Accidental death has consistently been the third leading cause of death in Canada. But unlike the top causes, heart disease and cancer, it receives far less attention and is less well understood.
“It’s a whole kind of group that is lumped together,” said Nicole Watt-Durant, acting unit head for the Centre for Population Health Data at Statistics Canada.
Watt-Durant says the category is an umbrella term for many different causes of death, including drug overdoses, crime and unintentional injuries such as falls.
Poison, drug overdoses
Canada lumps all deaths due to external causes into the accidental death category.
Within this category, poisonings are a leading cause of death, with drug overdoses accounting for the vast majority of poisonings, says Watt-Durant.
“Overdose mortality at this time in Canada is unprecedented,” said Sarah Larney, a drug addiction researcher at the Université de Montréal. “The rates … increase every year beyond what has been seen anytime in history.”
In 2023, drug overdoses claimed more than 7,150 lives, up from more than 2,150 in 2015.
If drug overdose deaths were in a category of their own, they would rank eighth as a cause of death nationally — behind diabetes and ahead of influenza and pneumonia.
Counting drug overdose deaths is important because it can help the provincial and federal government allocate more resources to addressing the issue, says Larney.
She pointed to the example of B.C. calling a public health emergency over the province’s drug crisis nine years ago. This call would not have happened without data on drug-related deaths, she says.
“There’s this very old saying that what gets counted is what matters,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t point to the number.”
‘Significantly preventable’
Another leading cause of accidental deaths is falls.
Fall-related deaths have risen dramatically in recent decades. These deaths accounted for about 8,000 deaths in 2023, up from 1,500 in 2000.
“This may be related to the aging population and the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions,” reads a February 2025 Statistics Canada report.
Death due to accidental falls increases sharply with age. The annual rate of death from falls for those aged 65 to 74 is 18 deaths per 100,000 people. For those aged 85 and older, it is nearly 30 times higher at 527 deaths per 100,000 people.
Older populations have a harder time recovering from falls, says Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Aging at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“A fall itself can lead to a whole bunch of other health consequences … [it] may result in a hip fracture, and then … that hip fracture … can put additional strain on one’s heart … and leads them to having a … heart attack,” said Sinha.
“If someone says, ‘Well, they died of a heart attack,’ one needs to dial it back and say, ‘Well, what precipitated the heart attack?’”
Every year, a third of older adults fall in their homes, he says, while half of those living in long-term care homes fall.
Falls among the aged population are often preventable, he says. Regular exercise, medication reviews and treatment for vision and hearing loss can reduce the risk of falling.
“While this is the major leading cause of accidental deaths amongst older people, it’s also a significantly preventable cause of death,” said Sinha.
A revised list?
The third leading cause of accidental deaths are vehicle accidents, says Stephanie Rea, issues manager at the Office of the Chief Coroner in Ontario.
In 2022, motor vehicles accounted for nearly 2,000 deaths in Canada.
Crime and injury-related deaths account for most other accidental deaths.
While it may be surprising for deaths from falls and murders to be lumped into the same category, Watt-Durant says the decision about how to label deaths is based on international standards set in the early 2000s. Currently, Canada follows the U.S. National Centre for Health Statistics and World Health Organization’s International Classification of Disease codes.
But Statistics Canada is considering making changes to the national death classification standards.
“We are looking into another potential list,” said Watt-Durant. “Some of those categories may be split up and within the different categories.”
The only change to Canada’s cause of death classification since 2000 has been separating COVID deaths into its own category, says Watt-Durant.
But it remains unclear whether prominent accidental deaths, such as drug overdoses and falls, should be treated as their own categories.
“It’s still in that preliminary phase,” said Watt-Durant.
