HANNAFORD: MAID expansion rolls on, no matter how Health Canada spins it

Well, here we are again, with another set of dystopic assisted-suicide numbers from Health Canada. According to the latest report, released last Friday and detailing the numbers for 2024, no less than 16,499 Canadians received assisted suicide that year. That's up nearly 7% from 2023's tally of 15,427. And in their Sixth Annual Report, Health Canada suggests the number of annual MAID provisions may be "beginning to stabilize.".Over 16,000 people in Canada received medically assisted suicide in 2024.The thrust of the Health Canada news release is that as the 2024-over-23 increase is less of an increase than the 15% of the year before (2023 over 2022,) this is a good thing.It says cheerfully that "The annual rate of growth in the number of MAID provisions has decreased significantly over the past several years, from 36.8% between 2019 and 2020 to 6.9% between 2023 and 2024.".Hmm. Where does this stop? First, I'm not condemning anybody for whom MAiD is personal. When it was first legislated in 2016, the idea was that for a tightly-defined group of people who were suffering horribly and going to die in a week anyway – a week – MAiD was a 'a health service,' that a compassionate society would not deny them.In Health Canada's view it was and remains, a good thing. But of course, it was such a good thing that since this bare minimum was legislated, the system seems to be working hard to expand eligibility. The expansion began when a Quebec court found the restraint of a 'reasonable foreseeability of natural death' was unconstitutional. So the law was changed. As Health Canada phrased it in 2021, "The revised law also contains new safeguards for eligible people who request medical assistance in dying and whose death is not considered reasonably foreseeable." They call this the '"second track" and in 2024, 732 people received assisted suicide under these rules..It was then proposed that the mentally ill should be allowed assisted suicide.And 'mature minors.'And babies.Babies.You probably think I'm making this up. However, The Atlantic recently published 'What happened when Canada gave citizens the right to die.' (If the paywall is a problem, switch to C2C Journal which in reviewing the Atlantic article, details how a Quebec doctor suggested " 'extending current MAID practices to cover infants under one-year old in cases of “severe deformities' " to the to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee for MAiD.The Quebec doctor's name is Louis Roy. Read the full parliamentary committee transcript here..Perhaps we should suspend judgment. Here in Alberta, we routinely allow babies born alive after a botched abortion to die. So what's the difference? (Amazingly, abortion survivors often grow up to be healthy, successful people. They even have their own association. But that's in the US. That's the difference.)Now admittedly, a decision on allowing the mentally-ill to access assisted suicide has been deferred to 2027. However, it hasn't been punted. The delay is only to "allow more time to ensure that MAID assessors and providers have the knowledge and tools necessary to appropriately assess requests for MAID from persons suffering solely from a mental illness." So, it's coming. And those who want to extend assisted suicide to children are still hard at it..So, there's something a tad disingenuous about an enthusiastic news release saying the rate of increase in MAiD is slackening. No, more people than ever are using it. And an increase of 6.9% of anything is significant. How would 6.9% year-over-year inflation sound? Are you getting a 6.9% pay raise? Meanwhile, those Track 2 clients – the 732 poor folks whose death was not imminently foreseeable in 2024 but wanted to go anyway – their year-over-year increase from 2023 works out not to 6.9% but an astonishing 33%. Up a third, in one year.This is growth in a demographic for which MAiD was never originally intended. As think-tank Cardus proposes, is there no room to expand palliative care?.SLOBODIAN: MAiD approved ‘candidate’ cleaning grandpa’s garage, not lying in a grave.My grumpy-old-man guess is that the enthusiasts in charge of the program, informed and encouraged as they are by a pro-death lobby that wants children — 'mature minors' — to be eligible (these people) are not unhappy with the increase. It's just poor form to gloat when so many Canadians are deeply suspicious of what's going on..Going on? Most of the money the system will spend on a normally healthy individual is spent later in life. (There are plenty of studies; here's one.)Now, even this old grump isn't cynical enough to believe governments mean to solve their health-funding problems by culling the weak and the old. Still, they do rather pitch it to vulnerable people, don't they? You know, the poor, homeless veterans, and as my friend and colleague Linda Slobodian points out, even the Anglican church is in on it..SLOBODIAN: Holy hypocrisy: Anglican Church and RCMP vets caught promoting ‘death talks’ to wounded mounties.Veteran alleges 20 cases of assisted suicide offers by Veterans Affairs Canada.So if you're wondering why this cheerful-as-the first robin despatch landed in your inbox late on a Friday afternoon, I doubt it's an accident. Governments have a time-honoured tradition of "taking out the trash" on Fridays... bury the things they don't want to talk about under the weekend's distractions, and by Monday, everyone's moved on to something else.But we shouldn't move on.Not on this.