Tag: euthanasia

Conservative MP Bob Zimmer said his father was offered medical assistance in dying (MAID) toward the end of his life without asking for it, prompting the MP to question whether safeguards for the procedure are being followed.

Zimmer said on X that his family was preparing to bring his father home from the hospital, as he “was about to pass away and he wanted to be at home to be more comfortable.”

While they were waiting, a nurse “approached us and offered MAID to him,” despite his father having not asked for the procedure, the MP for B.C.’s Prince George – Peace River – Northern Rockies riding said.

“I was disgusted. All the warnings about MAID we debated in the [House of Commons] and warned would happen with the change in legislation and the Liberals said would never happen […] are happening,” he said.

An official from the justice minister’s office told The Epoch Times that the law allows for health practitioners to provide eligible Canadians with the option for MAID. He said if Zimmer suspected wrongdoing or malpractice, he could raise it with the B.C. Ministry of Health’s MAID Oversight Unit, which could then investigate.

Zimmer’s testimonial was in response to a Leger survey that found one in 10 Canadians know someone who has been offered MAID for a treatable condition. Those surveyed were also asked if they knew someone in Canada who died due to a long healthcare waitlist, and 18 percent of those people said “yes.”

The federal government, meanwhile, has tabled legislation to allow Canadians to make advance requests for MAID. The MAID Safeguards Act would allow individuals to provide advance consent for euthanasia after receiving a diagnosis of an incurable illness expected to impair their future decision-making ability, such as Alzheimer’s or other degenerative neurological disorders.

The Justice Department has said that if a person shows a “clear refusal or resistance to MAID,” then the advance request would be invalid and the procedure would not be provided. An advance request would not guarantee approval for MAID.

The legislation would also indefinitely extend the exclusion of people whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness from MAID eligibility. The exclusion is currently scheduled to expire on March 17, 2027, after two extensions prompted by concerns from provinces, territories, and healthcare stakeholders.

A parliamentary committee recommended making that exclusion permanent in a June report. The report cited concerns about determining whether a mental illness is irremediable, distinguishing MAID requests from suicidal intent, and ensuring access to adequate mental-health services.

The Conservative Party has opposed the expansion of MAID and called for stronger monitoring and public reporting, minimum national standards for oversight, and a review of the effectiveness and enforceability of existing MAID safeguards.

The Tories have also opposed advance consent for MAID, with Conservative MP Andrew Lawton requesting on Oct. 29 that the Liberals’ bill be split into two so that advance consent and the indefinite exclusion of the mentally ill from accessing euthanasia can be voted on separately.

A total of 76,475 people received MAID in Canada between its legalization in 2016 and the end of 2024, according to Health Canada’s latest annual report, released in late 2025. In 2024, MAID deaths accounted for 5.1 percent of all deaths in Canada.

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Canada legally kills more citizens per year than die by gun violence in the United States, according to a new report.

According to the Post Millennial, 16,499 people were killed in 2024 through Canada’s medical assistance in dying program compared with 15,364 gun homicides in the United States that year.

Since the population of the United States is more than eight times larger than the population of Canada, far more Canadian assisted suicide deaths occur on a per-capita basis than American gun deaths.

That year, state-sanctioned deaths accounted for about 5 percent of all deaths in Canada, which prides itself on its gun control laws, that year.

Canada first approved ending the lives of its citizens in 2016, limiting the program to those whose death was “reasonably foreseeable.”

In 2021, Canada added people with chronic disabilities who were not expected to die soon. A further expansion to target Canadians with mental health issues is now being debated.

Age may soon not be a barrier if some have their way.

For example, doctors at the Quebec College of Physicians have said state-sanctioned death “may be an appropriate treatment for babies suffering from extreme pain.”

Canada is now the world leader in total euthanasia deaths, and comes second to the Netherlands in the per-capita rate of state-approved lethal injections, according to VOZ.

