Statistics Canada Winds Down Its Landmark Race and Indigenous Data Program, and Ottawa Won't Say What Replaces It

Statistics Canada has confirmed that its December 2025 update is the last annual progress report on the Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP), the five-year, $172-million program that built much of the federal government’s capacity to measure racial and Indigenous-identity disparities in Canada. At the same time, Budget 2025 has flagged Statistics Canada for a 15 percent spending reduction over three years, and neither the agency nor the Department of Finance will say what that means for the data infrastructure the DDAP leaves behind.

The DDAP was created through Budget 2021, which allocated $172 million over five years starting in 2021-22, “with $36.3 million ongoing,” to help Statistics Canada collect, analyze and publish data broken down by race, Indigenous identity, gender, disability and other characteristics. The plan funded 74 projects and activities by 2024-25, according to Statistics Canada’s own evaluation, and underwrote a steady stream of disaggregated releases — including “The Diversity of the Black Populations in Canada, 2021,” published in October 2024, and a January 14, 2026 Daily release showing Indigenous adults were incarcerated at 10 times the rate of non-Indigenous adults, and Black adults at three times the rate of white adults, in the provinces with available data.

In its “Disaggregated Data Action Plan 2024-2025 Accomplishments Report: From Commitment to Continuity,” published December 10, 2025, Statistics Canada states plainly that this is “the last annual DDAP Accomplishments Report,” while pledging only to “remain committed” to disaggregated data work going forward. The report does not specify a funding figure for that commitment. Statistics Canada’s newly published 2026-27 Departmental Plan is similarly unspecific: it says the agency “will continue to prioritize the availability of disaggregated statistics” and will work to “embed Indigenous data priorities into the national statistical system,” but attaches no dedicated dollar figure to that pledge, folding it into an overall $970.6-million statistical information budget with no line-item breakdown.

That vagueness is not new. When Budget 2025 was tabled in early November, it directed Statistics Canada, like most federal departments, to find savings of up to 15 percent over three years, stating that “the frequency of data collection will be reduced where the requirements can be met through statistical modelling or other modern methods,” and that “adjustments will be made to the frequency and level of detail collected for data sets which demonstrate less relevance to Canadians.” CTV News reported on November 6-7, 2025 that it asked Statistics Canada and Finance Canada directly what data would be affected and who decides what counts as “less relevant,” and received no substantive answer — only a statement from an unnamed Finance official that “further details on savings” would come “in due course.” Munir Sheikh, Statistics Canada’s former chief statistician, who resigned in 2010 over the cancellation of the mandatory long-form census, told CTV the cuts “really worry” him, warning that shrinking data collection and shrinking government capacity risk feeding each other. Biostatistician Erica Moodie, a McGill Canada Research Chair and past president of the Statistical Society of Canada, told CTV that reduced data “could impact things like transit lines in my neighbourhood” and hamper research that depends on fine-grained survey data.

Outside government, the concern was already on record before Budget 2025 was even tabled. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, in its “Alternative Federal Budget 2026: Racial Equity” brief published October 28, 2025, wrote that the DDAP “is almost at the end, and has not achieved uniform, consistent and comparable disaggregated data collection across government,” and called for the plan to “be renewed and strengthened by giving it legislative foundation in a National Anti-Racism Act.” Separately, the Yellowhead Institute’s November 10, 2025 analysis of Budget 2025 — while not addressing the DDAP specifically — documented that Indigenous-focused programs across government face a similar pattern of funding uncertainty, noting that both the Inuit Child First Initiative and the Urban Programming for Indigenous Peoples fund for Friendship Centres are set to sunset in 2026 without confirmed renewal.

As of this writing, no Black-led or Indigenous-led research or advocacy organization has issued a public statement addressing the DDAP’s funding status specifically. That silence is itself notable given how directly the program’s data has been used to document disparities affecting those communities — from labour-market gaps to the custody-overrepresentation figures Statistics Canada published in January. This story will be updated if organizations such as the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the Black Health Alliance, the Assembly of First Nations or Yellowhead Institute respond directly to the funding question.

What is confirmed: the $172-million, five-year build-out that expanded Canada’s disaggregated-data capacity is ending on schedule. What remains unconfirmed, despite specific questions put to Statistics Canada and Finance Canada by at least one other news organization, is whether the $36.3 million in “ongoing” funding promised alongside it in 2021 survives intact, is being absorbed into the broader 15 percent departmental cut, or will be reduced by an amount neither department will name. Until Statistics Canada or Finance Canada answers that question directly, the future scope of federal data on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous inequality in Canada remains, in the government’s own words, a matter to be resolved “in due course.”

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