New modelling data from the Public Health Agency of Canada shows there was a 22.8 per cent increase in new HIV infections between 2022 and 2024. In 2024, an estimated 2,517 new infections occurred compared with the 2,050 infections recorded two years earlier.
In 2019, B.C. declared an end to the HIV epidemic after new AIDS cases had declined by 90 per cent and new infections were at a record low. But since then, Montaner says infection numbers have been moving in the other direction.
In May, Manitoba’s public health minister declared HIV a public health emergency after HIV rates rose sharply, becoming 3.5 times higher than the national rate. Earlier this year, Saskatchewan reported infection rates just under Manitoba’s, making theirs the second-highest rates in Canada.
“What we’re seeing is a resurgence of HIV, both new infections and AIDS, which was until two or three years ago, persistently declining — because the strategy was working,” Montaner said.
Jollimore says the face of HIV is changing in Canada. He says when the AIDS crisis began in the 1980s it was centered in big cities, mostly affecting gay men, but today, it is showing up in rural and remote communities without adequate health infrastructure and resources. He says more investment is needed to reach those people. “It tends to thrive in pockets where there’s the least connection to care,” Jollimore said. “In those communities where stigma or discrimination or racism may prevent someone from coming forth to get tested or treated.”
This week, global health leaders at the International AIDS conference in Rio de Janeiro warned that major foreign aid cuts, mostly from the United States and other high-income countries — including Canada — could unravel years of progress. UNAIDS says, in 2025, international funding for HIV testing and treatment initiatives in low- and middle-income nations plummeted by 18 per cent.