Disability in Canada

April 21, 2025

With our NEW Member Services group (Keeping Up with Current Affairs) starting last week, we thought we’d share some basic information about disability in Canada.

We’ll start with the overall disability rate – did you know that 🍁27% of Canadians🍁 have at least one disability, many more than one? This number is up 5% from 2017!

Another interesting disability fact is that 30% of Canadian women and 24% of Canadian men have at least one disability. This is up 6% for women and 4% for men since 2017!

The age group with the fastest growing rate of disability in Canada is youth, from 15 to 24, with 20% having at least one disability. 24% of adults aged 25 to 64 have a disability as do 40% of seniors (65+). Again, all of these numbers have increased since 2017, with youth jumping a whopping 7%!

Of the 27% of Canadians that have disabilities, 29% have one disability. A massive 71% have two or more disabilities! It’s estimated that 70-80% of disabilities are non-apparent (invisible/hidden disabilities).

People with disabilities face barriers every day. And some are obvious, but many aren’t. Of the 27 total types of barriers researched, the accessibility of public spaces is the biggest barrier at 56% of those surveyed. Communication barriers come in at 48%. Behavioural barriers such as misconceptions or assumptions sit at 37% while online barriers are 17%. Overall, 72% of disabled Canadians faced one or more barriers to their disability within the previous year.

With numbers like these, it’s obvious that a lot more people live with disabilities than would ever be apparent just by looking. Meaning that it’s even more important for Canadians to do what we do best – be kind!❤️