McCallum and colleagues point out that coroners in Ontario are physicians, whereas those in Australia are lawyers.1 Our understanding is that the physician-only model operates in some Canadian provinces (e.g., Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario) but not in others (e.g., Quebec, British Columbia and Saskatchewan). In any case, we would readily concede that specific findings from our analysis of characteristics of deaths that are disproportionately more and less likely to reach inquest in Australia2 may not be directly generalizable to Canada.
The more important issue, however, is whether the questions about coronial practice our research poses have salience in Canada and other international settings. We believe they do. As McCallum and coauthors indicate, decisions by Ontarian coroners about which cases to take to inquest are the product of a series of subjective determinations.1 Understanding what body of public death investigations those determinations produce, and whether and how it differs from the broader body of deaths coroners investigate, is worthwhile. Inquests are both a springboard for recommendations and an important influence on the public’s understanding of untimely death. Indeed, subjecting coroners’ cases to the kind of epidemiologic analysis our paper presents may be especially useful in a jurisdiction like Ontario, where inquest rates are relatively low and the vetting process is extremely selective.