Death From Unintentional Injuries

They are words that family and friends dread: "There has been an accident."

Deaths caused by "unintentional injury" (as defined by Statistics Canada) can be the result of various types of incidents--motor vehicle collisions, falls, drowning, burns, poisoning. These dangers confront Canadians from coast to coast to coast on a daily basis.

But is one part of the country more dangerous than others? We know that urban and suburban areas are generally safer than rural areas. The real difference, however, emerges on opposite sides of Canada's North-South boundary. The accidental death rate is much higher in the North than in the South. A person in northeastern Manitoba is nearly six times as likely to die in an accident than is a person living, for example, in the Montreal suburb of Laval.

We cannot say, for certain, why Northern accidental death rates are so much higher. Do hazardous jobs, treacherous roads, and modes of transportation make living in the North riskier? Is it the dearth of doctors or the long distances (and hence, travel times) between accident sites and emergency services? Each, in its own way, could contribute to making the accidental death rate much higher in Canada's North than in the South.

Note: North-South boundary line based on health regions, rather than on census divisions as in previous maps.
Source: The Conference Board of Canada.

Methodology

This is the first map in the Here, the North series to present data by health region. Maps of all of the health regions in Canada are available from Statistics Canada at www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-221-x/2010001/regions/hrt1-eng.htm. As noted there, "For most data sources . . . health region level data are not available for some northern health regions in Manitoba and Saskatchewan [that] have small populations. To avoid suppression in these areas where small numbers or sample size impact on data quality, data have been grouped with neighbouring regions, as follows: Churchill Regional Health Authority, Manitoba (4690) is combined with Burntwood Regional Health Authority (4680) and referred to as 'Burntwood/Churchill' (4685); and, Athabasca Health Authority (4713) Saskatchewan is combined with Mamawetan Churchill River Regional Health Authority (4711) and Keewatin Yatthé Regional Health Authority (4712) and referred to as 'Athabasca/Keewatin/Mamawetan' (4714)." These changes were made to a health regions boundary file obtained from Statistics Canada using the MERGE function in ArcGIS. A new North-South boundary line was then drawn between Northern and Southern health regions.

Statistics Canada defines the "unintentional injury death rate" as the "age-standardized rate of death from unintentional injuries per 100,000 population. Unintentional ('accidental') injuries include injuries due to causes such as motor vehicle collisions, falls, drowning, burns, and poisoning, but not medical misadventures/complications."¹

Data in an Excel spreadsheet were obtained from Statistics Canada's 2010 Health Profile (Catalogue No. 82-228-XWE. Ottawa. Released June 15, 2010). Values from the "Unintentional Injuries" field were imported into a geographic information system (ArcGIS) where they were classified as "fewer than 45 per 100,000" or "45 or greater per 100,000." The data were mapped to the nearest whole number, and the values for health regions in the North falling in the higher category were labelled.

Excel's SORT function was used to prepare the two tables illustrating highest and lowest fatal accident rates by health region in Canada.

Data were not available for Prince Edward Island, so it was merged with the nearest adjacent health region (Region 1, New Brunswick). Similarly, no data were available for "York Regional" adjacent to the City of Toronto, so its boundaries were merged with those of the City of Toronto. Finally, the health region Terres-Cries-de-la-Baie-James, in Northern Quebec, comprises a number of small, geographically dispersed communities whose data are not visible when presented on a national map at the scale used in this series. The health region Nord-du-Québec was therefore merged with the health region Terres-Cries-de-la-Baie-James in order that the data for Terres-Cries-de-la-Baie-James would be visible.

About the Series

Here, the North is a bi-weekly series researched, written, and produced by The Conference Board of Canada's Centre for the North. The series is designed to illustrate similarities and differences--between Canada's North and South, and between Northern regions--in keeping with the Centre's mandate to provide policy-directed research to decision makers.

This issue of Here, the North was researched and written by Peter Wilson.

1 Statistics Canada, "Health Indicators." www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-221-x/4060874-eng.htm.