The decline was more pronounced among females compared to males, new data finds
Canada has witnessed an alarming trend: life expectancy declined for the third consecutive year, according to a new report from Statistics Canada.
The report found that the life expectancy of Canadians dropped from 81.6 years in 2021 to 81.3 years in 2022. According to Statistics Canada, the decline was even more pronounced among females than males.
“This is the first time this has ever happened. It’s a pretty big event. This is a measure of how our health is doing as Canadians. And it means that we’re doing worse,” says Dr. Doug Manuel, senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, as quoted in Global News.
Patrice Dion, analyst at Statistics Canada, attributes the three-year decline in life expectancy to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dion also points to additional factors, such as an increase in deaths among older age groups linked to COVID-19 and a rise in death rates among younger adults, potentially related to the opioid crisis.
Life expectancy variations were observed across the country. While Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba witnessed declines, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia saw relatively unchanged figures.
The report recorded a total of 334,623 deaths in Canada in 2022, indicating a 7.3 percent increase from 2021. Leading causes of death in 2022 were cancer and heart disease, constituting 41.8 percent of total deaths, a slight decrease from the previous year.
“We’ve been seeing slower gains in cancer and cardiovascular disease. It went down over the last 50, 60 years, but now it’s plateauing. And our concern is that there’s headwinds and it’s going up. Obesity is going up, diabetes going up, and blood pressure is going up,” says Manuel.
COVID-19 ranked as the third leading cause of death. COVID-19-related deaths increased to 19,716 in 2022 from 14,466 in 2021, with the rise attributed to the Omicron variant's impact and the easing of restrictions. The proportion of COVID-19 deaths among older Canadians aged 65 and older rose to 91.4 percent in 2022.
“The Omicron variant had an impact, as well as the preventive factors that changed in the country. 2022 was bad for COVID, it was our worst year. The sheer number of people who got infected and the older people who got infected and died. It was bad. It knocked our life expectancy down. These stats don’t lie,” Dion says.
When assessing the chance of a recovery in life expectancy in Canada, Dion noted the unpredictable nature of the pandemic. “We don’t know how it will evolve. It’s really hard to see a clear trend. And when we think about the opioid crisis, that’s evolving too,” he says.
