Speaking for the dead to protect the living: the role of the coroner in Ontario.

This paper describes the historical origins, modern-day operations and complexities of the Ontario coroners system. Both the Office of the Chief Coroner and Statistics Canada publish death statistics for the province of Ontario. The time required by the coroner's office to produce accurate cause-of-death data may significantly exceed the time constraints faced by Statistics Canada in producing its own annual cause-of-death statistics. As a result, substantial discrepancies arise in the number of deaths attributed to accidents, suicides and homicides that are published by these two agencies.