Don't Get Sick in Canada

Lethal Injection is the 5th Leading Cause of Death and Can Be Administered Without Consent

Margaret Mead, the celebrated anthropologist was once asked what archaeologic discoveries signaled to her that a culture had transitioned from primitive to civilized society. She said the presence of healed femurs. This answer was rather surprising until she explained. In very primitive communities, breaking a leg meant certain death. No one would put aside his or her immediate needs to look after a wounded person—particularly since a broken leg could take weeks to heal. And the person with a broken leg could not do what was needed to survive. So in very primitive cultures, a broken leg was as good as a death sentence. When it was clear that such injuries were tended and allowed to heal, it meant the community had embraced higher values and people looked after one another.

That was a sign of civilization.

Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) is the opposite of this. It was rolled out in 2018 but swept across Canada like Taylor Swift concerts. MAID was so “popular” that by 2022, over 4% of all Canadian deaths were due to the MAID programs, in other words, huge numbers of Canadians are being euthanized. MAID deaths increased more than 31% from 2021 to 2022 … and they’re still going up.

Over 80% of Canadians think MAID is a great idea and that sick people should be able to request a lethal injection. Despite the horror of this program, Canadians seem oblivious. Sort of like how they treat politics.

Since medical people are good at keeping statistics, here is what we know by the numbers.

• Slightly more men than women die of MAID (52% men, 48% women)

• The average age of a person who dies of MAID is 77 years

• The most common diagnosis of people who die of MAID is cancer, followed by heart disease

• In 2022, 3.5% of all MAID deaths occurred in people whose death was not reasonably foreseeable, in other words, these were people who might not necessarily have died

• The main reasons stated for opting for MAID instead of natural death were as follows (people could pick more than one)

  • The person could not participate in meaningful activities anymore (86%)

  • The person could not carry out normal activities of daily living (82%)

  • Pain could not be adequately controlled (59%)

• The number of doctors willing to euthanize their patients under MAID has increased from 19% from 2021 to 2022 and now includes over 1,800 clinicians

• Most healthcare workers who offer MAID are physicians (95%) but 5% are nurse practitioners

• In 2022, the average number of MAID provisions (people who died) was 7.2 per clinician. In 2021, it was 6.5 per clinician

At first, MAID was used for very specific patients. These patients had to be in the process of dying, that is, their death had to be reasonably foreseeable. The patient also had to be of sound mind, request MAID, and complete paperwork consenting to MAID. Prospective patients had to be suffering from conditions that could not be cured and often had terrible pain, limitations in their activities, and great stress. Many of the first MAID patients were in the final throes of terminal cancer, the point where medical care can no longer stem the pain and no curative or even comforting options were available.

Back in 2016, when the earliest forms of MAID were being tentatively initiated in Canada, those who sought MAID were typically highly educated people of high socioeconomic status. They sought MAID in order to control their own medical outcomes. Access to MAID was limited and only a few people requested it. And most of those who requested MAID in the early years had exhausted all other reasonable and sometimes extreme treatments.

MAID got its legal legs when the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized euthanasia and assisted suicide. The idea was that a carefully monitored and highly limited plan would allow medically assisted deaths in extreme cases for humanitarian reasons—MAID deaths were supposed to be safe, legal, and rare. Sound familiar? In just six years, the number of MAID deaths increased by a factor of 13 from 1,018 deaths in 2016 when it started to 13,200 deaths in 2022, the last year for which data are available.

That’s how it started. Here’s how it’s going.

In March 2024, MAID was expanded to include mental health issues. Now a mentally ill person can opt to die by MAID, even though MAID used to require a person to be in sound mind in order to even request MAID. So now you have a mental health diagnosis, i.e. not be in sound mind, and be eligible to request MAID.

Most Canadians think MAID is a good idea, and a lot are putting it into practice. Right now, more Canadians are being euthanized than die of liver disease or diabetes. No other country has seen a faster uptick in euthanasia than Canada. In fact, euthanasia is the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada.

Canada is not the first country to legalize euthanasia. The Netherlands decriminalized it way back in 1981 and then legalized it in 2002. Belgium followed suit. But these nations never saw more than 3% of the nation’s deaths to be medically assisted. In fact, these European countries did not see the rapid ramp-up or “popularization” of euthanasia that’s exploding in Canada.

While some knuckleheads are saying such an increase is perfectly reasonable and expected, it is totally unexpected and historically unique. Even Justin Trudeau thought MAID would be a remedy of last resort, a sort of exit ramp for those suffering unspeakable torment with no chance of survival. The euthanasia-supporting nations of Europe are trying to sever themselves from the Canadian experience, since it’s so disturbing and diabolical, even to them.

So why did Canada—a late entry into the medically assisted death business—get off to such a shocking start? For one thing, Canada has a nationalized healthcare program which is expensive for the government and can impose long waiting lists for patients. Surprisingly, if you make a MAID request, you can get treated in less than two weeks—about the fastest turnaround for anything medical in Canada. On the other hand, if you were to petition the Canadian healthcare system to try to get assistance in staying alive—physical or occupational therapy, pain management, pain medication, mental health services, surgery, or advanced treatments—you are going to be put on a very long waiting list.

MAID is the express lane in the Canadian healthcare supermarket.

