Counting the Dead: COVID-19 and Mortality in Quebec and British Columbia During the First Wave

The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to excess mortality across the globe, and Canada has been no exception. Nonetheless, the pandemic experience has been very different across provinces, and the objective of this paper is to investigate these differences focusing on two extreme cases. We contrast the mortality experience of British Columbia with that of Québec to understand how large differences in mortality during the first wave of the pandemic emerged across these two provinces. We find that most of the differences can be found in excess mortality in institutions (nursing homes) and that travel restrictions, differences in how deaths are recorded, differences in the seasonality of the flu, or differences in how the pandemic spread across different economic segments of the population are unlikely explain these large differences. We document that the reported death toll from COVID-19 is about 30% larger than excess mortality in Quebec due to lower mortality from other causes of death, in particular malignant tumors, heart disease, and respiratory problems. We do not find evidence of an income gradient (measured by postal code level income) in relative excess death for the first wave.