Article content continued

Out of the 188,161 people who enrolled in the Canadian military between 1972 and 2006, 3,969 deaths were counted.

This didn’t include the 44 soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan as of the end of 2006 — or even the 156 who have now been killed. However, those deaths would represent only a small proportion of military deaths. Statistics Canada analyst Jean-Michel Billette said the effect of hypothetically including combat deaths in the report would not have “changed the figures significantly.”

Among men, the figures showed military members had a 36% lower death rate than the general population over this time, and it was 33% lower for women.

“The results from CF CAMS (Canadian Forces Cancer and Mortality Study) suggest a healthy population of serving and released personnel with lower mortality rates for most causes of deaths,” the Canadian Forces said in a statement on its website.

But part of the data flagged by the Forces for further analysis was the finding that female soldiers ages 40 to 44 were 2.1 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population within this demographic. It was deemed a “statistically significant” finding, but a relatively small number overall — 13 suicides over the 35 years studied, 12 of whom were women released from the military at their time of death.

The Statistics Canada report also showed male soldiers, once released, were 1.46 times more likely to commit suicide than the average person. According to the data, 696 male soldiers committed suicide after their release from the military.