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Official data shows euthanasia deaths in Canada rose significantly in 2023

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) increased 42% in 2023 in Quebec alone.

Deaths of Canadians by state-approved euthanasia have risen sharply in most provinces according to recent data, with approximately 16,000 people dying in 2023 alone, a significant increase from 2022 and an “out of control” rate, the nation’s leading anti-euthanasia advocacy group warned.

Official MAiD data from Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta shows the shocking level of deaths. In 2022, there were 13,241 Canadians who died by MAiD.

According to data from the Quebec Commission on End-of-Life Care’s eighth annual report, 5,211 people died by MAiD from April 1, 2022, to March 31, 2023, which is a large increase from 3,663 in the previous reporting period.

Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC), wrote in a recent blog that he predicts that 60,000 Canadians have died by MAiD since the deadly practice was legalized in 2016, with the rate increasing every year.

“Euthanasia is out of control in Canada,” Schadenberg said.

The EPC noted that deaths in Quebec from MAiD increased 42% in 2023, accounting for 6.8% of all deaths in the province. The report also shows that from April 1 to June 30, 2023, the number of MAiD deaths in the province went up 24%, which the EPC noted is “a slower pace of growth, but substantial considering the massive number of euthanasia deaths.”

The EPC also reflected that “Shockingly, 15% of those who died by euthanasia in Quebec were not terminally ill.”

MAiD data from Ontario released late last year shows there were 4,641 deaths in 2023, an 18% increase from 3,924 in 2022.

Data from Alberta shows that since June 2016 there have been 3,914 reported deaths by MAiD. However, 977 were in 2023, which is an 18% increase from 836 in 2022, or 594 in 2021.

Assisted suicide, the EPC says, is much less common and “is done by a doctor or nurse prescribing a person, usually upon request, a lethal poison cocktail that the person would take themselves.”

Last week, notably after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delayed its planned expansion of euthanasia to those suffering solely from mental illness to 2027.

Canadian Health Minister Mark Holland and Justice Minister Arif Virani announced the delay but said the government is still fully committed to expanding MAiD.

The delay was welcomed by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, but Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews that euthanasia “should be scrapped altogether.”

“We will be active in the next election reminding voters of the Members of Parliament who voted against Bill C-314 last fall, a bill that would have scrapped euthanasia for mental illness,” Schadenberg said.

Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) said that Canadians need “compassionate care, not killing,” and has urged Trudeau’s federal government to permanently scrap, not just delay, its planned expansion of euthanasia to those suffering from mental illness.

The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) under leader Pierre Poilievre is supportive of the pause but wants the expansion of MAiD to be dropped altogether.

The CPC has opposed the expansion of MAiD, but recent attempts to stop the grim procedure, such as through Bill C-314, have failed.

The current delay is the second time the expansion has been put on hold.

Originally set to go into effect in March 2023, pressure from the same groups led the Liberals under Trudeau to delay Bill C-39.

The original delay in expanding MAiD until 2024 also came after numerous public scandals, including the surfacing of reports that Canadian veterans were being offered the fatal procedure by workers at Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC).

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Yet another struggling soldier says Veteran Affairs Canada offered him euthanasia

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By Jonathon Van Maren

‘It made me wonder, were they really there to help us, or slowly groom us to say ‘here’s a solution, just kill yourself.’

Yet another Canadian combat veteran has come forward to reveal that when he sought help, he was instead offered euthanasia. 

David Baltzer, who served two tours in Afghanistan with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, revealed to the Toronto Sun that he was offered euthanasia on December 23, 2019—making him, as the Sun noted, “among the first Canadian soldiers offered therapeutic suicide by the federal government.”

Baltzer had been having a disagreement with his existing caseworker, when assisted suicide was brought up in in call with a different agent from Veteran Affairs Canada.  

“It made me wonder, were they really there to help us, or slowly groom us to say ‘here’s a solution, just kill yourself,” Baltzer told the Sun.“I was in my lowest down point, it was just before Christmas. He says to me, ‘I would like to make a suggestion for you. Keep an open mind, think about it, you’ve tried all this and nothing seems to be working, but have you thought about medical-assisted suicide?’” 

Baltzer was stunned. “It just seems to me that they just want us to be like ‘f–k this, I give up, this sucks, I’d rather just take my own life,’” he said. “That’s how I honestly felt.” 

Baltzer, who is from St. Catharines, Ontario, joined up at age 17, and moved to Manitoba to join the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, one of Canada’s elite units. He headed to Afghanistan in 2006. The Sun noted that he “was among Canada’s first troops deployed to Afghanistan as part Operation Athena, where he served two tours and saw plenty of combat.” 

