Did You Know…about MAiD and Assisted Suicide in Canada?
Since physician-assisted death by lethal injection (MAiD - Medical Assistance in Dying) was legalized (Bill C-14) in Canada in 2016, the number of cases has increased dramatically, largely due to original safeguards being removed.
Originally, assisted suicide was meant to be offered only to those whose death was reasonably foreseeable. That changed in 2021 when Bill C-7 passed. It shortened waiting periods and allowed those with chronic illnesses and disabilities to be euthanized. It no longer required a person to be capable of giving consent by making advanced directives legal.
These changes removed protections for the most vulnerable and weakened efforts to improve palliative care which is offered inconsistently across Canada.
Read more about the state of palliative care in Canada in the 2023 CIHI Access to Palliative Care report.
1-3. Canada is likely worse than the Netherlands as the world capital of assisted suicide, about to surpass their 5% of all deaths due to euthanasia, taking only 7 years to get there compared to 22 years of legalized assisted death in Holland.
For the first six years of legalized MAID in Canada, the rate of deaths grew by at least 30 per cent per year. This was the fastest and most sustained growth rate of any assisted suicide regime in the world, and it utterly blew past official expectations.
Three U.N. human rights experts have written that Canada’s euthanasia laws violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, putting disabled Canadians at risk. Read more in this Associated Press article.
Canada’s Permissive Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia Law
4. Bill C-7 has broadened eligibility for medical assistance in dying by repealing the eligibility requirement that the person’s natural death be reasonably foreseeable (clause 1(1)). Bill C-7: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying)
5. The Liberal government planned to allow MAiD for reasons of mental illness beginning in March 2024. But after a strong backlash from citizens and mental health experts, the government postponed its implemention until 2027. Expanding assisted suicide encourages a culture of neglect for suffering, elderly, disabled and vulnerable people and devalues their lives.
The Society of Canadian Psychiatry prepared a brief on MAID and Mental Illness Expansion. They recommended that, “the planned 2024 MAID for mental illness expansion be paused indefinitely, without qualification and presupposition that such implementation can safely be introduced at any arbitrary pre-determined date; and that any future potential consideration of MAID for sole mental illness policy be informed by evidence, guided by experts reflecting the range of views rather than being driven exclusively by ideological advocates, and only be potentially considered following fulsome and unbiased review of the issues and process flaws identified in this Briefing. “
6. When applying for MAID, patients are asked to detail all the types of suffering they’re experiencing in order to determine if their condition qualifies as something “grievous and irremediable” — and thus eligible for death. Expanding euthanasia https://nationalpost.com/opinion/first-reading-hundreds-seeking-death-due-to-loneliness-inside-canadas-new-maid-figures
To see more results and statistics of the euthanasia regime in Canada you can read the Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada, 2023 here. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/health-system-services/annual-report-medical-assistance-dying-2023.html