For Justin Trudeau’s disaster of a government, this is just a matter of priorities. Canada is more willing to help its sick citizens die than to help them live. It’s certainly cheaper to give someone a lethal injection that 12 rounds of chemotherapy or a coronary bypass procedure. A scientific article on MAID in Canada reported that there are increasing numbers of accounts of people who petitioned for MAID not because they wanted to die but because they thought they had no reasonable chance of access to medical care, therapies, disability protections, or social support.

Any person in Canada can petition for MAID. If you want MAID and your spouse or loved ones disagree with your decision, MAID can still be administered against the wishes of the family. There was a case of Canadian man named Alan Nichols who lived independently but had cognitive disability, hearing loss, and sometimes suffered depression. A wellness check was made on this man, and he was involuntarily committed to a hospital that diagnosed him as suicidal. However, they said at the same time that he was mentally fit to opt for MAID if he wanted it. He apparently asked for MAID and was euthanized just 40 days after his wellness check—even though his family opposed it. To be fair to the family, they only found out about his impending death four days before the scheduled lethal injection.

Or take the case of Sathya Dhara Kovac, a 44-year-old woman who had a chronic and degenerative disease that was getting worse. Kovac wanted to continue living but she did not have anyone who could provider with day-to-day help, nor did she have the money to pay for long-term professional care. She died of MAID but not before she wrote her own obituary, which stated, “It was not a genetic disease that took me out, it was a system.”

A disabled military veteran in Canada had applied to have a wheelchair ramp installed at her home. For about five years, she applied and waited in vain. Finally, her caseworker—rather than offering her the much-wanted ramp—suggested she opt for MAID instead. After all, her life clearly wasn’t worth living. Four other disabled veterans claimed the same thing—when they applied for assistance to manage disabilities or other conditions, they wait-listed and offered MAID.

Waiting lists in Canada are typically measured in years.

Thus, it is clear that MAID now targets the poor, the mentally ill, the disabled, and other vulnerable individuals, who are known to be a big financial drain on a socialized healthcare system. And it’s been speculated that MAID practitioners may be prejudiced and tend to offer MAID to minorities over others. In fact, it has been anecdotally reported that some people in Canada hesitate to seek medical services of any kind, for fear that they will be forced to get MAID.

A woman under the assumed name of Sophia made a video shown on Canadian TV to talk about MAID. She had a number of extreme sensitivities to chemicals and needed to live in a special type of housing. Such housing existed, but she could not afford it on her disability income. Unable to find a healthy place to live, Sophia opted for MAID (which was offered to her instead of a safe living space), and she made a recording before she got the lethal injection. Sophia stated, “The government sees me as expendable trash.”

Canada’s notoriously long waiting lists mean that some sick people despair to the point that they opt for MAID and die before any treatment is even tried. A cancer diagnosis without treatment can end up in a MAID death, even if the cancer was curable. This contrasts with certain European countries, where euthanasia is considered only after standard treatments have failed or proven ineffective. The idea of killing a person on a waiting list is barbaric.

Think how cruel it is to deny a person treatment and then tantalize them with the prospect of death, instead of prolonged despair with no reasonable hope for relief.

It is easy to see why a communist society would embrace MAID, particularly an aggressive program that denies care and pushes death. Healthcare is expensive, for one thing. And sometimes healthcare is lavished on the least productive members of society—the aged, the infirm, the mentally ill, the disabled. If all you were to consider was a balance sheet, such people are often a net loss—they cost more to treat than they contribute to the economy. This is one reason that no one should want a government-controlled healthcare system, since governments look at balance sheets and not into human faces. Canada spends a lot of money on a healthcare system that is best known not for humanity or cure rates or comprehensive care, but rather for long wait times or the swift-death option.

Canada is pushing this hard. You can now sign an “Advance Consent” to MAID which stipulates that in specific instances, you agree in advance to be euthanized. They also have a “Final Consent Waiver” which dispenses with the pesky requirement that a person being euthanized must sign off on it. In other words there is paperwork that justifies a Canadian physician euthanizing a patient who did not consent formally.

Canada is unique with MAID in some other aspects.

• Nurse practitioners can administer lethal injections, not just physicians

• MAID can be administered to people who do not have fatal disease

• MAID can be administered to a mentally ill person

• MAID can be administered to a person suffering unbearable pain, even if this person is denied pain medications or other interventions that could have controlled the pain

• The person who asks for MAID is the sole arbiter of whether or not their suffering or pain is unbearable

Physicians—who swear the Hippocratic oath to first, do no harm, should be at the vanguard opposing all types of assisted suicide and euthanasia. Yet MAID is Canada is a disaster that—like the diseases it deals with—just gets worse and worse because no one is doing the hard work to fix things.

• The guard rails to prevent untimely or unnecessary MAID are weak; safeguards can be violated, skips stepped, there are loopholes to the paperwork

• It is possible to administer a “kill shot” without patient consent

• It is possible to administer a “kill shot” to a person whose spouse or family objects

• Undiagnosed mental illness is not uncommon, particularly in a country with long waiting lists for mental health services, yet individuals with diagnosed and undiagnosed mental health conditions can qualify for MAID

• Many people who consider MAID want their suffering to end, not their life

• Better care, treatments, and counseling should be exhausted before MAID is even considered, but in Canada, it’s often MAID that is considered first

• MAID differs from “death with dignity”

MAID, like many other things in Canada, has run amok. It was a bad idea turned diabolical. Sort of like electing Trudeau.