Causes of Death - ARCHIVED

This publication contains statistical tables showing the number of deaths by age, sex and underlying cause for Canada (and by sex for the provinces for 1999 and earlier).

Underlying cause of death is defined as the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death, or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury. The underlying cause is selected from a number of conditions listed on the medical certificate of death.

The underlying cause is presented by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) codes, established by the World Health Organization (WHO, 1992). Beginning in 2000, causes of death in Canada are coded according to the 10th revision of the Classification, referred to as ICD-10. The previous revision, ICD-9 (WHO, 1977), was used for the classification of cause of death in Canada from 1979 to 1999.