(LifeSiteNews) — Canadians must wait an average of 27.7 weeks to receive healthcare, causing some to despair and end their lives with euthanasia rather than wait for treatment.
According to a recently released report by the Fraser Institute, healthcare wait times in Canada have reached a record high of 27.7 weeks, the longest wait time in the survey’s 30-year history and 198 percent longer than the 1993 average of 9.3 weeks.
“Excessively long wait times remain a defining characteristic of Canada’s health-care system,” Fraser Institute policy analyst and co-author of the report Mackenzie Moir said in a December 7 press release.
“And they aren’t simply minor inconveniences, they can result in increased suffering for patients, lost productivity at work, a decreased quality of life, and in the worst cases, disability or death,” he added.
The data surveyed 1,200 Canadian doctors across 12 specialties and 10 provinces. The report found that Nova Scotia had the longest wait time of 56.7 weeks, followed by Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick with wait times of 55.2 weeks and 52.6 weeks respectively.
The remaining provinces averaged wait times of 33.5 weeks in Alberta, 33.3 weeks in Newfoundland, 31 weeks in Saskatchewan, 29.1 weeks in Manitoba, 27.7 weeks in British Columbia, 27.6 weeks in Quebec, and 21.6 weeks in Ontario.
According to the report, the average 27.7-week wait time is composed of a 14.6-week wait to be seen by a specialist after referral by a general practitioner in addition to a 13.1-week wait between the specialist consultation and treatment.
Doctors responded that the wait for treatment is “clinically” unreasonable as it exceeds the recommended 8.5 week wait to see a specialist.
According to the report, the increased wait times cannot be totally attributed to COVID regulations.
“COVID-19 and related hospital closures have exacerbated, but are not the cause, of Canada’s historic wait times challenges,” Fraser Institute director of health policy studies Bacchus Barua said. “Previous results revealed that patients waited an estimated 20.9 weeks for medically necessary elective care in 2019—long before the pandemic started.”
However, the increasing wait times do come as many provinces still mandate medical staff receive the experimental COVID vaccine, which has left many hospitals understaffed.
Unfortunately, the increased wait times have led some Canadians to despair of receiving treatment and instead chose to end their lives through Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), the euphemistic name for Canada’s euthanasia regime.
This is the case of 52-year-old Dan Quayle, a grandfather from British Columba. On November 24, he chose to be medically killed by a lethal injection after being unable to receive cancer treatment due to the increased wait times.
Throughout the agonizing wait, his family “prayed he would change his mind or get an 11th-hour call that chemo had been scheduled,” but were instead told consistently by the hospital that they were “backlogged.”
The family is speaking out now “following the stories of two Vancouver Island women who went public with their decisions to seek treatment in the U.S. to avoid delays in B.C.” – and Dan’s wife believes that she could still have her husband today if he’d gotten the treatment he needed. In fact, wait times for cancer patients who are literally dying while waiting for treatment keep getting worse.
Unfortunately, Quayle’s story is not unique, as many Canadians have chosen to end their lives with MAiD as they are unable to obtain necessary healthcare.
In 2022, a Winnipeg woman wrote in her posthumously published obituary that she chose to die by assisted suicide after being refused the treatments she needed: “I could have had more time if I had more help.”
However, instead of supporting the healthcare system to prevent Canadians from taking their own lives, the Trudeau government is working to expand access to MAiD by loosening its requirements.
On March 9, 2024, MAiD is set to expand to include those suffering solely from mental illness. This is a result of the 2021 passage of Bill C-7, which also allowed the chronically ill – not just the terminally ill – to qualify for so-called doctor-assisted death.
The mental illness expansion was originally set to take effect in March of this year. However, after massive pushback from pro-life groups, conservative politicians and others, the Liberals under Trudeau delayed the introduction of the full effect of Bill C-7 until 2024 via Bill C-39.
The expansion comes despite warnings from top Canadian psychiatrists that the country is “not ready” for the coming expansion of euthanasia to those who are mentally ill, saying expanding the procedure is not something “society should be doing” as it could lead to deaths under a “false pretense.”
According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD lethal injection, which is 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year, and a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.
The number of Canadians killed by lethal injection since 2016 now stands at 44,958.