Canadian soldiers patrol an area in the Dand district of southern Afghanistan in June 2009. The Defence Department is changing the way it tracks the number of suicides in the military to include members who kill themselves while no longer on active duty. (Colin Perkel/Canadian Press)

Canada's Defence Department is changing the way it tracks the number of suicides in the military to include members who kill themselves while no longer on active duty, according to a report.

The department will now record the self-inflicted deaths of former soldiers and reservists, going back to 1972, the Toronto Star reported.

Previously, only actively serving full-time soldiers who took their own lives have been recorded in the department's suicide count.

The military has maintained that the suicide rate in its ranks is lower than for the general Canadian population.

Fifteen soldiers committed suicide in 2008. The figure has ranged from 11 to 13 during 2002-07.

The project, expected to be completed by next spring, hopes to give a better picture of mental health issues former soldiers deal with upon leaving the Forces.

But the new system of recording suicides may still not accurately reflect what impact military service had on the decision to commit suicide.

"If some people happened to commit suicide 14 or 18 years after leaving the [Forces] it would be interesting to see what proportion of that is related to [military] experience," Lt.-Col. Rakesh Jetly, a Canadian Forces psychiatrist in Ottawa, told the Star.