Deloitte puts $25 billion of Canada's health productivity loss within reach
Health-related barriers to workforce participation cost Canada more than $100bn in lost economic output in 2025, spread across caregiving, illness, and premature death.
The estimate comes from the Health Productivity Gap framework in a new Deloitte Canada report.
Unpaid caregiving is associated with $48.5bn in lost labour income, living with a health condition with $55.1bn in lost economic value from time away from work, and premature death with $1.1bn in lost output during what the report calls a friction period, the time required to replace and train workers.
Roughly a quarter of the total is recoverable, Deloitte finds, or $25bn set against $79bn the report treats as unavoidable.
Mental health is the largest driver of long-term disability at 40 percent of claims in 2024, and depression claims were up 33 percent and anxiety claims up 50 percent in 2025 against pre-2020 levels, the report states.
BPM has reported separately that mental health now drives 40 percent of new approved long-term disability claims among Alberta employers, according to Alberta Blue Cross's Benefits Pulse Report.
Substance use compounds the effect, and in construction, up to 33 percent of personnel in safety-sensitive roles report being impaired, hungover, or using substances shortly before or during work.
Nearly half of Canadian adults lived with one or more chronic disease in 2023, at 46.1 percent, up from 41.2 percent in 2015.
Chronic disease treatment accounts for roughly 58 percent of annual health care costs, a pressure point alongside findings that seven in ten Canadian workers say their benefits do not help with chronic care.
Nearly eight million Canadians provide unpaid care, and most working caregivers report reduced hours, earnings, or advancement.
Deloitte identifies caregiving as the largest single lever available for lifting workforce participation and output, an area where national survey data show caregivers burning out across the workforce.
Reducing the caregiving burden on families and informal carers by 25 percent could deliver economic gains of over $12bn.
Easing the morbidity burden that keeps people out of work or working below capacity by the same margin could generate more than $13bn in GDP gains, and eliminating avoidable mortality, which the OECD and Statistics Canada estimate at 25 percent of deaths in the working-age population, could add a further $250m.
Deloitte cites a Harvard Business School study of employers offering a Care Concierge Benefit, which helped employees find services, coordinate care, and navigate the system.
Absenteeism fell by up to 50 percent, 30 percent of employees said caregiving support prevented them from taking time off or leaving their job, and employers realized up to 72 percent return on investment from caregiver support programs.
Two of the report's seven recommended actions reach into workplace plans.
The first is a universal Prevention Savings Account, a portable, incentive-linked entitlement covering screening, risk-factor management, and healthy behaviours, built on Health Spending Accounts already offered by many employers and extended toward universality through a public seed or match.
Deloitte places it outside the Canada Health Act's insured services, as a federal tax-and-transfer instrument.
The second calls for legislated parity for mental health and substance use so those conditions are funded equitably with physical health, with rapid-access therapy, prevention, and early intervention added to every workplace.
On caregiving, the report recommends broadening the existing EI caregiving benefit beyond critical-illness and end-of-life eligibility to include chronic care, paired with respite, home-care hours, and job-protected leave.
