic conditions managed by a family physician has dramatically better outcomes than one cycling through walk-in clinics and emergency departments.

Specialist demand growth: As the population ages, demand for geriatric specialists, cardiologists, oncologists, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, and palliative care physicians is increasing faster than training programs can produce them.

Personal Support Workers: The Invisible Crisis

Personal Support Workers (PSWs) and Care Aides provide the majority of hands-on care to Canada's seniors in both long-term care facilities and home care settings. They assist with bathing, dressing, feeding, mobility, and daily living activities. They are among the lowest-paid healthcare workers in Canada and face the most physically and emotionally demanding working conditions.

Canada faces a shortage of approximately 100,000 PSWs nationally in 2026, a figure projected to grow to 200,000 by 2035 as the demand for long-term and home care expands. Addressing this shortage requires:

• Significant wage increases (average PSW wages of $18 to $22 per hour are insufficient to attract and retain workers in high cost-of-living provinces)
• Improved working conditions including manageable patient loads
• Greater recognition of PSW contributions within the healthcare team
• Accelerated immigration pathways for internationally trained care workers

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The Disease Burden Shift

An aging population does not just need more healthcare. It needs different healthcare. The disease profile of an older population is dominated by chronic, complex, and degenerative conditions that require fundamentally different care models than the acute episodic illness model that Canada's healthcare system was originally designed to manage.

Leading Causes of Healthcare Utilization in Seniors (2026)

The Dementia Challenge

Dementia deserves particular attention because its growth trajectory is steeper than almost any other condition, its care needs are uniquely intensive, and Canada is fundamentally unprepared for its projected scale.

In 2026, approximately 750,000 Canadians are living with dementia. By 2030, this number is projected to reach 1.1 million. By 2050, nearly 1.7 million. The economic cost of dementia care in Canada is currently estimated at $18 billion annually and is projected to exceed $50 billion by 2040.

Dementia care creates specific systemic challenges:

• Long duration: Canadians can live 8 to 15 years with dementia, requiring escalating care intensity over a prolonged period
• Caregiver burden: Approximately 1.1 million Canadians provide unpaid care to someone with dementia, often at significant personal, financial, and health cost to themselves
• Specialized facilities: Dementia requires behavioral and memory care environments that standard long-term care facilities are often not equipped to provide
• Medication limitations: Unlike many conditions, dementia has limited pharmaceutical treatment options. New drugs like Lecanemab show early promise but are not yet widely accessible or curative

Polypharmacy: A Growing Safety Crisis

The average Canadian over 65 takes between 5 and 7 prescription medications. Among those over 80, this number rises to 8 or more. This polypharmacy (the concurrent use of multiple medications) creates significant risks:

• Drug-drug interactions that can cause adverse effects, hospitalizations, and death
• Prescribing cascades in which medications prescribed to treat side effects of other medications create their own side effects
• Medication non-adherence due to complexity, cost, and cognitive limitations
• Falls and cognitive impairment linked to sedating medications

Medication-related harm in Canadian seniors is estimated to cause approximately 30,000 preventable hospitalizations annually, with an associated cost of over $4 billion.

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The Infrastructure Gap

Canada's healthcare infrastructure — hospitals, long-term care facilities, diagnostic equipment, and digital systems — was largely built for a younger population and a different era of medicine. The aging population requires significant capital investment to modernize and expand this infrastructure.

Hospital Pressures

Canadian hospitals are facing increasing utilization pressure driven largely by an aging population. Emergency department overcrowding, hallway medicine (patients receiving care in hallways due to lack of beds), and surgical wait lists have become defining features of the healthcare experience for many Canadians.

A key driver of hospital overcrowding is Alternate Level of Care (ALC) patients: hospitalized patients who no longer require acute hospital care but cannot be discharged because appropriate community or long-term care alternatives are not available. In 2026, ALC patients occupy approximately 14 to 18% of all Canadian hospital beds on any given day. The majority of ALC patients are seniors awaiting long-term care placement.

This creates a cascade effect:

• Hospital beds occupied by ALC patients are unavailable for new acute admissions
• Emergency departments back up because admitted patients cannot move to inpatient beds
• Ambulances are delayed at emergency departments because ERs are overcrowded
• Surgical cases are cancelled because post-operative beds are unavailable

The solution is not primarily more hospital beds. It is more long-term care beds, more home care capacity, and more community-based senior support to prevent unnecessary hospitalizations in the first place.

Diagnostic and Surgical Capacity

Canada's aging population is driving increased demand for diagnostic imaging (CT, MRI, PET scans), laboratory testing, and surgical procedures. Canada's per-capita availability of MRI and CT scanners is below the OECD average, contributing to diagnostic wait times that are among the longest in the developed world.

