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Life expectancy at birth, 2021: 81.6
Share of the population aged 65 and over, 2021: 18.5
Share of the population aged 65 and over, 2050: 23.6
Share of the population aged 80 and over, 2021: 4.6%
Share of the population aged 80 and over, 2050: 8.6%
Adults aged 65 and over rating their own health as good or very good, 2021: 81%
Share of adults aged 65 and over receiving long-term care, 2021: 3.5%
Estimated prevalence of dementia per 1,000 population, 2021: 15.2
Estimated prevalence of dementia per 1,000 population, 2040: 22.9
Total long-term care spending as a share of GDP, 2021: 2.3%
Long-term care workers per 100 people aged 65 and over, 2021: 3.8
Share of long-term care workers who work part time or on fixed contracts, 2021
– Part-time: 57.2%
Long-term care beds in institutions and hospitals per 1,000 population aged 65 years and over, 2021
– Institutions: 46.7
– Hospitals: 2.5
Total long-term care spending by provider, 2021
– Nursing home: 66%
– Hospital: 13%
– Home care: 19%
– Households: 0%
– Social providers: 0%
– Other: 2%

Source: OECD (2023), Health at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, doi.org/10.1787/7a7afb35-en.

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Population, Mid-Year 2019: 37,411,000
Projected Population Mid-Year 2030: 40,834,000
Percentage of Population Under Age 25 Years, Mid-Year 2019: 28%
Percentage of Population 65 Years Or Over, Mid-Year 2019: 18%

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019: Data Booklet (ST/ESA/SER.A/424).

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Formal Long-Term Care Workers At Home (Head Counts) (2020): 34,439 (estimated)
Formal Long-Term Care Workers In Institutions (Head Counts) (2020): 197,703 (estimated)
Long-Term Care Recipients In Institutions Other Than Hospitals (2021): 314,455
Long-Term Care Recipients At Home (2016): 948,600 (estimated)

Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD.Stat. Last accessed Oct. 23, 2022.

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“LTC [Long Term Care] may be provided in facility-based settings, or in the community through home care and other support services. Publicly funded programmes are available in all provinces and territories for both sectors (facility-based care and home care). In most provinces, LTC has increasingly been integrated 120 Health Systems in Transition into geographically based delegated health authorities, and provincial ministries of health generally have division(s) responsible for LTC which provide overarching policy direction.

“As LTC is not an insured service under the Canada Health Act, public policies, subsidies, programmes and regulatory regimes vary widely across the country. In both facility-based care and home care, access to publicly funded services is based on needs assessment. In home care, there may be an income-based co-payment for publicly funded services in some provinces and territories. There is also a significant market for privately procured home care services (Allin et al., 2020b). The cost of care in publicly funded LTC facilities does not generally entail out-of-pocket expenses to residents. Charges to residents for accommodation and meals are generally reduced or waived for those on low income.

“Private facility-based LTC (i.e. paid for fully out of pocket) is a small segment of the sector. There are other privately paid residential options for seniors – variously referred to as seniors’ residences, or retirement residences – which are generally considered part of the housing (rather than LTC) sector. Core services generally include meal provision and housekeeping services. Residents may also be eligible for publicly funded home care, and/or choose to purchase care services privately. These residential options are not examined further in this section, where “LTC facilities” refers to publicly funded institutions to which admission is based on care need, and which provide 24/7 supervision and access to nursing services.”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

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“Estimates suggest that roughly 11% of public/government spending on health is directed to non-hospital institutions, most of which are LTC facilities, compared with about 5.5% on home and community care (CIHI, 2019a). In 2016, about 3% of Canadians aged 65 years and older, and 12% of Canadians 85 years and older, were living in an LTC institution (Statistics Canada, 2016). Factors predicting admission to a facility include age, diagnosis of dementia and other chronic conditions (such as diabetes, urinary incontinence and mood disorders) and losing a spouse (Garner et al., 2018). While facility-based care is generally targeted to high-needs individuals, there is some evidence of potentially inappropriate use of facility-based LTC: a study of six provinces and territories found that 22% of individuals aged 65 and older who entered an LTC facility had been assessed with low to moderate needs which may indicate that they that could have been supported at home (CIHI, 2017a).”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

