The Canadian government’s official statistics show that the number of citizens killed by euthanasia surged by 16% in 2023.
The alarming figures were revealed in Health Canada’s newly published fifth annual “Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAID) review.
The report shows that a staggering 15,300 Canadians were euthanized in 2023.
The figure totals 4.7 percent of the roughly 320,000 deaths in the country.
The report stated that the majority of the euthanasia deaths, 95.9 percent, were “Track 1” deaths.
“Track 1” deaths are euthanasia requests from a person deemed to have a “terminal” condition.
4.1 percent were “Track 2” deaths, or requests from a person deemed to not have a terminal condition.
Additionally, “assisted suicide” deaths increased 15.8 percent from 2022.
While still large, the increase was smaller than between 2019 and 2022, during which the average growth rate was approximately 31 percent, according to the report.
The report further found that Québec, Ontario, and British Columbia had the highest increase rates.
Euthanasia surged by 36.5 percent in Québec, 30.3 percent in Ontario, and 18 percent in British Columbia.
The next highest increase rate was Alberta at 6.4 percent.
In a blog post, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition director Alex Schadenberg responded to the alarming figures, asking:
“When analyzing the 5th Annual Report we question, ‘What makes British Columbia, Ontario, and Québec different than the rest of Canada?’”
Indeed, Quebec appears to have made it its provincial goal to expand its euthanasia regime with the highest rate of “assisted suicide” in Canada.
In 2023, the province’s “assisted suicide” program euthanized 5,686 people.
The number represents a whopping 7.3 percent of all deaths in the province.
It puts Québec at the top of the list of euthanasia rates worldwide.
In October, the province began taking advance requests for “MAID.”
However, the practice is supposed to be illegal under Canadian law.
Additionally, Ontario euthanasia regulators have tracked 428 cases of potential legal violations.
However, officials have failed to refer a single case to law enforcement.
The most recent reports show that assisted suicide is the sixth-highest cause of death in Canada.
However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022.
Statistics Canada said that it records the illnesses that Canadians had when they were euthanized, not the actual cause of death, as the primary cause of death.
According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by “MAID” lethal injections.
This accounted for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year, a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.
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