These wait times fall disproportionately on seniors, for whom delayed hip replacement means prolonged pain and immobility, delayed cataract surgery means falls and loss of independence, and delayed cardiac surgery means preventable mortality.

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The Home Care Imperative

One of the most consistent findings in healthcare research on aging is that the majority of Canadian seniors prefer to remain in their own homes for as long as possible, and that keeping seniors at home — when appropriate support is provided — is both better for their wellbeing and significantly less expensive than residential care.

The cost differential is striking:

Despite this economic logic, Canada's home care system remains chronically underfunded and fragmented. Home care services vary enormously by province, are often inadequate to meet the actual needs of seniors with complex conditions, and are frequently unavailable on evenings and weekends when family caregiver support is absent.

The Family Caregiver Reality

Approximately 8 million Canadians provide unpaid care to family members or friends, the majority of whom are seniors. This unpaid care, which includes personal care, medication management, transportation to appointments, household maintenance, emotional support, and advocacy within the healthcare system, is estimated to be worth $26 to $30 billion annually in economic value.

The personal cost of caregiving is substantial:

• Employment impact: 35% of caregivers reduce their work hours or leave the workforce entirely to provide care
• Financial impact: Average out-of-pocket caregiving costs exceed $12,000 annually. Many caregivers dip into savings or retirement funds to cover care costs
• Health impact: Caregivers have higher rates of depression, anxiety, physical illness, and mortality than non-caregivers of similar age
• Gender disparity: Women provide approximately 57% of unpaid caregiving hours and bear a disproportionate share of the career and financial consequences

For Canadians who are both navigating a parent's healthcare needs and thinking about their own financial future, the intersection of healthcare costs and retirement planning is increasingly important. Understanding the best age to start retirement planning has become inseparable from understanding the potential costs of your own future healthcare and long-term care needs.

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Technology and Innovation: Part of the Solution

Canada's healthcare system is increasingly turning to technology as a partial solution to the challenges of an aging population. While technology cannot replace human caregivers, it can extend the effectiveness of the healthcare workforce, improve monitoring and early intervention, support aging in place, and reduce preventable hospitalizations.

Digital Health and Electronic Records

Canada has made significant progress in electronic health record (EHR) adoption, though interoperability between provincial systems remains a major challenge. A senior who sees a family physician in British Columbia, a specialist in Alberta, and is admitted to a hospital in Ontario should theoretically have their complete medical history accessible at each encounter. In practice, this seamless information sharing is still more aspiration than reality.

Canada Health Infoway has invested over $5 billion since 2001 in digital health infrastructure, and 85% of Canadian physicians now use EHRs. However, the ability of different systems to communicate with each other, share medication lists, flag dangerous interactions, and provide a complete patient picture remains inconsistent.

Remote Patient Monitoring

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) uses wearable devices, sensors, and digital platforms to monitor seniors' health metrics — blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose, oxygen saturation, activity levels, and sleep patterns — from their homes. When monitored values fall outside normal ranges, alerts are sent to care teams who can intervene before a condition deteriorates to the point of hospitalization.

Early RPM pilots in Canada have shown promising results:

• 25 to 35% reduction in emergency department visits for monitored patients
• 20 to 30% reduction in avoidable hospitalizations
• Improved medication adherence
• Earlier detection of deteriorating conditions

Telehealth and Virtual Care

COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of telehealth in Canada dramatically. Virtual care visits, which accounted for less than 5% of physician encounters in 2019, peaked at over 60% during the pandemic and have stabilized at approximately 25 to 30% of visits in 2026.

For seniors, virtual care offers significant advantages:

• Reduced transportation barriers for those with mobility limitations
• Access to specialist consultations without long-distance travel for rural seniors
• More frequent touchpoints with care teams for chronic disease management
• Reduced exposure to hospital-acquired infections

However, virtual care also has limitations for older populations, including digital literacy barriers, inadequate broadband access in rural areas, and the inability to perform physical examinations that are often essential for accurate diagnosis.

Artificial Intelligence in Senior Care

AI applications are increasingly being deployed in Canadian healthcare settings relevant to aging:

• Fall prediction: AI algorithms analyzing gait, activity patterns, and medication lists can identify seniors at high risk of falls before falls occur
• Dementia detection: AI analysis of speech patterns, cognitive test performance, and brain imaging can detect early dementia with increasing accuracy
• Medication management: AI-powered medication dispensing systems reduce polypharmacy errors in both long-term care and home settings
• Predictive hospitalization: AI models analyzing health system data can identify seniors at risk of hospitalization within 30 days, enabling preventive intervention

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Provincial Responses: A Patchwork of Approaches

Healthcare in Canada is primarily a provincial responsibility, and the provinces have responded to the aging population challenge with varying degrees of ambition, investment, and innovation.

