What do we need to make it easier for people across Canada to plan for the health workforce?  Whether it’s across a province or territory, in the community, or in a hospital, a strong data foundation is critical. And making health workforce data more comprehensive, coordinated, and connected across the country supports more consistent, evidence-based decision-making.  

The new Pan‑Canadian Health Workforce Data Strategy takes a step toward this goal. Co-developed with partners, it will enable better health workforce planning, more responsive policies, and ultimately contribute to improved health outcomes for people across Canada.  

At the heart of the strategy are five shared outcomes that define what success looks like. The recommendations outline practical, incremental actions to help move each outcome forward. Below is a closer look at what they are and why they matter for solving health workforce data challenges. 

1. Equity-driven, high-quality data for decision-making

This shared outcome focuses on ensuring data supports decision-making in a way that accounts for differences in populations, helping to inform more appropriate planning for a health workforce that meets both population and health system needs. Some key points: 

• Advancing the comprehensiveness, timeliness and accessibility of data is central to achieving this shared outcome, and shared data standards are an important enabler.  

• Equally important is the ability to link health workforce data across different sources in privacy-appropriate ways and using a distinctions-based approach when working with Indigenous partners to create a more complete picture and connect it to outcomes of care.  

• Comprehensive data moves beyond workforce counts alone, helping identify where pressures exist and where investments are needed.  

• Supporting a ‘collect once, use many times’ approach reduces duplication and improves integration. 
  

2. Partnerships with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis organizations

Centered around establishing and advancing distinctions-based, Indigenous-led partnerships and mechanisms to govern, direct, and oversee the collection, sharing, protection, and use of First Nations, Inuit and Métis health workforce data, in ways that meets priority needs, supports cultural safety, and respects Indigenous Data Sovereignty rights. 

Indigenous Data Sovereignty – recognized as an inherent right grounded in self-determination – is a necessary condition for restoring trust, ensuring accountability, and enabling First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to govern data in ways that support their health priorities and cultural safety. This shared outcome acknowledges the historical and ongoing harms caused by colonial approaches to data, and the essential role of Indigenous-led governance in addressing those harms.  

Any recommendations to advance data on the Indigenous health workforce will be developed in partnership with First Nations, Inuit and Métis organizations and partners, recognizing the significant and persistent disparities in health outcomes between Indigenous peoples and the non-Indigenous population, and the critical role that culturally appropriate, Indigenous-led health workforce data plays in addressing these inequities. This work will respect and apply established Indigenous data governance processes and frameworks, as part of the data strategy’s evergreen process. 

3. Efficient, interoperable data flow

Focused on maximizing efficiency in how health workforce data flows, reducing reporting burden and cost, improving timeliness and enabling appropriate secondary use of data where possible.  

Canada is quite data rich when it comes to health workforce data. However, data is fragmented across many sources and jurisdictions, and interoperability remains limited and inconsistent in how data flows among data stewards and users, affecting timeliness and connectedness of the data. Adopting common data content and exchange standards in Canada can improve data flows that support real-time analytics and fit-for purpose planning. 

In February 2026, the Government of Canada introduced the Connected Care for Canadians Act (Bill S-5), which proposes to strengthen the secure, interoperable exchange of health information across health systems. The Pan-Canadian Health Workforce Data Strategy supports continued advancement of Connected Care initiatives and recognizes the potential role of Bill S-5 in shaping conditions that enable interoperable health workforce data. 

4. Strengthened domestic workforce supply through education data

Improving how health profession education data are shared, linked, and used across relevant sources – supporting a more complete view of health workforce pathways, from education through to practice. It aims to enable more coordinated, connected, and privacy-appropriate use of data to strengthen the domestic health workforce pipeline.  

Currently, inconsistency and limited information on education and training across Canada makes it difficult for broader health workforce planners to design a stable domestic supply of health workers that meets the needs of Canadians now and into the future. This includes building in stretch capacity for flexibility, adaptive models of care, and crises. 

The Pan-Canadian Health Workforce Data Strategy encourages relationship and bridge building across the two sectors of health and education as a first step to strengthening governance structures. As data linkages expand across multiple sources, it will also be important to ensure that any new approaches respect privacy and remain consistent with existing legislative and regulatory frameworks. 

5. Improved data on internationally educated health professionals

This final shared outcome focuses on enabling seamless sharing, integration and access to data across relevant sources to strengthen immigration pathways for health workers and ensure these individuals can work to their full scope of practice and education level in Canada.  

Internationally educated health professionals (IEHPs) have been an important part of Canada’s health workforce for many years, contributing across many roles and making up a significant portion of the workforce. While the COVID-19 pandemic brought more attention to their contributions and led provinces and territories to rely on newly arriving and already-resident IEHPs, this amplified efforts that were already underway rather than marking a new shift in policy.   

Though a great deal of IEHP data exists, sources remain incomplete and siloed, making linkage and tracking individuals over time challenging. Several studies have leveraged data that does exist to tell the IEHP story, but accessing the data requires time, research skill and integration of multiple sources. Even then, a complete picture does not exist. Much like the interface between education and health, immigration and health are similarly complex, spanning challenges with licensure pathways, integration into Canadian society, retention efforts, and ethical recruitment practices.   

What’s next 

As we move forward, Health Workforce Canada will continue to work with partners across the health system to lead and coordinate efforts that ensure the data strategy remains relevant, continues to evolve and is responsive to emerging needs. Continuous learning and feedback will be important to this process. Partners will have opportunities to share insights, challenges and emerging priorities through streamlined channels to help identify where support, new approaches, or additional actions are needed, ensuring the data strategy remains inclusive and effective.

As part of this next phase, an implementation monitoring approach will be established to track progress on the strategy’s recommendations and bring together insights to inform next steps and future priorities. 

Together, this approach will keep the data strategy as a living resource that evolves with health system needs, technological advancements including AI, and practices and principles related to Indigenous data sovereignty. 

You can learn more about the five shared outcomes and the associated recommendations for each here: Pan-Can-Health-Workforce-Data-Strategy_EN_Mar-2026.pdf