Three ways of counting, and what each one means
- New diagnoses
- How many people were diagnosed for the first time during the year. Also called incidence.
- Living with the condition
- How many people have the condition at all, whether diagnosed this year or years ago. Also called prevalence, so this number is much larger.
- Deaths from any cause
- How often people with the condition die, of any cause, compared with people without it. Also called all-cause mortality; not deaths caused by the condition.
What stands out
New diagnoses
How many people were diagnosed for the first time each year, and how that differs across the country.
| Fiscal year | Rate per 100,000 | 95% confidence interval | New cases |
|---|
An asterisk marks the pandemic period, 2020–21 to 2022–23.
Darker tiles have higher rates. Colours are scaled to each year’s range, so small differences can look large; the comparison chart shows the intervals.
Dots are rates and lines are 95% confidence intervals. A filled dot marks an interval that does not include Canada’s rate: a descriptive flag, not a formal test.
Rate compared with the number of new cases
Who is affected
How new diagnoses differ between females and males, and what these data leave out. PHAC publishes these figures by sex, in two categories, females and males; the tables do not include gender. The panels in this section compare females with males whatever the sex filter is set to.
| Fiscal year | Females, rate (95% CI) | Males, rate (95% CI) | New cases, females | New cases, males | Females, % of new cases | Females, % of population |
|---|
Rates are age-standardized, per 100,000. Shares are counts, not adjusted for age. A dash marks a year in which PHAC suppressed the estimate for one sex. An asterisk marks the pandemic period, 2020–21 to 2022–23.
| Age group | Females, rate (95% CI) | New cases, females | Males, rate (95% CI) | New cases, males |
|---|
Crude rates per 100,000 people in each age group. A dash marks an estimate PHAC suppressed.
Dots are the female rate divided by the male rate, and lines are 95% confidence intervals. The dashed line at 1 marks equal rates. A filled dot marks an interval that does not include 1: a descriptive flag, not a formal test.
What these data cannot show
Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA Plus) is the Government of Canada’s tool for asking how sex and gender combine with other factors, which it lists as age, disability, education, ethnicity, economic status, geography (including rurality), language, race, religion and sexual orientation. The tables PHAC publishes from the CCDSS cover only some of these. The rest are listed here so that a missing factor is not read as an absence of differences.
- Shown on this site
- Sex (female, male), age group, province or territory, and fiscal year. Age groups are five years wide for Canada and wider for the provinces and territories.
- Gender, and sexual orientation
- Not in these tables. PHAC publishes two sex categories, female and male, drawn from administrative health records, so the tables say nothing about gender, and people who are neither female nor male are not visible in them.
- Economic status and education
- Not in these tables.
- First Nations, Inuit and Métis identity
- Not in these tables.
- Race, ethnicity, language and religion
- Not in these tables.
- Disability
- Not in these tables.
- Rurality
- Not in these tables. The smallest geography published is the province or territory.
What is GBA Plus? (Women and Gender Equality Canada)
A difference between females and males on this page describes diagnosed cases. It can reflect biology, how long people live, how often they see a health care provider, and how readily a diagnosis is recorded, and these data cannot separate those.
Living with the condition, and deaths
How many people have the condition, and how often they die, of any cause, compared with people who do not.
| Fiscal year | Prevalence (%) | 95% confidence interval | People living with the condition |
|---|
An asterisk marks the pandemic period, 2020–21 to 2022–23.
| Fiscal year | With the condition | Without the condition | Rate ratio (95% CI) |
|---|
Deaths from any cause per 100,000 people. An asterisk marks the pandemic period, 2020–21 to 2022–23.
Behind the case count, and two scenarios for the rate
Why the number of new cases changed, and where the rate would sit if the pre-pandemic trend continued or if it stayed flat. Both panels are national and follow the sex filter.
Read these results with care
About the data
These figures come from the Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System (CCDSS). It links provincial and territorial health insurance registries with physician billing claims and hospital discharge records, and, for dementia, prescription drug records. A person is counted once their records meet PHAC's case definition, so the figures describe diagnosed cases in the publicly funded health system rather than everyone living with a condition.
Rates are age-standardized to the 2021 Canadian population, so places with older or younger populations can be compared. Estimates are annual by fiscal year (April to March) and cover people aged 65 and older for dementia, 40 and older for parkinsonism, and 20 and older for multiple sclerosis. Three measures are shown: new diagnoses in a year (incidence), the share of people living with the condition (prevalence), and deaths from any cause among people with and without the condition.
New Brunswick has no estimates for these conditions, Quebec has none for multiple sclerosis, and Yukon has none for parkinsonism or multiple sclerosis. This release uses data the provinces and territories contributed as of April 2025.
Source
Public Health Agency of Canada. Canadian Chronic Disease Surveillance System (CCDSS) Data Tool, 2025 edition. Health Infobase. Accessed September 15, 2026. health-infobase.canada.ca/ccdss/data-tool
- New diagnoses (age-standardized incidence): dementia, parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis
- People living with the condition (age-standardized prevalence): dementia, parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis
- All-cause mortality rate and rate ratio: dementia, parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis
- New diagnoses by age group (crude incidence, age distribution), accessed September 29, 2026: dementia, parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis
- CCDSS summary of methods
- PHAC guidance on COVID-19 and CCDSS measures
An independent student project built with open data from the Public Health Agency of Canada under the Open Government Licence – Canada. It is not produced or endorsed by PHAC or by the provinces and territories.