British Columbia

BC has made aging in place and home care expansion central to its seniors care strategy. Key initiatives include:

• $1.2 billion long-term care construction commitment: BC has committed to building 13,500 new publicly funded long-term care beds by 2032, the largest long-term care capital investment in the province's history
• Home care expansion: BC increased home care funding by 45% between 2020 and 2025, adding approximately 4,200 new home care clients annually
• Dementia care strategy: The BC government's Dementia Action Plan includes specialized dementia care units, caregiver support programs, and community dementia networks
• IEN recruitment: BC's aggressive internationally educated nurse recruitment, through dedicated BC PNP immigration streams and Health Authority direct recruitment, has partially addressed the nursing shortage
• BCCNM streamlining: BC has invested in accelerating the internationally educated nurse credential recognition process, reducing average assessment timelines

Ontario

Ontario faces the most acute aging population challenges due to its population size and the demographic concentration of retirees in communities like the GTA suburbs, cottage country, and southwestern Ontario.

• Ontario Long-Term Care Staffing Plan: Ontario committed to four daily hours of direct care per long-term care resident, a significant increase from the approximately 2.7 hours previously provided, requiring the addition of tens of thousands of PSW and nursing positions
• New long-term care beds: Ontario has announced the creation of 30,000 new and 28,000 upgraded long-term care beds, though delivery has been slower than initially committed
• Ontario Health Teams: Ontario's restructured primary care model, organized through Ontario Health Teams, is intended to better coordinate care for seniors across home care, community support, primary care, and hospital settings
• Caregiver tax credits: Ontario has enhanced caregiver tax credits to partially offset the financial burden on families providing unpaid senior care

Quebec

Quebec has historically had a more developed home care infrastructure than most provinces through its CLSC (Centre local de services communautaires) network. However, COVID-19 exposed catastrophic failures in Quebec's residential and long-term care sector, where deaths in CHSLDs (Centres d'hébergement et de soins de longue durée) accounted for a disproportionate share of national COVID-19 mortality.

Quebec's post-pandemic response has included significant investment in improving CHSLD conditions, expanding home care hours, and piloting new autonomous senior housing models.

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The Federal Role: Funding, Standards, and National Strategy

Healthcare is primarily a provincial jurisdiction in Canada, but the federal government plays crucial roles through fiscal transfers, setting national standards, and managing federal programs.

Canada Health Transfer

The Canada Health Transfer (CHT) is the primary federal fiscal transfer to provinces for healthcare. In 2025-2026, the CHT totals approximately $52 billion, representing approximately 22% of total provincial healthcare spending.

Healthcare advocates and provinces have long argued that the federal share of healthcare funding has declined relative to total costs and that a higher federal contribution is needed to address the aging population challenge. The federal government has periodically increased CHT commitments but has not returned to the 50% cost-sharing model of the 1970s.

National Pharmacare

Canada remains the only country with universal healthcare that does not include universal prescription drug coverage. Seniors, who are disproportionately dependent on multiple prescription medications, are among those most affected by drug costs. The federal government passed foundational pharmacare legislation in 2024, beginning with coverage for diabetes medications and contraceptives, with a long-term goal of expanding to comprehensive coverage. Full national pharmacare implementation remains politically contentious and fiscally uncertain.

National Long-Term Care Standards

Following the COVID-19 long-term care crisis, the federal government worked with provinces to develop national long-term care standards. These standards, published in 2023, address staffing ratios, infection control, resident rights, and quality of care. However, because long-term care is provincial jurisdiction, implementation and enforcement of these standards varies significantly by province.

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The Financial Planning Dimension

For individual Canadians, the aging population's impact on healthcare is not just a policy abstraction. It is a deeply personal financial and logistical reality that requires proactive planning.

The financial implications include:

Potential out-of-pocket healthcare costs in retirement:

• Long-term care costs not covered by provincial insurance: $40,000 to $95,000 per year
• Prescription drug costs above provincial formulary coverage: $2,000 to $8,000 annually
• Dental care (not universally covered under public plans): $1,500 to $5,000 annually
• Vision care: $500 to $1,500 annually
• Home care above publicly funded hours: $15,000 to $40,000 annually
• Assisted living and supportive housing: $30,000 to $60,000 annually

Total potential uncovered senior care costs over a 20-year retirement: $500,000 to $1.5 million per person in a worst-case scenario of significant long-term care needs.

This reality makes early and comprehensive retirement financial planning not just prudent but essential. Understanding the best age to start retirement planning in the context of potential healthcare costs is one of the most important financial decisions Canadians can make, and the earlier those plans are made, the more options remain available.

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Looking Ahead: What Needs to Change

Addressing the healthcare implications of Canada's aging population requires systemic reform across multiple dimensions simultaneously. There is broad consensus among healthcare researchers, clinicians, administrators, and policymakers on the key priorities:

1. Expand and Reform Long-Term Care

Canada needs more long-term care beds, better long-term care beds, and fundamentally reformed long-term care delivery. This means increased public investment in new facility construction, rigorous enforcement of staffing and care standards, significant wage improvements for PSWs and care aides, and a thorough re-examination of the role of for-profit operators in publicly funded care.

