Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide
(LifeSiteNews) – Deaths of Canadians by state-approved euthanasia have risen sharply in most provinces according to recent data, with approximately 16,000 people dying in 2023 alone, a significant increase from 2022 and an “out of control” rate, the nation’s leading anti-euthanasia advocacy group warned.
Official MAiD data from Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta shows the shocking level of deaths. In 2022, there were 13,241 Canadians who died by MAiD.
According to data from the Quebec Commission on End-of-Life Care’s eighth annual report, 5,211 people died by MAiD from April 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023, which is a large increase from 3,663 in the previous reporting period.
Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), wrote in a recent blog that he predicts that 60,000 Canadians have died by MAiD since the deadly practice was legalized in 2016, with the rate increasing every year.
“Euthanasia is out of control in Canada,” Schadenberg said.
The EPC noted that deaths in Quebec from MAiD increased 42 percent in 2023, accounting for 6.8 percent of all deaths in the province. The report also shows that from April 1 to June 30, 2023, the number of MAiD deaths in the province went up 24 percent, which the EPC noted is “a slower pace of growth, but substantial considering the massive number of euthanasia deaths.”
The EPC also reflected that “Shockingly, 15% of those who died by euthanasia in Quebec were not terminally ill.”
MAiD data from Ontario released late last year shows there were 4,641 deaths in 2023, an 18 percent increase from 3,924 in 2022.
Data from Alberta shows that since June 2016 there have been 3,914 reported deaths by MAiD. However, 977 were in 2023, which is an 18 percent increase from 836 in 2022, or 594 in 2021.
Most MAiD deaths in Canada are done by a “doctor or nurse injecting a person, usually upon request, with a lethal poison cocktail,” the EPC noted.
Assisted suicide, the EPC says, is much less common and “is done by a doctor or nurse prescribing a person, usually upon request, a lethal poison cocktail that the person would take themselves.”
Last week, notably after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delayed its planned expansion of euthanasia to those suffering solely from mental illness to 2027.
Canadian Health Minister Mark Holland and Justice Minister Arif Virani announced the delay but said the government is still fully committed to expanding MAiD.
The delay was welcomed by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, but Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews that euthanasia “should be scrapped altogether.”
“We will be active in the next election reminding voters of the Members of Parliament who voted against Bill C-314 last fall, a bill that would have scrapped euthanasia for mental illness,” Schadenberg said.
Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) said that Canadians need “compassionate care, not killing,” and has urged Trudeau’s federal government to permanently scrap, not just delay, its planned expansion of euthanasia to those suffering from mental illness.
The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) under leader Pierre Poilievre is supportive of the pause but wants the expansion of MAiD to be dropped altogether.
The CPC has opposed the expansion of MAiD, but recent attempts to stop the grim procedure, such as through Bill C-314, have failed.
The current delay is the second time the expansion has been put on hold.
Originally set to go into effect in March 2023, pressure from the same groups led the Liberals under Trudeau to delay Bill C-39.
The original delay in expanding MAiD until 2024 also came after numerous public scandals, including the surfacing of reports that Canadian veterans were being offered the fatal procedure by workers at Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC).
Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide