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Lung Health Foundation’s new Canadian COPD Performance Index finds significant shortfalls in COPD care across the country, driven by missing data, workforce shortages and no national strategy. Here’s where your region stands.

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TORONTO, Oct. 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Your lungs don’t know what province you live in. Canada’s healthcare system does, especially when it comes to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

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That’s the headline finding of the Canadian COPD Performance Index, a first-of-its-kind report released today by Lung Health Foundation (LHF), and made possible in part by a grant from the Speak Up for COPD Coalition. Built by a national working group of clinicians, researchers and people living with COPD, the Index is the first of its kind to lay every province and territory side by side – comparing them on population health, patient experience, workforce capacity, cost of care and health equity.

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The topline message is clear: there are significant gaps in COPD care across Canada, and where you live may shape the care you receive. The Index shows where those gaps are, and where provinces and territories can learn from one another.

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“COPD is one of the most common, most costly, and most under-prioritized chronic diseases in Canada,” says Dr. Somkene Igboanugo, Director, Programs & Person-Centered Care at Lung Health Foundation. “We constantly hear from people living with COPD about the gaps they run into in their own care. What most don’t see is how much that care varies from one part of the country to another. This Index puts real data behind both.”

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More than two million Canadians live with COPD. It is the second-leading cause of hospitalization in the country, accounting for 76,968 hospital stays in 2024 alone, averaging 7.3 days each. That burden is felt across the entire health system, in hospital beds and costs that affect every Canadian, with or without COPD. People living with COPD die at more than twice the rate of people who don’t have it. And, on the global stage, Canada ranks a middling 17^th out of the 45 countries measured by the Global COPD Index, despite having a publicly funded healthcare system that, in theory, should put Canada near the top.

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In practice, however, the Index shows that COPD care falls short across the country and varies widely along provincial and territorial lines. These gaps are specific to COPD, not simply a reflection of broader pressures on the healthcare system, and there is still no national COPD strategy to close them.

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A Tale of 10 Provinces and Three Territories

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Here’s where it gets complicated – and where the Index does something no one else has done. Instead of naming a single “best” or “worst” place for COPD care, it breaks performance into pieces because this is what the data supports. A region can lead the country in one respect and lag poorly in another, and even the leading scores leave significant room for improvement.

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Canadian COPD Performance Index Highlights:

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