MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

After Parliament legalized assisted suicide in 2016, 2,838 Canadians killed themselves with the help of doctors the following year. By 2024, that number had risen almost six-fold to 16,499.

Assisted suicide (euphemistically mischaracterized as medical assistance in dying, or MAID) is now the fourth-largest cause of death in Canada, accounting for 5.1 percent of Canadian deaths in 2024, and a shocking 7.9 percent of deaths in Quebec. After the Netherlands, Canada comes in second place as the global leader in assisted suicide, even dwarfing ever-progressive Belgium, where assisted suicide was responsible for 3.6 percent of deaths in 2024.

A senior U.S. health official is sounding the alarm after explosive revelations that Canada’s government-run euthanasia program is now intertwined with organ harvesting, calling it a “strange new horror” that should terrify the world.

Jim O’Neil, the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, blasted Canada’s so-called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program.

O’Neil responded after reports confirmed that organs are being taken from patients who are medically euthanized.

Societies occasionally reach a threshold so significant that it demands direct attention, regardless of legal or bureaucratic framing. Canada’s current approach to assisted suicide, especially in cases involving mental illness, represents such a threshold. Recent federal data indicate that more than 16,000 assisted suicide cases are approved annually in Canada, with an increasing proportion involving individuals with mental health challenges. This trend highlights the urgent need for policy reassessment and underscores the critical importance of addressing this issue.

This week a judge of the B.C. Supreme Court (reminder: that’s a superior trial court, not an appellate court) heard a case that has the potential to further expand the Canadian empire of assisted suicide. The new battleground is “institutional religious objections,” or IROs, which is what the pro-euthanasia forces call them because they love acronyms so much. Most Catholic hospitals (and some hospices) have rules against administering euthanasia on the premises, which sometimes leads to very sick people undergoing what Dying with Dignity calls “forced transfers” to other facilities at the eleventh hour. The parents of one such patient are now suing B.C.’s Providence Health Care, the umbrella agency that operates the province’s legacy Catholic health institutions.

A B.C. Supreme Court trial starting this week is challenging the constitutionality of faith-based hospitals in the province opting not to provide medically assisted death for terminally ill patients.

The case stems from the death of a terminally ill woman, Sam O’Neill, who sought medical assistance in dying (MAiD) while receiving care at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.

On Wednesday, a British man was jailed for 14 years for selling poisonous chemicals online to allow people to commit suicide. Miles Cross sold the fatal drugs to four people, two of whom, tragically, have since died as a result. In court he appeared to defend his actions, arguing that he simply wanted to “help others end their lives”.

Most Canadians disagree strongly with the concept of euthanasia for babies. We know this because every time the topic comes up, the public’s response is one of instant horror. So why does it keep coming up?

A medical assistance in dying (MAID) study exposes how MAID lobby groups may be attempting to influence policy in Canada — through the publication of medical studies.

A study on patients who were forced to transfer out of faith-based hospitals to receive medical assistance in dying (MAID) claims this caused “unnecessary suffering” for those who had to be transfered.

Claire Brosseau is desperate to die.

She is 48 years old and has had a life she calls an “an embarrassment of riches.” She has a vast network of friends, a devoted family, the steadfast adoration of a small dog. She has performed to raucous laughter in some of North America’s most prestigious comedy clubs and festivals, acted in movies, written brutally funny television shows. She has traveled, shopped, danced and known herself to be deeply loved.

She also suffers from debilitating mental illness that decades of treatment have not tamed. Sometimes she is so crushingly sad that she sobs until her bones ache. Sometimes she feels as if she were standing on a ledge, flipping minute by minute between being sure that if she jumped she would actually fly, and wanting to hurl herself as hard as she can onto the ground.

To truly understand the impact of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada, we must ask the question: what does the average MAiD patient look like?

MAiD was made to ensure Canada’s “laws reflect Canadians’ needs, protect those who may be vulnerable, and support autonomy and freedom of choice.”

At least, this is what the feds claim.

(Incognito)

OTTAWA — Sandra Demontigny knew something wasn’t right when she couldn’t remember buying herself a new pair of boots. They were a splurge — a little out of character for the mother of three — and she had been excited about bringing them home.

“I saw them near the door and I asked my kids, ‘Who bought these boots? I’ve never seen them,’” she said.

“The kids were saying, ‘No, (they’re) yours. You bought them and you really like them.”

Sliding her feet inside, she realized she couldn’t remember buying them. “I started crying,” she said.

It was presented to Canadians as an exceptional option to an already approaching natural death. How did doctor-assisted dying become so popular?

Nearly a decade after the Criminal Code was amended to permit doctors to end, under certain conditions, a consenting person’s life, one in 20 deaths in Canada now involve medical assistance in dying (MAID).