2. Invest Massively in Home Care

Keeping seniors in their homes longer through robust home care is both economically rational and aligned with what seniors actually want. Every dollar invested in home care that prevents a long-term care admission or avoidable hospitalization generates significant system-wide savings while improving quality of life.

3. Rebuild Primary Care

Canada cannot manage an aging population's chronic disease burden without a functioning primary care system. Rebuilding family medicine requires addressing physician compensation, reducing administrative burden, expanding the scope of practice of nurse practitioners and other healthcare professionals, and fundamentally rethinking how primary care teams are organized and compensated.

4. Scale Healthcare Immigration

Internationally educated nurses, physicians, and care workers are an essential part of Canada's healthcare workforce strategy. Streamlining credential recognition, creating dedicated immigration pathways, and ensuring IENs are integrated effectively and treated equitably are national priorities.

5. Implement National Pharmacare

Universal prescription drug coverage would reduce out-of-pocket costs for seniors, improve medication adherence, reduce polypharmacy harms, and lower total system costs through improved chronic disease management.

6. Support Family Caregivers

The 8 million Canadians providing unpaid care to seniors are an invisible pillar of the healthcare system. Enhanced caregiver tax credits, expanded respite care, caregiver-leave employment protections, and better integration of family caregivers into formal care teams would both improve the sustainability of family caregiving and improve outcomes for care recipients.

7. Embrace Technology

Remote patient monitoring, AI-assisted care, virtual care, and digital health information systems must be scaled from pilots to mainstream implementation. Canada's fragmented provincial healthcare infrastructure requires active federal coordination to achieve the interoperability that makes digital health effective.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many Canadians are currently over 65? As of 2026, approximately 7.7 million Canadians are over 65, representing approximately 19.8% of the total population. This is projected to grow to approximately 9.5 million, or 23.4% of the population, by 2035.

How much does Canada spend on senior healthcare? Canada spends approximately $372 billion annually on healthcare overall. Seniors (65+) account for approximately 45% of total healthcare spending, or roughly $167 billion, despite representing only about 20% of the population.

What is the biggest challenge in Canadian senior healthcare? The three most acute and interconnected challenges are the long-term care bed shortage (38,000 Canadians on wait lists), the nursing shortage (60,000 positions unfilled), and the collapse of primary care (6.5 million Canadians without a family doctor). These three problems compound each other: seniors without primary care doctors deteriorate, require hospitalization, and then cannot be discharged because long-term care placements are unavailable, while nursing shortages make every step of this process more difficult.

Will healthcare costs affect my retirement? Yes, significantly. Healthcare costs in retirement are one of the largest and most variable expenses Canadians face. While provincial healthcare plans cover many essential services, long-term care, dental care, vision care, and home care above publicly funded hours can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars over a retirement. Starting retirement planning early and specifically accounting for potential healthcare costs is strongly advisable.

Is Canada's healthcare system sustainable long-term? In its current form, without significant structural reform, Canada's healthcare system faces mounting sustainability challenges due to demographic pressures, workforce shortages, and infrastructure gaps. However, most healthcare economists believe the system is reformable, and that targeted investments in home care, long-term care, primary care, and healthcare workforce development can maintain a universal system while managing costs more effectively.

What is Canada doing to recruit healthcare workers from abroad? Canada has significantly accelerated healthcare worker immigration through dedicated provincial nominee program streams (particularly for nurses and physicians), streamlined credential recognition processes, Express Entry draws targeted at healthcare occupations, and direct international recruitment programs run by health authorities. In 2025, approximately 22% of new nursing registrations in Canada were internationally educated nurses.

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Sources

1. Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI): National Health Expenditure Trends — https://www.cihi.ca/en/national-health-expenditure-trends
2. Statistics Canada: Population Projections for Canada — https://www.statcan.gc.ca/
3. Alzheimer Society of Canada: Dementia Statistics — https://alzheimer.ca/en/about-dementia/do-i-have-dementia/dementia-numbers-canada
4. Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions: Nursing Workforce Report 2025 — https://cfnu.ca/
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8. Ontario Ministry of Long-Term Care: LTC Staffing Plan — https://www.ontario.ca/page/ministry-long-term-care
9. Canada Health Infoway: Digital Health Progress Report — https://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/
10. Parliamentary Budget Officer: Federal Healthcare Spending Projections — https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/
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12. Canadian Home Care Association: Home Care in Canada Report — https://www.cdnhomecare.ca/
13. Carers Canada: The State of Caregiving in Canada — https://carerscanada.ca/
14. World Health Organization: Ageing and Health — https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ageing-and-health
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