Canada to reach 100,000 deaths by Assisted Suicide

Canada is set to reach a “grim milestone” this summer as a record 100,000 people will have had their lives ended by assisted suicide  – more than twice the death toll for the country in the second World War. 

Commentators have noted that “more Canadians are dying from assisted suicide each year than all the world’s other countries combined”, and that cases where doctors help people to die by suicide now account for 45 deaths per day.

Cases of assisted suicide have controversially spiralled since the procedure was legalised in Canada close to 10 years ago. In 2024, the number of cases climbed to 16,499 – up from 15,343 in 2024.

The National Post said that the 100,000 figure had recently been popularized by Canadian activist Kelsi Sheren who “stated in a recent op-ed that her country is “about to kill its 100,000th citizen through Medical Assistance in Dying”.

Sheran described the grim new record as “systemic failure dressed up as compassion” as Health Canada’s most recent update stated that 76,475 Canadians had died via assisted suicide as of Dec. 31, 2024.

“MAiD was sold as a narrow option for the terminally ill, a rare mercy. That fiction collapsed long ago. Today, assisted death is a routine outcome for people struggling with disability, isolation, poverty, and mental health challenges and when the world looked at what we’re doing, it didn’t nod approvingly. It recoiled,” she said.

Sheren had previously told psychologist Jordan Peterson of serious concerns regarding the process of assisted suicide and the ongoing bid to expand offering the procedure to what she says are vulnerable people, including disabled persons or those with mental health issues.

      

Her estimate “is indeed in line with the official trajectory of Canadian MAID deaths,” the National Post added. Official reports show that more than 76,000 deaths by assisted suicide had taken place by the end of 2024, with Canadian medical doctor Jonathan Edwards saying the yearly rise wasn’t “so much a slippery slope as an elevator shaft.”

“Canada’s MAiD program—Medical Assistance in Dying, basically their polished, judge-approved version of euthanasia—is barreling towards its 100,000th case. Nothing shouts “compassionate care” like 100,000 state-approved terminations in under a decade,” he said.

“The Canadian government has euthanized, put down, or killed nearly 100,000 of its own citizens in the name of compassion and restoring human dignity. It’s now the 5th leading cause of death in Canada behind cancer, heart disease, and accidents,” he said.

Another Canadian GP,  Dr Ramona Coelho, who is a Maid Death Review Committee, told BBC last year that assisted suicide was “out of control”. “I wouldn’t even call it a slippery slope,” she says “Canada has fallen off a cliff.”

Total MAID Deaths in Canada by Year 

Cases had tripled between 2017 and 2019, before almost doubling again by 2021, with the 2024 numbers up 60% on that total. Cases grew by almost 7% from 2023 to 2024, with some suggestions that numbers might have plateaued.

However, Canada also plans to begin administering assisted suicide to persons who are mentally ill in early 2027, and the Quebec College of Physicians is now requesting euthanasia for severely ill newborn babies.

Critics have said that the provision of assisted suicide is seen as a cost-cutting measure by policymakers and governments, citing the case of Roger Foley who was born with spinocerebellar ataxia, which is a severe neurodegenerative disease, and who said that the assisted dying regime in Canada”led him to experience a lack of care and assistance he needed to live.

“I have been denied food and water. I have not been assisted to transfer, take my medications and go to the bathroom. I have been abused and berated because I have disabilities and told my care needs are too much work. My life has been devalued. I have been coerced into assisted death by abuse, neglect, lack of care and threats,” he said

Irish pro-life advocates, Life Institute, said today that the Canadian figures should serve as a salutary warning of the dangers of legalising assisted suicide. “We’re seeing a renewed push for assisted suicide now in Ireland, despite the medical bodies coming out so strongly against it,” spokeswoman Sandra Parda said. “100,000 people in Canada have been killed under this law, mostly by doctors, and that’s a frightening reality which Ireland should heed.”

She said that legalising assisted suicide risked normalising of suicide and also risked the coercion of vulnerable and elderly people into being killed by a doctor. “Medical professionals are meant to save lives, not be involved in killing people who are sick or suicidal,” she said. “Real compassion doesn’t kill.”

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MARIA MAYNES

This was first published on gript and is published here with permission

Photo credit: Shutterstock

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