The phrase, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you,” is a classic punchline. Still, the news that Canada is crafting its first-ever Men and Boys’ Health Strategy deserves our attention, especially as they seek public input.

On March 2, 2026, Health Canada announced a male health survey, available until June 1, 2026, at Canada.ca/Healthy-Men. I completed the survey in under 10 minutes, though some open-ended questions allow longer responses. Health Canada wants the public’s ideas on challenges to male physical and mental health, barriers to improvement and possible actions. They will also accept formal submissions from organizations.

Health Canada acknowledges that it is playing catch-up, since Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and WHO Europe have already published national strategies for men’s health. Reviewing them yielded some fascinating tidbits. For example, male life expectancy in Australia is listed at 82.59 years compared to Canada’s 80.94. The Aussie report does note that “the life expectancy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males is over 10 years lower than for non-Indigenous males.” That’s certainly a factor in Canada, too. As for why Canada is doing this project, and why now, one motivation seems to be the shocking findings from Movember Canada’s 2025 report, The Real Face of Men’s Health. It noted that Canadian men are three times as likely as women to die by suicide, and three times as likely to have a gambling problem. The Movember report also notes that “72% of accidental opioid toxicity deaths, and 63% of accidental opioid-related poisoning hospitalizations are males.”

Another factor is male hesitance to seek out appropriate health care resources. Health Canada notes that “Men are less likely than women to engage with primary care or access preventive services, including health screening” and that “65% of Canadian men wait more than six days with symptoms before visiting the doctor.”

The Movember report also theorizes about the reasons behind gender-based differences in health-care utilization. It observes that “Women’s relationships with health and health care are often established during adolescence, and in many cases built around their reproductive and sexual health needs. Men, in contrast, tend to be estranged from health care, and their health literacy is often underdeveloped.”

Since one of the goals of this Health Canada exercise is to collect constructive ideas, I tried to provide some, ranging from school- and sports-team-based health literacy and counselling to, at the older end of the male spectrum, socially positive activities like men’s sheds.

Since the folks at Movember have given this a lot of thought, it’s worth highlighting their three policy requests as explained in the report.

Policy Ask #1: Strengthen men’s mental health literacy, health promotion and service engagement. They suggest “a focus on ‘at-risk’ groups, so men can get the assistance they need, when they need it.”

Policy Ask #2: Build a health-care system and workforce to deliver men’s programs and services. This could involve investing in a Canada-wide Men’s Health Centre, with provincial hubs, as well as comprehensive training programs for the health care workforce.

Policy Ask #3: Advance research to map and better respond to how men engage with their health and health-care services. The report notes that Movember Canada has funded a five-year, $500,000 initiative to support “large-scale, longitudinal and systems-based research to better understand why, how, when and where diverse populations of men engage with their health, and health-care services.” The request is for matching funding and certainly seems like it would be put to good use.

While it may seem like the classic model of asking the government to return the money it has collected from us through taxes, there is, in fact, an economic upside to improving male health in Canada. In the Health Canada news release, it is noted that “Improved men’s health in Canada could save $12.4 billion annually, with billions more in increased productivity.”

Another positive factor is the commitment to release the results of this project by the end of 2026. With many health-care systems experiencing difficulties, it’s good to know that at least some attention is being provided to the unique issues of male health.

Besides the truisms about government “being here to help you” and giving us back our own money, there is another spark of political reality at play here. If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain. In this case, voting is as simple as clicking a link and contributing your best ideas about how to improve men’s health in Canada.

Tom Keenan is an award‑winning journalist, public speaker, professor in the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape at the University of Calgary, and author of the best‑selling book Technocreep: The Surrender of Privacy and the Capitalization of Intimacy.