Canadians encouraged to register as organ donors as Green Shirt Day returns

A photo and flowers are seen during a funeral service for Humboldt Broncos' Logan Boulet in Lethbridge, Alta., on Saturday, April 14, 2018. STHE CANADIAN PRESS/David Rossiter

Eight years after the deadly Humboldt Broncos bus crash, the legacy of one junior hockey player continues with an annual reminder for Canadians to register as organ donors.

Green Shirt Day is a national campaign rooted in the memory of 21-year-old Logan Boulet, one of 16 people who died when a truck driver went through a stop sign at a rural Saskatchewan intersection and into the path of the team’s bus on April 6, 2018.

Boulet, who was from Lethbridge, Alta., died from his injuries the next day, and his parents said it had been his wish to donate his organs.

Green Shirt Day organizers have said that decision helped save six lives.

In the weeks that followed, about 150,000 people registered to become organ donors, launching what became known as the “Logan Boulet Effect” and Green Shirt Day.

The Saskatchewan government has said that the province continues to see organ transplant donation registration rates go up. The registry, which started in September 2020, has seen more than 30,000 residents sign their intent to donate organs and/or tissues.

Nicole de Guia, manager of organ donation and transplantation with the Canadian Institute for Health Information, said data from 2024 shows that 3,203 transplants were performed in Canada. Data from 2025 is not yet available.

“We still have quite a bit of demand for these vital surgeries, and there’s still much more of an unmet need,” de Guia said in an interview.

There were 4,044 Canadians on a waiting list for an organ as of Dec. 31, 2024, while 691 people died or were withdrawn from the list.

Nationally, she said, there has been an increase in transplant surgeries in the last 10 years.

But data from 2024 shows the first decrease in deceased donors in five years -- about six per cent compared to the year before. Living donations saw a smaller decrease in 2024 with 1.7 per cent.

“For the most part, a living donor can only provide a kidney or a part of a liver, so we really rely on deceased donors to be able to supply these vital life-saving surgeries,” she said.

De Guia added that it’s still too soon to tell if the decrease is a trend that will continue or just a fluctuation.

The institute -- an independent not-for-profit organization that collects, analyzes and shares data on Canada’s health systems -- started a project in 2023 funded by Health Canada for a new data system called CanODT. It’s aimed at modernizing organ donation and transplantation reporting across Canada.

De Guia said there’s still a lot of manual data entry in the transplant process and the new system is designed to better support interprovincial organ transfers.

“This is a precious resource and it needs to be very timely to share data about organs that are available and to match them up with those who need them the most,” she said.

The institute doesn’t have data specifically about Green Shirt Day. But de Guia said these kinds of campaigns are important for starting conversations within families about donation.

Dr. Sam Shemie, a medical adviser for deceased organ donation with Canadian Blood Services, said the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the rate of consent for people dying in intensive care.

Before the pandemic, he said, the consent rate was about 60 per cent, and it has dropped in recent years to about 49 per cent.

“I think there’s a lot of factors, perhaps trust of government and health-care institutions since COVID, as well as vaccine mandates and isolation,” said Shemie, who is also a pediatric intensive care physician at Montreal Children’s Hospital.

He called the decrease concerning but said the Boulet family have been important advocates for having conversations about end-of-life decisions on organ donation.

“Managing this complex intersection of dying, death and organ donation in intensive care units is vitally important for the health of Canadians,” Shemie said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2026.