Assisted suicide surged by almost a third again in 2022 in Canada, where state-sanctioned suicide claimed the lives of 13,241 Canadians, of whom a third said they feared being a burden on family and friends. SPUC warns that “the UK must wake up to the mortal danger that assisted suicide poses”.

Assisted suicide was responsible for 13,241 deaths in Canada in 2022, an increase of 31.2% compared to the previous year. Medical Assistance in Dying, known as MAiD, now accounts for 4% of all deaths in the North American nation.  The data was published by Health Canada in October.

The total MAiD death count in Canada since 2016, when assisted suicide was legalised, now stands at 44,958 (as of December 2022).

The number of practitioners, mostly physicians, providing assisted suicide also rose by 19.1% in 2022, with each practitioner facilitating an average of 7.2 assisted suicides during that time.

Cancer was the most common underlying cause of assisted suicide reported by Health Canada, at 63%, followed by cardiovascular conditions at 18.8%. Neurological conditions were the cause in 12.6% of individual cases, out of which 9% were related to dementia.

To be eligible for assisted suicide, the subject must (according to MAiD) be said to be suffering intolerable physical or psychological pain.

The most cited source of suffering in 2022 was “loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities” (86.3%); “loss of ability to perform activities of daily living” (81.9%); and “inadequate control of pain, or concern about controlling pain” (59.2%).

Over a third (35.3%) of individuals also listed being “perceived burden on family, friends or caregivers” as a cause of their suffering, while 17.1% said “isolation or loneliness” was another factor.

“A public safety concern”

This year, an official memo told doctors in the Canadian province of Quebec to respect the limits of the law on assisted suicide following a 54% rise in MAiD deaths, including several potentially wrongful suicides, between 2021 and 2022.

In 2022, SPUC reported on the case of a Canadian doctor who boasted that she killed 400 people through assisted suicide, sometimes on the grounds of “loneliness and poverty”.

Numerous other horror stories have emerged from Canada in recent years, including soldiers suffering from PTSD being offered assisted suicide, leading to a public outcry from people and organisations like Jordan Peterson and the noted medical journal The Lancet.

Meanwhile, England and Wales, as well as Scotland and the Isle of Man, are considering the legislation of assisted suicide.

At a Westminster inquiry, one expert in palliative care said that any legalisation of assisted suicide would be “bonkers… We are against this in healthcare, and certainly in palliative care”, adding that it would also constitute “a public safety concern”, there being “incorrect deaths” as a result of “hidden elder abuse”.

“Canada is a warning to us all”

Daniel Frampton, SPUC’s Editorial Officer, said: “The UK must reject Canada’s example, a culture of death masquerading as compassion, which has made vulnerable people feel they are the problem – hence a burden on others, including the state that has abandoned them.

“The real problem is the state that every day seeks to usher vulnerable individuals into an early grave for the sake of convenience. And it is becoming increasingly clear that even some physicians prefer to cure the disease by killing the patient.

“But assisted suicide is not medicine, it is a method of disposal of problem people no longer deemed worthy of life. Once permitted, the precedent is set, the culture changed, and the slippery slope is put into effect.

“Already, almost 50,000 lives have been lost in Canada – that’s 17 times the number of people killed on 9/11. Canada is a warning to us all. The UK must wake up to the mortal danger that assisted suicide poses.

“Much has been said about enacting safeguards, but in the end, as Canada proves, the only safeguard against needless deaths is not to legalise assisted suicide in the first place. Alternatives including palliative care, so often underfunded, should be made a priority, and medicine should return to its founding principle – to do no harm.”