Data accuracy

Since the registration of births is a legal requirement in each Canadian province and territory, reporting is virtually complete.
2017 birth and stillbirth data for Yukon are not available.
Due to improvements in methodology and timeliness, the duration of data collection has been shortened compared to previous years.
As a result,there may have been fewer births and stillbirths captured by the time of the release. The 2017 data are therefore considered preliminary. Undercoverage is thought to be minimal, but is being monitored.
Undercoverage may occur because of late registration, which, if not completed soon after birth,
is needed for school registration. Statistics Canada does receive late registrations (typically 1,000 to 1,500 cases, five years after the year of the event).
Incomplete registration is also a source of undercoverage. For example, some provinces require that a notarized statement be completed
when a mother declines to name the father on the application for birth registration. Until the statement is notarized, the application is not registered.

Non-registration and overcoverage are minimal. For overcoverage, births to non-resident women in Canada are registered but are excluded from most tabulation.
Duplicate birth registrations are identified as part of the regular processing operations on each provincial and territorial subset,
as well as additional interprovincial checks, and comparisons between the birth and stillbirth databases for multiple births.
Possible duplicate registrations are checked against microfilmed registrations or optical images, or by consulting with the provinces and territories.