The mainstream press loves to play up Canada as “the best country in the world” to live in. Usually, they back this up with reference to various country rankings, but over the last few years, Canada’s place has declined compared to other developed countries. One of the most glaring areas where Canada has seen its rank drop is in child mortality. Recent data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that, while in absolute terms Canada’s child mortality rate has continually declined since the 1980s, Canada’s relative ranking among countries has gotten worse. Canada has gone from 10.9 deaths per 1000 births in the 1980s to 4.4 deaths in 2021, but at the same time has moved from 10th place out of 24 countries in the 1980s to 30th place out of 38 countries in 2021. This poses the question: why is an advanced capitalist country like Canada falling behind?
Child mortality and capitalism
One of the leading causes of child mortality is Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) which given its name would lead one to believe that such deaths are purely accidental. However, quite the opposite is true. Data from Statistics Canada revealed that nearly half of all houses in Nunavik, QC were overcrowded in 2021, and a recent coroner’s report determined that overcrowded housing was directly linked to the deaths of 10 children in Nunavik. A medical assistant at the Regional Board of Health and Social Services pointed out that many families are forced to sleep in a single room, leaving no space for a bassinet. There is a severe shortage of social housing in Nunavik, but the same overcrowded conditions are recreated throughout the country by the continually rising cost of housing and rent. Here we can see the real cause behind infant deaths—poverty and a system where housing is based not on need but on what is most profitable, a system incapable of addressing the issues working class people face.
To add misery on top of misery, the result of all this is that parents blame themselves for the failings of the system. As Dr. Andrew Boozary states “people often wrongly blame themselves for health outcomes that are driven by social determinants such as poverty or lack of access to healthcare.”
Those social determinants are where Canada has been slipping. Canada ranked last (tied with Sweden) out of nine peer countries when it comes to acute care beds per capita—and that was back in 2018 when Canada’s healthcare system had yet to face the devastating effects of the pandemic. Canada also ranks last in affordable housing when compared to all 38 countries in the OECD. The falling ranking in infant mortality is an indication of broader problems, not the negligence of parents. The system is to blame through and through.
Systemic racism
It is well documented that inflation, high housing costs, and inaccessible healthcare hit the most marginalized in society the worst. A $50 increase to one’s grocery bill goes largely unnoticed by the rich, but can mean having to choose between food and rent for someone living paycheck to paycheck. This is reflected in Canada’s child mortality rate as well, which is all the more damning when one looks at the Indigenous population. Here, infant mortality is 9.2 deaths per 1000 births—more than double the non-Indigenous rate! This only serves to underline the fact that the problem is tied to the systemic failures of Canadian capitalism. The Indigenous population is hardest hit by lack of services, poor housing, and inaccessible healthcare, with many communities still without necessities like affordable food and clean drinking water. While politicians like Justin Trudeau will cry crocodile tears when it comes to Indigenous suffering, they do nothing to address the problems Indigenous people face. The bourgeois politicians and press will boast about Canada being a land of opportunity, but turn a blind eye to the thousands of children who are never given a chance.
Who is to blame?
Dennis Raphael, a professor for the School of Health Policy at York University called Canada’s fall on the child mortality ranking a “canary in a coal mine”—an early warning that things are about to get bad. But he has failed to realize that the canary is long dead. It was killed by years of austerity and cuts to healthcare, education, and other services. With soaring debts and high inflation, governments of all stripes are looking to make more cuts. Anything else would require them to attack the profits of the capitalists, and that is one thing they cannot do.
The only way to solve this issue is to invest in education, healthcare, public housing, and good jobs. But this is something capitalism can no longer afford, as evidenced by the lack of funding that has eaten away at all these institutions over the past decades. Canada’s decline in rank is the result of Canadian capitalism itself. It is an indictment of the system as a whole that it cannot improve the conditions of people generally, and infant mortality particularly. If it is incapable of improving, its existence can no longer be justified. It is capitalism that has to go. Only a society where working class people control their workplaces, hospitals, schools, and the economy as a whole can reverse Canada’s decline in rank and reduce child mortality to a thing of the past.
