Visualizing mortality in Canada: Rates and counts by sex and province or territory for select causes of death

Additional information

Note

Deaths under investigation by coroners or medical examiners, such as suicides, accidents and homicides, often require a lengthy investigation. As a result, information on cause of death—particularly among those under the age of 45, whose deaths are more likely to be investigated—generally takes longer to be reported to Statistics Canada. This means that the number and rate of deaths of certain causes may underestimate the true value for the most recent years.

Thus, during the production of death statistics each year, data from previous years may be revised to reflect updates or changes received from provincial and territorial vital statistics registries.

Analytical assistance

This dashboard shows the change in a cause of death by age at time of death since the year 2000. Data can be viewed by number of deaths, percentage of deaths and age-standardized mortality rate per 100,000 population.

The percentage of deaths shows the proportion of a cause of death among all deaths. This indicator allows the importance of one cause of death among all deaths to be measured.

The age-standardized mortality rate per 100,000 population allows analysis of the change in a cause of death using a common comparative base of 100,000 people residing in Canada. Therefore it is possible to better compare the change in a cause of death over time.

Definitions

Cause of death: The tabulated cause of death is the underlying cause of death. The underlying cause of death is defined as (a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death, or (b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury. The underlying cause is selected from a number of conditions listed on the medical certificate of cause of death, using international mortality classification rules for statistical tabulation prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Deaths: Death refers to the permanent disappearance of all evidence of life at any time after a live birth has taken place. Stillbirths are excluded.

Percentage of deaths: The percentage of deaths is the proportion of a cause of death among all deaths in a given year.

Age-standardized mortality rate per 100,000 population: Age-standardized mortality rates show the number of deaths per 100,000 people that would have occurred in a given area if the age structure of the population of that area was the same as the age structure of a specified standard population. Age-standardization removes the effect of differences in the age structure of populations among areas and over time.

Province and territory: The geographic distribution of deaths in this dashboard is based on the deceased's usual place of residence. Counts in this dashboard exclude deaths of non-residents of Canada.

For more information about the international mortality classification rules for statistical tabulation prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO), tenth edition (ICD-10), or the definition of grouped causes of death, please refer to the table “Deaths and mortality rate (age standardization using 2011 population) by selected grouped causes” table number: 13-10-0800-01