Ontario Dementia​ Task Force Leadership: ​
Co-Chairs: Lisa Levin (AdvantAge Ontario) and Dr. Jo-Anne Clarke (North East Specialized Geriatric Centre) 
Convened by: Adam Morrison (Alzheimer Society of Ontario) and Dr. Saskia Sivananthan (Brainwell Institute) 

An estimated 71,700 people in Ontario will develop dementia in 2026, joining more than 352,000 people already living with the disease. More than 207,000 care partners provide 5.75 million hours of unpaid care every week, and both numbers are expected to grow substantially in the years ahead. 

Numbers of this scale can feel abstract, but their consequences are deeply personal: imagine a family waiting for answers after the first signs of cognitive change, a primary care provider unsure where a patient should go next, or a care partner left to hold everything together. 

These experiences unfold across every part of Ontario's health and social system. Dementia care spans hospitals, primary care, community services, home care, and long-term care. There is considerable expertise throughout the system, and many programs are making a meaningful difference. What remains challenging is the space between them: the transitions that determine whether someone experiences care as a connected journey or as a series of separate encounters. 

That challenge is at the center of the Ontario Dementia Task Force (ODTF), launched in April 2026 as a joint initiative of the Alzheimer Society of Ontario and The Brainwell Institute, co-hosted with the Ontario Dementia Care Alliance and supported by the Weston Family Foundation. More than 40 organizations are represented, bringing together lived experience and expertise from across clinical, community, research, and health-​system settings. 

The work began by examining what coordinating infrastructure Ontario already has, and where greater coordination could make it work better. It has looked to cancer, stroke, and palliative care for lessons.  It also examined how dementia services and sectors connect across the province and where people may fall between gaps in the system. From there, the goal is to help shape a practical roadmap for more coordinated dementia care. 

Understanding what that coordination could mean in practice begins with the pathway itself. A social and clinical pathway provides the route: it establishes where someone should go and what should happen along the dementia journey. Programs and health care providers make that journey possible. Overarching coordination provides the connective structure, helping those services work together and creating greater consistency as people move through care. 

Seen this way, much of what Ontario needs is already here. Ontario Health’s Dementia: Care for People Living in the Community Quality Standard describes what high-quality dementia care should look like, while existing programs across the system already deliver important parts of that care. The opportunity is to connect this work more deliberately and build on the strengths already in place. 

That opportunity has arrived at an important moment for dementia care in Ontario. The Improving Dementia Care in Ontario Act, 2024 calls for the development of a provincial dementia care framework, creating an opportunity to think more deliberately about how care is organized across settings. The ODTF’s work is intended to complement that process by bringing together evidence and the perspectives of people who know the dementia journey firsthand. 

The health system already offers useful precedents for this kind of coordination. Cancer and stroke care, for example, have benefited from structures that help people navigate care more smoothly. Dementia presents its own complexities, of course, that span health and social care over a journey that can last many years; even so, the underlying principle is similar: good programs have greater impact when the system around them helps people move from one to the next, and this is the crux of the ODTF’s mission. 

What comes next is translating the work into action. Over the coming months, the Ontario Dementia Task Force will finalize its proposed roadmap and present its findings to government. The recommendations are intended to support the development of Ontario's provincial dementia care framework under the Improving Dementia Care in Ontario Act, 2024, while identifying practical opportunities to strengthen coordination across the continuum of care. The objective is not simply to describe the current system, but to help shape one that is more connected, consistent, and easier to navigate for people living with dementia and their care partners. 

Learn more about the Ontario Dementia Task Force and its findings here. ​