Alcohol is a popular legal psychoactive substance that holds special social and cultural significance in Canada as in many parts of the world. Many Canadians associate drinking with pleasurable social events, such as music festivals, parties, watching sports, and/or to de-stress or to cope. Our society condones, supports, and in some cases promotes drinking such as through “drink of the day” specials and sale prices on certain brands. Alcohol also plays a significant role in the Canadian economy, generating jobs, and tax revenues for governments.
While alcohol is socially accepted and its use widely tolerated and promoted, particularly in comparison with other substances, it has one of the most significant impacts on the health and wellbeing of Canadians compared to other substances. In 2020, there were over 17,000 alcohol-related deaths and 652,000 emergency visits in Canada, including deaths from alcohol poisoning and impaired driving. Alcohol is the most costly substance, with $19.67 billion in costs to Canadian society in terms of direct health care costs, direct law enforcement costs, and indirect costs related to lost productivity. Although more deaths can be attributed to tobacco use, alcohol use has the highest cost because it can be attributed to injuries and deaths of people at a younger age and was therefore responsible for more lost years of productive life. In 2020, alcohol use accounted for the greatest costs to the criminal justice system at nearly $4.0 billion or 39.8% of all criminal justice costs. Evidence shows that alcohol use is a serious public health issue that is having significant impacts on Canadians.
The overall objective of the research is to benchmark the views and knowledge of Canadians related to alcohol and the associated risks when consuming it.
The survey is comprised of 9,812 Canadians, 16 years of age and older. The survey was conducted across Canada in each province and territory between February 13th and June 30th, 2023.
The survey sample was drawn from two sources:
1) The Nanos Probability Panel, which contains about 50,000 Canadians who were randomly recruited to join the panel by land- and cell-lines with live agents.
2) Random recruitment by land-and cell-lines and administered the survey online.
The resulting sample contains Canadians who were all randomly recruited by telephone, thus it is a probability sample and allows a margin of error to be associated with the research. The randomly recruited probability sample has a margin of error of +/-1.0% at a 95% confidence interval. Results are weighted to population proportions for region, age, and sex from the 2021 Census. Chi-square tests were used to compare subgroups to the remaining sample (ex. Ontario versus the rest of Canada; 16 to 19 years old versus the rest of Canada; women versus men). All respondents self-administered the survey online.
The research was commissioned by Health Canada and was conducted by Nanos Research.
This publication reports the findings of this research.
To view the full report in English, click here.
To view the full report in French, click here.