Life expectancy in Canada: Up last year, still down compared to pre-pandemic

The average Canadian can expect to live 81.7 years, according to new death data from Statistics Canada.

The latest data analyzes deaths from 2023. Life expectancy is up from 81.3 years in 2022 but is still lower than it was before the pandemic.

Life expectancy from birth was 81.76 years in 2012 and had risen to a high of 82.23 in 2019.

By 2022, it had dropped more than one year from its peak, down to 81.29 years. The rise this past year marked the first time since 2019 that life expectancy had risen from the previous year.

Before 2012, the number had been consistently rising for decades. Canadians can expect to live approximately seven years longer than they could in 1980, when life expectancy was approximately 75 years.

Men vs. women

While the trend lines follow a similar pattern, women can expect to live significantly longer than men.

In 2023, the expected lifespan for females was 83.89 years, according to the data — more than four years longer than their male counterparts, who have a life expectancy of 79.51 years at birth.

Causes of death

Overall, there were 326,571 deaths in Canada in 2023, 2.4 per cent fewer than in 2022.

Cancer was the leading cause of death for Canadians. One out of every four deaths were caused by cancer in 2023 — 84,629 total (25.9 per cent).

According to Statistics Canada, “Overall cancer incidence rates have been declining since 2011 for males and since 2012 for females,” though the agency notes the total number of new cases and deaths is increasing “due to the growing and aging population.”

With 7,162 instances in 2023, accidental drug poisoning deaths reached an all-time high in the country.

That’s up from 6,774 in 2021 and 5,645 in 2022. Death rates were highest in British Columbia (40.3 deaths per 100,000 population), Alberta (26.1) and Saskatchewan (22.9).

Nearly three in four accidental drug deaths (73 per cent) were males, according to Statistics Canada. Among those men, nearly 9 in 10 of them were aged 25 to 64 years.