Introducing the Canadian Accessibility and Remoteness Index (CARI+)

Abstract Rurality and remoteness are policy‐relevant concepts for planning and evaluating equitable access to services across Canada, yet existing measures rely on categorical, urban‐centric, and coarse spatial definitions that obscure variation in accessibility across the rural‐urban continuum. The Canadian Accessibility and Remoteness Index Plus (CARI+) is a small‐area accessibility index at the dissemination‐area level. It is based on road‐network travel to stratified service centres, including population centres and 24‐hour emergency departments stratified by settlement size. Category‐specific scores are capped at 3, summed to produce an overall score, then normalized. We examined the CARI+ values against socio‐demographic indicators and compared them with the Index of Remoteness (IOR). CARI+ yields a more even population distribution than the IOR (39% vs 77% in the most accessible category) and reveals socio‐demographic gradients: material deprivation and Indigenous identity increase with remoteness, while educational attainment and immigrant representation decline. In very remote areas, CARI+ identifies 25% of Indigenous residents and 27% of the population with less than high school education, versus 78% and over 50% respectively under the IOR. The CARI+ provides a transparent, service‐specific, high‐resolution measure of accessibility that addresses key limitations of existing Canadian indices and supports nuanced analysis for health and social service planning.