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Canada’s rapidly expanding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program is raising ethical alarms as, in some cases, assisted deaths occur within 24 hours of a request. The program’s fast-tracked, clinical approach in Ontario has prompted scrutiny, particularly regarding weakened safeguards for vulnerable patients and the acceleration of state-sanctioned suicide.

Oh goodie, the kiddies’ version comes with crayons.

It’s somewhat of an irony that the name of the retired Quebec neurosurgeon eulogising the soaring rates of state-sanctioned assisted suicide in Canada is Georges L’Esperance. Anyone with a modicum of French knows that “esperance” is the French word for hope.

Yet with the projected total number of Canadian deaths attributed to MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) soaring to 110-thousand by the end of 2026, hope – at least in the Christian understanding of the term – appears to be in short supply. One in twenty Canadians dies through MAID. Crazy times.

And it is not just Christians who are noting this. While there is a deep and long-held theological aversion to assisted suicide throughout Christian history, the article I quote here was published in the secular online journal The Free Press.

It would seem that the wider Western culture is starting to have reservations, too, about assisted suicide, and the almost gleeful rampage it is making across our societies.

A Machine Built for Speed

And not simply reservations about the number, but the speed at which this thing has ramped up, and also – alarmingly – the speed at which such deaths are carried out once they are signed off.

It may take time to see a GP these days, and the lack of beds in many hospitals across the West means ambulance ramping is a scourge. But the time from when one assents to MAID to the time of it being carried out in Canada, can be as short as one day.

The Free Press reports:

In Ontario alone, 219 people were killed by the end of the next day following their request for “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) in 2023, according to a 2024 report by an advisory committee. About 30 percent of those deaths occurred on the same day that the person sought the government’s permission to die. The committee hasn’t published comparable numbers since then.

That is sobering. And gives little time for people to reconsider their decision. True, some decisions are taken right at the end of life when all else has been tried. Well, all else except true, costly and laborious palliative care, of course. The health care system is costly. Why not ease the burden for your fellow citizens and do the right thing?

When Changing Your Mind Is Not an Option

Yet the statistics show that there are many cases being reported of patients changing their minds, but being overridden in their decision. It seems bizarre that a Western culture so averse to capital punishment because “one innocent person might be executed”, is almost blasé about reluctant patients being euthanised.

So read this and weep:

The report described the treatment of a dying woman in her 80s who was identified as “Mrs. B.” She “reportedly expressed” her interest in MAID “to her family,” but then changed her mind, “citing personal and religious values and beliefs..The next day, her husband requested another MAID assessment. The person who evaluated Mrs. B concluded that she was eligible for assisted suicide, even though the previous evaluator was concerned about “the possibility of coercion or undue influence. . . due to caregiver burnout.” A third evaluator did an online assessment of Mrs. B and approved her suicide. She was killed by the end of the day.

This is the same Canada that anyone who has even a slight aversion to their southern neighbour, the USA, constantly eulogises as a much happier, emotionally healthy, and definitely safer place to live.

Now, the shock you have at reading that is in direct contrast to the aforementioned retired neurosurgeon with the unfortunate name. Rather than express concern about it, he is positively radiant:

It’s a sign of maturity of a society, of a progressive society, which says, ‘I prefer this for myself…It is cultural; it is about control over our lives. As we say here, joie de vivre—living life fully and on one’s own terms…In Quebec, the majority are Catholics. But we don’t want to have religion interfering with our lives anymore. And more than 90 percent of the population is in favor of MAID.

If that is a sign of progress and maturity, then lead me in the direction of Luddite childlikeness. And of course, the religious question comes up. Once again, the good Dr Hope takes the standard secular line that there is “religion” and then there is “reality”, as if somehow the secular position that has fast-tracked MAID is a neutral one.

It’s interesting that the fall-away of religious belief in the strong French-speaking, traditionally Catholic, Quebec has been starker than in other parts of Canada. What we are seeing, and it is true across the West, is that when the Christian air starts to run out, toxic gases replace it.

The MAID Economy and the Slippery Slope

This graph shows how alarming the spike in MAID cases is:

That’s quite a ramp-up in demand. And as with all demand, the supply chain is becoming more streamlined. As The Free Press article states:

Assisted suicide has been allowed in Canada for nearly a decade. Over time, it has become just another part of the healthcare system, with well-established referral networks and forms to fill out. The government has also made it easier to end your own life. The required 10-day “reflection period,” starting the day after someone submits a written request for MAID, was abandoned in 2021

The most important revelation in the Ontario report is not how many people are dying with help from the Canadian government. It is how the MAID machine is evolving to move faster and faster.

MAID has merely become another part of the healthcare system. It’s all so white coat and ho-hum. Sign this, date that, duplicate this form. Done.

There’s something boldly and baldly clinical about the system, almost akin to another killing machine experienced in Europe some 80 years ago. If you can document it well, covering all your legal and administrative bases, then what you are doing is given social and cultural credibility.

Oh, and there’s good money to be had. As with the trans surgery debate, there are doctors who are making a tidy living from the MAID process, which is fully funded by the government. The Left has complained about Big Pharma for many decades – and rightly so – but here it is in its progressive form. I hope they are as loud about this as they are about the over-prescription of drugs.

And here’s a shake-up for the Western world in general, as we experience an ageing population that lives longer but not necessarily better. With the soaring rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s, you aren’t limited to pre-preparing your own funeral, but your own demise:

In Quebec, where nearly 7 percent of all deaths in 2023 were by assisted suicide, a provincial law passed in 2024 allows people who have been diagnosed with dementia to preauthorize their future deaths once they lose capacity, even though such requests are illegal under federal criminal law. Over 2,100 people have been approved so far.

Of course, none of this will stop the calls in Australia and the UK, which are already pushing for more intrusive voluntary assisted dying laws. With end-of-life matters, there has always been a special derision reserved for those who worry about the slippery slope.

But there’s clear evidence in all countries that are ahead of us on this curve that the slippery slope exists. It’s the same slippery slope as with abortion laws (later abortions and more selective), and sexuality (marriage laws being widened to include throuples, anyone?).

A Trickle That Must Become a Flood

The only encouragement in all of this is that it is increasingly secular journals that are reporting this data. That does not lessen the veracity of the information when faith-based groups report it, but it does show that the overreach by the state in determining whether and when one can die, plus the widening of those groups permitted to access the likes of Canada’s MAID, is starting to trickle into the mainstream consciousness.

May this trickle rise to a flood of concern. May the likes of the ironically named Georges L’Esperance, come to be considered brutish outliers who, while espousing progress and maturity, and a detached amoral secularism, express a vicious, almost casual, approach to life.

The good neurosurgeon may claim to believe in “joie de vivre”, but he has scant understanding of the one who is the true Joy of life, and who offers life beyond both the joys, and indeed the despairs, of this age.

Our prayer ought to be that many secular Canadians will see the end game of such despair, and ask deeper questions about themselves and their society.

Republished with thanks to Stephen McAlpine. Image via Adobe.