The site noted that Canada’s rise in ridding itself of its elderly and ill comes amid “recurring accounts of elderly, disabled or vulnerable people who claim to have been pressured or to have not given explicit consent.”

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verywhere that assisted suicide has been legalized, critics have warned that, however tight the initial restrictions limiting the use of this so-called process may at first be, its legalization could become the beginning of a slippery slope. Canada was not the first country to legalize assisted suicide. But Canada is presently the poster child for what the slippery slope looks like. Although Canada’s Criminal Code, which governs this procedure, originally required two witnesses to the application it was subsequently amended to require only one. For those who are curious as to where the slippery slope can ultimately lead, a recent case has spelled this out quite clearly: it leads to a criminal investigation.

The term assisted suicide is an oxymoron. Unless one dies of illness, old age, or accident, there are only two ways by which a life may be ended, both of which are defined by agency. If one dies by one’s own hand, then it is a suicide; if by the hand of another, then it is a homicide. But reality is not that simple. Since the assisted suicide process in its various forms was introduced, both the morality and legality of the matter turn on one thing: the patient’s consent. The public is divided on the morality of the process, but the one thing that the public and the law are not divided about is the issue of consent. Everything depends on the patient’s desire and ability to give consent. That is the issue at the heart of the criminal investigation.

Brigitte Stegemann — affectionately known by her family as “GG” — was an eighty-three-year-old grandmother from a devout Christian family. For twelve years, her namesake granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk, was GG’s medical advocate and also had Power of Attorney. For the last two years of her life, GG was a resident of a nursing home in the town of Belleville, Ontario. Towards the end of her life, she had some issues in understanding what people were saying to her, in part because she was deaf in one ear as well as partially deaf in the other, and also due to cognitive decline. But her granddaughter Brigitte was always capable of clearly communicating with her even through a medical mask. Therefore, during the two years that GG had been a resident of the home, staff had constantly consulted with her on all matters of care. About five months before her death, GG was diagnosed with terminal stage-four stomach cancer. The possibility of assisted suicide was then raised with Brigitte present, and it was determined that GG did not want to go that route due to her Christian faith.

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Opponents of government-backed assisted suicide have rightly argued that the program always, invariably, leads to a slippery slope of government-backed euthanasia. Those opponents have been proven right time and again, but no more so than with Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program. Hailed as a compassionate death for people with terminal illnesses like cancer, it was meant to ease suffering.

Instead, it’s killing more people than U.S. gun deaths and outpacing euthanized animals, including people with treatable diseases like hyperparathyroidism or mental health issues, veterans, the poor and homeless, and even infants and children. The vast majority of victims are white, affluent Canadians because if you can’t tax the rich to death, you can always put them down like dogs, we suppose.

A Canadian woman’s euthanasia request was recently approved, and the reason is as ridiculous as it is scary: she could no longer cook for her family. That’s it. She wasn’t terminal. She wasn’t actively dying. She just couldn’t cook, and the state okayed euthanasia.

Top Canadian doctors are raising alarm bells over the country’s seemingly quick approval for assisted dying requests, after one elderly woman was accepted based on the fact that she lost the ability to cook meals for her family.

Doctors Gary Rodin and Madeline Li from the University of Toronto shared mounting fears among Canada‘s healthcare professionals over increasing cases of euthanasia approvals. 

The psychiatry professors said they aren’t opposed to legalized medical assistance in dying, but stressed that Canadian law does not require healthcare professionals to guide patients toward seeking alternative help. 

In an opinion piece in the New York Times, the doctors said that the procedure is intended to provide a ‘dignified’ last resort, typically for those who are terminally ill. 

But, in recent years, ‘too many people are receiving the procedure without the opportunity for careful reflection about it with a health provider,’ Rodin and Li wrote. 

‘In some cases, patients are being approved who should not be,’ they added, citing mounting reports of euthanasia being approved for patients claiming loneliness or poverty.

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