Canada has world’s fastest growing ‘assisted suicide’ program: report

One in 25 (4.18%) deaths in Canada were caused by assisted suicide in 2022, a thirteenfold increase from 2016. Legislation to include irredeemable mental illness is currently before the House of Commons.

  • By Alex Dhaliwal
  • September 18, 2024
  • News
Canada has world’s fastest growing ‘assisted suicide’ program: report
Remove Ads

A Canadian think tank is sounding the alarm after calling the country’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) program the fastest-growing in the world.

When MAID became legal in 2016, 1,018 Canadians accessed the procedure. It led to the deaths of 13,241 Canadians six years later, rapidly surpassing tallies from peer countries. 

As a percentage of all Canadian deaths, euthanasia amounts to 4.18% of deaths in 2022, a thirteenfold increase from 2016, according to a new report from Cardus, a think tank.

“Assisted dying was clearly not meant by the courts to become a normal way of dying…Despite judges’ and policymakers’ claims or expectations, MAID is no longer an option of last resort,’” it reads.

For comparison, in the six years following euthanasia legalization in peer countries (2003-2009), deaths in peer countries only increased by 3.4 times (Belgium), 1.5 times (Switzerland) and 1.4 times (Netherlands), reported the Hub.

Euthanasia comprised 1.96% (Netherlands), 0.79% (Belgium) and 0.48% (Switzerland) of total deaths in those countries, respectively.

“Medical assistance in dying can pose real risks and… we do not wish to promote premature death as a solution to all medical suffering,” then-minister of justice Jody-Wilson Raybould told the Commons as the procedure approached legalization in 2016.

After MAID became legal, a Québec court expanded access after it ruled the "reasonably foreseeable" death clause unconstitutional.

In 2021, the Trudeau government permitted anyone with "a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability" who is in "an advanced state of irreversible decline" to access MAID — not including the mentally ill. 

Three in five (61%) Canadians support current legislation, according to an earlier Angus Reid poll conducted with Cardus. That fell to 31% when offered to patients with irredeemable mental illness.

Health Canada in May 2022 extrapolated assisted suicide deaths would not constitute 4% of annual deaths until 2033. 

On February 2, 2022, Health Minister Mark Holland introduced Bill C-39, delaying the expansion of MAID to Canadians whose sole underlying condition is a mental disorder.

Initially, eligible persons could have accessed MAID last March 17, but the federal government extended the temporary exclusion period until March 17, 2024. That too has been delayed. It remains before the House of Commons as of writing.

Many have expressed concerns with expanding the procedure to mental illness. Support for Canadians with post-traumatic stress disorder (23%) or severe depression (22%) accessing the procedure is low.

Québec, followed by British Columbia, had Canada’s sharpest spike in assisted suicides. Between 2016 and 2022, Québec’s MAID deaths rose from 494 to 4,801. It rose from 194 to 2,515 in B.C.

In 2022, euthanasia deaths, as a percentage of total deaths in each province, were 6.5% and 5.5%, respectively.

Provincial collection of euthanasia death data varies, as do provincial safeguards. Some government agencies record MAID deaths but specify them as “natural deaths,” while others omit all reference to MAID entirely. 

In 2022, MAID killed more Canadians than all reasons except accidents, COVID-19, heart diseases, and cancer.

Canada news Health & Medical
Remove Ads
Remove Ads

Don't Get Censored

Big Tech is censoring us. Sign up so we can always stay in touch.

Subscribe via RSS
Remove Ads

Don't Get Censored

Big Tech is censoring us. Sign up so we can always stay in touch.