Add/Remove data

Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian Vital Statistics - Death database (CVSD)

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

During the production of each month's death statistics, data from previous months/years may be revised to reflect any updates or changes that have been received from the provincial and territorial vital statistics offices.

The adjusted number of deaths for the reference years 2020 and 2021 is based on provisional death counts.

Due to improvements in methodology and timeliness, the duration of data collection has been shortened compared to previous years. Fewer deaths were captured by the time of the release. As a result, these death counts have been adjusted to account for the undercoverage in the data. The 2017, 2018, and 2019 data are preliminary.

These death data are provisional and may not match data from other sources, such as media reports or counts and estimates from provincial or territorial health departments and other agencies.

Statistics Canada’s capacity to provide useful and timely information is dependent on its ability to receive the information from the provinces and territories. For several jurisdictions this information is typically sent within 30 days of the death event, while for others it is sent 30 to 60 or more days following the death event. For this reason, data for certain provinces and territories for certain weeks are suppressed.

These data are provisional and subject to change. Care should be taken when making conclusions from provisional data. These estimates will be revised as more records are received and processed.

Weeks are as defined in several epidemiological studies, including those of the U.S Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC weeks start on a Sunday and end on a Saturday. They are numbered sequentially from 1 to 52 or 53 depending on the year. The first CDC week in a year ends on the first Saturday of January, provided it has at least four days in that calendar year. The first CDC week of a year may include a few days from the previous calendar year. Conversely, the first few days of a calendar year may be included in the last CDC week of the previous year. Since CDC weeks can overlap two months, they do not perfectly recreate calendar months or years.

This real-time cube is designed to track changes in the data since their initial release. Typically, data are released as preliminary for a specific period, revised the following period based on new information and eventually revised in an annual or historical revision process.

For more information on the estimation process and on the Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database, please consult the Definitions, data sources and methods for Survey 3233— Vital Statistics - Death Database.

The quality of the weekly adjusted counts is largely contingent on the level of completeness of the data, that is, the extent to which all deaths have been reported to Statistics Canada. For this reason, only estimates for weeks where the level of completeness reaches 75% or more are shown. This threshold offers a compromise between the robustness and the timeliness of estimates. The level of completeness reaches 90% or more for almost all weeks, with a few exceptions. Although useful to signal potential new recent trends in regard to excess mortality, estimates based on weekly data with lower level of completeness should be used with caution as they were found to carry more uncertainty and be more sensitive to model assumptions (such as the choice of the reference period). Consequently, these estimates are subject to change noticeably in subsequent releases as the number of reported deaths increase for these weeks.

The adjusted number of deaths for the reference years 2020 and 2021 was based on provisional data.

The geographic distribution of deaths in this table is based on the deceased's place of death.

The following standard symbols are used in this Statistics Canada table: (..) for figures not available for a specific reference period, (...) for figures not applicable and (x) for figures suppressed to meet the confidentiality requirements of the Statistics Act.

2017 to 2021 data for Yukon are not available.