In 2022, 7,189 Canadians aged 65 and older died from falls. The count comes from the Public Health Agency of Canada’s surveillance of fall-related deaths, and it works out to an average of almost 20 older Canadians a day.
This page holds that figure and the other verified Canadian falls numbers in one place. It is written for anyone who needs them with the sourcing attached: journalists, discharge planners, home-care agencies, researchers, students, and families who want the real picture. Every statistic below names its source in the same sentence and links to the official record. The figures were last verified against their sources on August 20, 2026, and this page is refreshed when the Public Health Agency of Canada updates its falls surveillance.
One more thing before the numbers. Bedford Medical Alert® monitors personal emergency response systems for a living, and this page still makes no claims about what any device prevents or cures. The numbers stand on their own, and where a figure has limits, the limits are stated next to it.
Prepared by the Bedford Medical Alert research desk, August 2026; every source is cited in full below, and this page is part of our research section.
About 20 percent of Canadian seniors living in the community, one in five, report falling each year, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Seniors’ Falls in Canada: Second Report. Counting all settings, the same report puts the range at 20 to 30 percent of seniors falling each year.
The Second Report remains the anchor document for Canadian falls surveillance. It draws on the Canadian Community Health Survey, the Hospital Morbidity Database, and Canadian Vital Statistics, which is why its figures keep appearing in hospital handouts and public-health materials across the country.
The Public Health Agency of Canada’s most recent surveillance analysis of fall-related deaths, hospitalizations and emergency department visits (Yao and colleagues, 2024, published in the agency’s journal Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada) counted 7,189 fall-related deaths among Canadians 65 and older in 2022, with Yukon excluded from the count.
That is the arithmetic behind the opening line of this page: 7,189 deaths across 365 days is an average of almost 20 a day.
Falls are the leading cause of injury-related hospitalization among Canadian seniors, per the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Second Report. The 2024 surveillance analysis attaches current counts to that ranking: 81,599 fall-related hospitalizations of older adults in fiscal 2023/24, excluding Quebec, and 212,570 fall-related emergency department visits by older adults in Ontario and Alberta over the same period (Yao and colleagues, 2024).
Read the scope notes as part of the numbers. The death count leaves out one territory, the hospitalization count leaves out one province and the emergency-department count covers only two, so the true national totals sit higher than any of the three figures. Careful surveillance reports say exactly what they counted. So should anyone quoting them.
About one quarter of Canadians aged 65 and over, 24.6 percent, lived alone at the 2011 Census, down from 26.7 percent in 2001, according to Statistics Canada’s Living Arrangements of Seniors census brief. The vintage is stated on purpose. A number travels honestly only with its year attached.
Falling, meanwhile, is mostly a solitary event in the oldest age groups. In a British cohort study that followed 110 people over 90 for a year, 82 percent of falls happened while the person was alone (Fleming and Brayne, BMJ, 2008).
Put those two figures side by side and the picture is plain: a substantial share of older Canadians live alone, and when a fall comes, it usually comes with nobody else in the room.
In a 2020 National Institute on Ageing and TELUS Health survey, 91 percent of Canadians of all ages, and almost 100 percent of Canadians 65 and older, said they plan on supporting themselves to live safely and independently in their own home for as long as possible.
Every figure on this page lands somewhere inside that ambition. The counts above are not abstract; they are what interrupts that plan.
Surveillance counts describe how often something happens. On their own they do not say why it happened, or what would have prevented any single fall, and they say nothing about any product, including ours.
For what can actually be done, the practical material lives elsewhere on this site, and we would rather point than repeat. Our guide to fall prevention for seniors at home covers the home side. Medications that increase fall risk in seniors covers one of the few risk factors a doctor or pharmacist can directly adjust. And because the bathroom and the night route to it earn their reputation, bathroom safety for seniors walks through that room fixture by fixture.
A last honesty note, since this is a statistics page: the seniors-safety corner of the internet is full of round, dramatic numbers with no source attached. If a falls statistic arrives without a named source and a year, treat it as marketing until shown otherwise. That test applies to our industry as much as anyone’s.
Putting together a falls-safety plan for yourself or a parent and want to talk it through with a person? Bedford’s Canadian care team answers exactly these calls every day, with no pressure and no script. Call Bedford Medical Alert at 1-888-755-3055.
You are welcome to quote figures from this page. Citing the originals is better practice, so here they are:
Figures last verified against these sources on August 20, 2026. When the Public Health Agency of Canada publishes its next surveillance update, this page gets refreshed to match.
Bedford brings three generations of experience to Canadian seniors and the people who worry about them, and we have read enough unsourced falls marketing to want one page that does it properly. We are Canadian owned and operated, an OCSA member, trusted by clinicians across Canada, and we have supported hospital education programs and research initiatives from UHN Toronto Rehab to Trillium Health. Families rate Bedford 4.9 stars on Google. Publishing the numbers straight, sources attached, is the same habit applied to a web page.
If the numbers have you thinking about a monitored help button at home, the Home Freedom in-home system comes with 24/7 monitoring based in Canada, equipment included with the subscription, Easy Setup, and no long-term contract. Call Bedford Medical Alert at 1-888-755-3055 and we will help you figure out whether it fits.
