State-facilitated suicide is now a leading cause of death north of the border, according to a new report from the Canadian think tank Cardus. In the way of body counts, euthanasia under Canada's eugenicist-founded health care system may have already edged out what was previously the fifth-leading cause of death, cerebrovascular diseases.

Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016, referring to it euphemistically as medical assistance in dying. According to Cardus, court rulings emphasized early on that MAID should be a "stringently limited, carefully monitored system of exceptions." It appears that MAID has become anything but.

"MAiD in Canada is no longer unusual or rare. Federal predictions about the expected frequency of MAiD have significantly underestimated the numbers of Canadians who are dying by this means," said the report. "More troubling, instead of physicians acting as 'reluctant gatekeepers' for assisted dying, as the lawyers for the plaintiff in Carter envisioned, they appear highly favourable to MAiD requests, as shown by the available data on length of time from assessment to provision, the percentage of MAiD requests that are denied, and the sheer prevalence of occurrences."

Blaze News previously indicated that in its first year, MAID killed 1,108 Canadians. That number tripled the following year, and by 2021, the number had climbed to over 10,000 assisted-suicide deaths a year in a country with an overall population of less than 39 million. State-facilitated suicides jumped another 31% in 2022, accounting for over 4% of deaths in Canada.

"We've seen that between 2016 and 2022, deaths from euthanasia have grown 13 times higher than when we originally started,” study author Alexander Raikin, a visiting fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, told Postmedia. "In short, Canada has the fastest-growing euthanasia regime of anywhere in the world."

In 2022, there were reportedly 84,412 Canadian cancer deaths; 57,357 deaths resultant from diseases of the heart; 19,716 alleged COVID-19 deaths; and 18,365 accidental deaths.

According to Cardus, MAID and cerebrovascular diseases — a condition group that includes aneurysms, carotid stenosis, and stroke — were neck and neck for fifth place. There were 13,915 deaths from cerebrovascular diseases and 13,241 deaths from MAID in 2022.

'If it can happen there, it can here.'

While it appears cerebrovascular diseases have a numerical edge over state-facilitated suicides in terms of victims, Cardus indicated Statistics Canada possibly counted MAID deaths toward its cerebrovascular disease total as it does not recognize MAID as a cause of death. That would mean it's too close to call.

Not only is MAID killing many moribund people, it's killing people who could otherwise live for years or decades, as well as victims whose primary symptom is suicidal ideation.

Originally, those seeking MAID had to be at least 18 years of age with a "grievous and irremediable medical condition" causing "enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable" to them. Additionally, they had to be in an "advanced state of irreversible decline," with death a likely outcome in the foreseeable future.

The rules have been loosened in the years since, such that those with PTSD, depression, anxiety, and other survivable issues can be put down.

According to the report, there is ample evidence now indicating that "medical professionals are not viewing MAiD as an option of last resort only."

"In less than a decade, euthanasia has gone from being a rare exception — as was originally intended by proponents, by policymakers, by the courts, by even the lead lawyer for the plaintiff in Carter v. Canada, to a routine cause of death in Canada," said Raikin.

It appears some in Ottawa may regard euthanasia as a way to save money and ease strain on a socialized health care system burdened by massive influxes of immigrants under the Trudeau government.

Canada's Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer highlighted in an October 2020 report that "expanding access to MAID will result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments" — saving those governments hundreds of millions of dollars that would otherwise be spent on saving lives and providing Canadians with the treatment they paid for as taxpayers.

Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, recently said of Cardus' findings, "If it can happen there, it can here. The only sure preventative is to reject the assisted-suicide agenda while it remains relatively limited in scope and reinvigorate the ethical tenets of Hippocratic medicine."

Smith is right to be concerned.

Last week, Gallup revealed that the majority of Americans now support legal euthanasia.

71% of respondents indicated that doctors should be "allowed by law to end the patient's life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it." 66% said doctors should be allowed to assist their patients in offing themselves.

Despite this overwhelming support, only 53% of Americans indicated doctor-assisted suicide was morally acceptable; 40% said it was morally wrong.

It's clear that religion plays a role in shaping views on whether it's acceptable for white-jacketed professionals to exterminate their patients. 77% of Americans with no religious identity said doctor-assisted suicide was morally acceptable. Meanwhile, only 46% of "Protestant/Other Christian" and 44% of Catholics said the same.

Opposition was strongest (66%) among those respondents who admitted of weekly religious attendance. Only 28% of those with seldom or no religious attendance signaled opposition.

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