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Photo courtesy Archdiocese of Vancouver
Statistics Canada’s 2024 Health of Canadians snapshot, released March 5, contains some positive news for the country: life expectancy rose for the first time in three years from 81.3 to 81.7 years.
Conversely, the trendlines for Canada's crude birth rate, total fertility rate, perceived health and perceived mental health continued declining.
Access to health care appears to be driving the unsettling outcomes as nearly three million Canadians ages 15 and older, representing 9.2 per cent of the population, declared they had unmet health-care needs in 2022, an increase of 1.3 per cent over the 7.9 per cent of survey respondents who reported this reality in 2021. This catch-all report is a hodgepodge of 2022, 2023 and 2024 data.
Even though this overview of the Canadian health landscape contains findings on a vast array of mental, oral, sexual and reproductive health, chronic diseases, infectious diseases and health behaviour topics, there is a gaping lack of mention of one particular health issue: euthanasia.
“(Medical assistance in dying) is not mentioned in the list of leading causes of death,” said Rebecca Vachon, the program director for health at the Cardus think tank. “Over (15,343) Canadians had a premature death as a result of MAiD in 2023. I think that it is an important piece of the picture. It changes the understanding that we have about prognoses or disease trajectories when you have people opting for premature death months, years or many, many years before they would die.
“I think this is an element proving to be a bit of a blind spot for Statistics Canada.”
Vachon would like to see Statistics Canada invest time and resources in comprehensively evaluating the effects of the well-documented loneliness epidemic. In 2021, Statistics Canada reported that over 40 per cent of Canadians ages 15 and older feel lonely some or all the time.
“This is a big public health concern and it's something that would be good to see reflected in these reports,” said Vachon. “The fact is that social isolation and loneliness are linked to increased mortality and morbidity risks.”
Ron Noble, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association of Ontario (CHAO), spoke about how it is paramount for the CHAO to continue its advocacy efforts.
“As our population ages chronic disease management will become increasingly important as well as providing care at the primary and community-based level to free up capacity at our health-care institutions so they can provide the specialty care they were designed for,” wrote Noble.
The Register reported last October that the ability to replace the working-age population is in great peril because of Canada’s collapsing fertility rate. In 2024 Canada was labelled as a “lowest-low” fertility nation by the United Nations. The total fertility rate (TFR) for Canada in 2023 was 1.26, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.
The new data from Statistics Canada provides an illuminating age-specific fertility rate finding for females aged 25 to 29. From 2021 to 2023 the rate in this age grouping shrunk from “81.1 live births per 1,000 females in 2019 to 64.3 in 2023.”
Statistics Canada outright states that because of the low TFR, “the Canadian population will mainly rely on international migration for continued growth.”
Ross McKitrick, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, released a report March 6 that makes a case as to why reliance on increased immigration is not a sensible solution and offers advice on reversing the falling fertility rate.
The professor of economics at the University of Guelph told The Register one of the issues is that when people immigrate from countries with high birth rates, they get here and then they stop having children. This type of situation “amounts to a Ponzi scheme with people rather than money.”
In other words: more people with no intention of childbearing arrive, the affordability crisis is exacerbated and more barriers are created for native- and foreign-born Canadians to raise children.
Read the Statistics Canada Health of Canadians report online.
(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)
A version of this story appeared in the March 23, 2025, issue of The Catholic Registerwith the headline "MAiD remains a StatCan blind spot".
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