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“In 2020, 46% of LTC facilities were publicly owned, with 28% operated on a private-for-profit basis, and 23% private not-for-profit, with variations across provinces (CIHI 2020). For example, in Ontario, the majority of LTC facilities are private-for-profit (57%) and private not-for-profit (27%), while in Quebec the majority are publicly owned (86%) (CIHI 2020). Even after adjusting for case mix, there is evidence that not-for-profit facilities provide more direct care per client than for-profit facilities, and that chain-affiliated facilities, both for-profit (of which 83% are chain affiliated) and not-for-profit (of which 38.5% are chain affiliated), provided fewer direct hours of care than non-chain-affiliated facilities (Hsu et al., 2016). While there is some evidence that better patient outcomes are associated with notfor-profit LTC facilities compared with for-profit homes, more research is needed to test this association (McGrail et al., 2007; McGregor & Ronald, 2011). A recent study in British Columbia found that there was greater use of the emergency department and hospital beds by residents from private LTC facilities versus residents from publicly-owned facilities (Office of the Seniors Advocate British Columbia, 2018).”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

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“Wait times for publicly funded facility-based LTC across the country are common, although comprehensive data is limited. Estimates from Ontario suggest that the median wait time for an LTC facility from hospital was 92 days in 2016/2017, up from 70 days in 2015/16. The median wait time for LTC home from community was 149 days in 2016/17, up from 132 days in 2015/2016 (Health Quality Ontario, 2018). In 2018–9, about 40% of LTC residents are admitted from hospital, 34% from home-based settings, and 25% from other residential settings (e.g. seniors’ residences) (CIHI, 2019c).

“In 2014–2015, an estimated 3.3% of adult Canadians (not limited to seniors) received home care services, including publicly funded and privately procured services (Gilmour, 2018). About 60% of care recipients were seniors, who primarily receive long-term services (other target populations for home care services include those with short-term acute needs; for example, to avoid or following a hospital stay, or at end of life). Publicly funded home care is intended to support (rather than replace) informal care by family members or friends, and is mostly provided in-kind. It may be delivered by public employees or through contracted agencies which may be for-profit or notfor-profit. Most provinces and territories have programmes that offer the option of providing personal budgets for clients to purchase their own care for some selected groups that meet certain eligibility criteria.* These programmes have historically been oriented to younger adults with disabilities (Carbone & Allin, 2020).”

“* For example, the Choice in Supports for Independent Living in British Columbia and Self-Managed Care in Alberta are programmes that allow clients to pay for and manage their home care.”

Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.

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“Home care provides professional and personal support services in the home, enabling recipients to independently age in their community.⁷ Home care services include nursing, homemaking, personal support, rehabilitation and other care services.⁷ Along with prolonging and/or avoiding the need to seek long-term residential care, home care is also associated with improved quality of life, decreased mortality, fewer hospitalisations and system level cost savings.8,11 Despite the widely acknowledged benefits of home care to individuals and health systems, there are concerns about equity and fairness in home care use in Canada. Potential inequity in home care use has meaningful implications regarding the degree to which certain populations are disadvantaged in ageing at home over others.^{12 13}

“In Canada, provinces administer publicly funded healthcare systems under a federal mandate. However, home care is not a mandated service and is thus provided at the discretion of each province.¹⁴ Nevertheless, all provinces provide public funding for medically necessary home care services.^{15 16} However, there is substantial variation in the funding of services, both in terms of which services are covered and the amount of coverage.^{7 17} Additionally, varying eligibility requirements, service availability, service maximums¹⁸ and co-payments,¹⁹ all lead to significant unmet home care needs,²⁰ and may result in disparities in use.^{12 21 22} Previous studies suggested disparities in home care use for those living in rural areas,23,25 lower earners,¹⁶ women²⁶ and those facing linguistic and cultural barriers.^{21 27}“

Source: Lee J, Watt JA, Mayhew A, et al. Equity in home care use in Canada: a cross-sectional analysis of the Canadian longitudinal study on ageing. BMJ Public Health. 2024;2(2):e000812. Published 2024 Aug 21. doi:10.1136/bmjph-2023-000812

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“Long-term care is funded either through global budgets for public facilities or, for private facilities, through per diem public subsidies to facilities based, in many cases, on standardized assessments of the severity of the condition of residents in a facility (Marchildon, 2013).”

Source: Jeremia Hurley and G. Emmanuel Guindon. “Private health insurance in Canada.” In Private health insurance : history, politics and performance. Thomson, S., Sagan, A., & Mossialos, E., Eds. (2020). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated April 12, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.