“We went out on long-range patrols trying to find the Taliban, and that’s exactly what we did,” Baltzer said. “The best way I can describe it, it was like Black Hawk Down — all of the sudden the s–t hit the fan and I was like ‘wow, we’re fighting, who would have thought? Canada hasn’t fought like this since the Korean War.” 

After returning from Afghanistan, Baltzer says he was offered counselling by Veteran Affairs Canada, but it “was of little help,” and he began to self-medicate for his trauma through substance abuse (he noted that he is, thankfully, doing well today). Baltzer’s story is part of a growing scandal. As the Sun reported:  

A key figure shedding light on the VAC MAID scandal was CAF veteran Mark Meincke, whose trauma-recovery podcast Operation Tango Romeo broke the story. ‘Veterans, especially combat veterans, usually don’t reach out for help until like a year longer than they should’ve,’ Meincke said, telling the Sun he waited over two decades before seeking help. 

‘We’re desperate by the time we put our hands up for help. Offering MAID is like throwing a cinderblock instead of a life preserver.’ Meincke said Baltzer’s story shoots down VAC’s assertions blaming one caseworker for offering MAID to veterans, and suggests the problem is far more serious than some rogue public servant. 

‘It had to have been policy. because it’s just too many people in too many provinces,” Meincke told the Sun. “Every province has service agents from that province.’

Veterans Affairs Canada claimed in 2022 that between four and 20 veterans had been offered assisted suicide; Meincke “personally knows of five, and said the actual number’s likely close to 20.” In a previous investigation, VAC claimed that only one caseworker was responsible—at least for the four confirmed cases—and that the person “was lo longer employed with VAC.” Baltzer says VAC should have military vets as caseworkers, rather than civilians who can’t understand what vets have been through. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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New York Times publishes chilling new justification for assisted suicide

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By Calvin Freiburger

Even happy, healthy lives without major issues can warrant needless ending if they are ‘complete.’

Notorious secular “ethicist” Peter Singer has co-authored an opinion piece in The New York Times positing a chilling new rationale for assisted suicide: the determination that one’s life is simply “complete.”

Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March 2024 at age 90. His cause of death was not disclosed at the time, but a year later, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Kahneman had emailed friends the day before to tell them he was traveling to Switzerland to avail himself of the country’s legal physician-assisted suicide.

“I think Danny wanted, above all, to avoid a long decline, to go out on his terms, to own his own death,” WSJ journalist and longtime friend of the deceased Jason Zweig wrote. “Maybe the principles of good decision-making that he had so long espoused — rely on data, don’t trust most intuitions, view the evidence in the broadest possible perspective — had little to do with his decision.”

On April 14, The New York Times published a guest essay by the infamous Singer, a pro-infanticide Princeton bioethics professor, and philosophy professor Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, who shared that they too knew of Kahneman’s plans and that days before he had told them, “I feel I’ve lived my life well, but it’s a feeling. I’m just reasonably happy with what I’ve done. I would say if there is an objective point of view, then I’m totally irrelevant to it. If you look at the universe and the complexity of the universe, what I do with my day cannot be relevant.”

“I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief,” Kahneman reportedly said. “I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am 90 years old. It is time to go.”

Singer and de Lazari-Radek argued that this was an eminently reasonable conclusion. “(I)f, after careful reflection, you decide that your life is complete and remain firmly of that view for some time, you are the best judge of what is good for you,” they wrote. “This is especially clear in the case of people who are at an age at which they cannot hope for improvement in their quality of life.”

“(I)f we are to live well to the end, we need to be able to freely discuss when a life is complete, without shame or taboo,” the authors added. “Such a discussion may help people to know what they really want. We may regret their decisions, but we should respect their choices and allow them to end their lives with dignity.”

Pro-lifers have long warned that the euthanasia movement devalues life and preys on the ill and distraught by making serious medical issues (even non-terminal ones) into grounds to end one’s life. But Singer and de Lazari-Radek’s essay marks a new extreme beyond that point by asserting that even happy, healthy lives without major issues can warrant needless ending.

“Instead of seeing every human life as having inherent value and dignity, Singer sees life as transactional: something you are allowed to keep by being happy, able-bodied, and productive — and something to be taken away if you are not,” Cassy Cooke wrote at Live Action News.

Support is available to talk those struggling with suicidal thoughts out of ending their lives. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.

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