A total of 16,499 people in Canada received medically assisted suicide in 2024.This is according to Health Canada statistics published in November, which stated the "health service," medical assistance in dying in Canada (MAID), had 22,535 people submit requests in 2024.To be eligible for MAID, a patient must qualify for health services federally or provincially, be 18 years or older and mentally competent, have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition”, make a voluntary request, and get informed consent.The feds stated in 2024, 95.6% of medically assisted suicide deaths fell under "Track 1", where patients' "natural deaths" must be "reasonably foreseeable." .The other 4.4% of MAID patients were classified as "Track 2," meaning these individuals who received MAID were "assessed as having a natural death that was not 'reasonably foreseeable.'"Under track 2 — 34% of those who received MAID lived with what the feds define as "a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability for more than 10 years," which they say was most commonly "Neurological conditions and 'other' conditions (such as diabetes, frailty, autoimmune conditions, chronic pain)."There were 2,266 MAID practitioners in 2024, 93.2% of whom were physicians while 6.8% were nurses.However, the report notes that a small number of healthcare practitioners were responsible for the majority of MAID cases..Of the over 2,000 MAID healthcare practitioners, 102 were responsible for 38% of Track 1 deaths and 27% of Track 2 deaths.In 2024, 5% of people who died in Canada died from MAID.In 2022, the number of MAID cases was 13,241.This was a 24% increase in MAID deaths when compared with 2024 numbers. Not to mention that 2023 MAID deaths were 15,427 — a 7% increase in 2024..Previously reported in another article by the Western Standard, there were many MAID practitioners who have broken the criminal code when administering MAID. According to a Hub article, few MAID cases are being reviewed.In the summer of 2023, Michael Bureau, the head of Quebec’s independent monitoring board, filed a public appeal that MAID cases in Quebec “are approaching the limits of the law.”The monitoring board’s 2023 annual report included a new category of MAID qualifying illnesses, including “cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and other illnesses or disabilities.”.They found 14 patients’ underlying diagnosis for MAID was not “grievous and irremediable illness as defined by Quebec’s law on MAID.”Similar issues were reported to be happening in Ontario.Ontario’s Chief Coroner, Dirk Huyer, assigned by Health Canada and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to be the sole agency doing oversight for MAID, found in 2018: “a pattern of non-compliance, a pattern of not following legislation, a pattern of not following regulation.”The compliance requirements for MAID state if nurse practitioners and physicians do not “submit necessary information on a MAID provision — or failure to inform a pharmacist of the purpose of the MAID prescriptions or to follow provincial guidelines — is also punishable by a prison sentence,” Raikin says.In 2018, Huyer sent a memo to healthcare practitioners in Ontario stating there were “some…compliance concerns with both the Criminal Code and regulatory body policy expectations, some of which have recurred over time.” .“It only worsened since then. In 2020, his office identified 76 ‘issues with compliance,’ and in 2024 his office identified 428 ‘issues with compliance."The November MAID report states that since MAID's introduction in 2016, there have been a total of 76,475 deaths by medically assisted suicide.
