Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
This is not new news but 23,746 Canadian patients died on waitlists between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025. The Canadian government data released by Second Street in November 2025 does not indicate how these Canadians died, but it is likely that a fairly large percentage of them died by euthanasia.
This is not new news but 23,746 Canadian patients died on waitlists between April 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025. The Canadian government data released by Second Street in November 2025 does not indicate how these Canadians died, but it is likely that a fairly large percentage of them died by euthanasia.
Canada's euthanasia law does not require a person to first attempt effective treatments before being killed nor does it define euthanasia as a last resort, meaning, there are no effective treatments for the condition.
Canada's law only requires a person to have a terminal condition to be approved for Track 1 euthanasia, which includes no waiting or reflection period or have a grievous and irremediable (not defined in the law) medical condition to be approved for Track 2 euthanasia, which has a 90 day waiting period.
Terminal condition is not defined by a 6 month or 12 month terminal prognosis, but rather it is an undefined terminal condition, which is why someone with diabetes can qualify.
We know that people are "choosing" death by euthanasia based on wait times for surgery and other treatments, but we do not know how many people who died by euthanasia did so because of treatment wait times.
The Second Street think tank report indicated that the 23,746 figure is low since the report did not include every region of the country and some provinces only shared the data on deaths of people who were waiting for surgery and didn't share data related to diagnostic tests.
What are the 'reasons' that possess people to choose suicide by lethal injection for non-terminal medical conditions? Is it fear of dying or fear of the death itself? Is it control vs nature taking its course? Is it anger?
ReplyDeletePeople euthanize animals for arbitrary and senseless reasons. A pet is diagnosed with cancer so they immediately put it down because the animal can't handle it or the owner can't handle it!
Anger can cause fatal decisions.
There are many reasons, but often they are encouraged by the euthanasia doctor who thinks they are helping them out of a terrible life.
ReplyDeleteThere are people here in the U.S. who think Canada's universal healthcare system is so wonderful and we should adopt it. They are obviously very misinformed about how it actually works. Our system is not perfect, but we don't have to be placed on "waitlists" in order to get life-saving treatments.
ReplyDelete