Alexander Raikin: We were promised MAiD would be rare. Instead, Canadian euthanasia deaths are soaring

When the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalized euthanasia and assisted suicide, it tasked Parliament to create “a stringently limited, carefully monitored system of exceptions.” Instead, within a decade, Canada created the world’s largest and fastest-growing euthanasia program, a trend that we wrote about in a recent report for Cardus.

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Charter challenge launched against Ottawa for excluding mental illness from MAID

OTTAWA — A Charter challenge has been launched against the federal government over its decision not to allow those suffering solely from mental illness the ability to access an assisted-death.

On Monday, a statement of claim was issued at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice by Dying with Dignity Canada, a national charity that advocates for people’s right to access the procedure, along with two individuals diagnosed with mental disorders who say it has filled their life with suffering.

How long before conservative political beliefs are legislated as a mental illness requiring involuntary “euthanasia”.

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Cui Bono? Organs of Drug Overdose Victims Fuel 10-Year Rise in Donations

When Dylan Plakstis died of illicit fentanyl poisoning in December 2020, his mother Tammy Plakstis decided to donate the 29-year-old’s organs. Although Tammy Plakstis doesn’t regret granting the gift of life to another, she has begun to wonder whether fentanyl is being allowed to circulate nationally as a way to increase organ donations.

“It hurts my heart to think that but the thought has come to my mind,” Tammy Plakstis told The Epoch Times. “It could be a money thing. Fentanyl poisoning is an epidemic and crisis.”


Raymond J. de Souza: Euthanasia’s grisly transformation of the Canadian medical regime

My colleagues at Cardus have done a signal service in telling Canadians what the government does not want us to know, namely that euthanasia is far more widespread in the country than we think.

The study, entitled “From Exceptional to Routine: The Rise of Euthanasia in Canada,” was released this past week. The shift from exceptional to routine refers to the practice of euthanasia, which has exploded from 1,018 deaths nationally in 2016 to 13,241 in 2022, the last year for which data are available.

Monsters live among us.

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‘Descent into hell’: Quebecer with long COVID requests MAID over lack of home support

Tired, in pain and worried about being a burden to his family, a 44-year-old Quebecer suffering from long COVID has requested medical assistance in dying.

To be legally eligible for MAID, one must have a serious and incurable illness, experience persistent and unbearable suffering, and make the request in a free and informed manner. Since 2021, in Canada, people whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable are eligible.

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Euthanasia was Canada’s 5th leading cause of death in 2022

Despite promises of a “stringently limited, carefully monitored system of exceptions,” medically-assisted death is now the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada, says a newly-released report.

The report, released this week by Canadian think-tank Cardus, paints a bleak portrait of Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAiD) regime, which according to the report has seen a thirteen-fold rise in participants since its 2016 legalization.

h/t Mauser & Patti Jo

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Researcher argues health-care serial killer could take advantage of Canada’s assisted dying program

Canada’s assisted dying regime could provide a cover for medical staff with “serially homicidal personalities,” according to a controversial paper critics say provides no evidence patients could be preyed upon by criminal medical murderers.

“Canada’s MAID (medical assistance in dying) system is criticized as the most permissive or least safeguarded in the world, raising the question of whether it could protect patients who fit the clinical profile of adult victims of HSK (health-care serial killers) from a killer working as a MAID provider,” Christopher Lyon, a Canadian social scientist who teaches at the University of York in the United Kingdom, wrote in a newly published paper.

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On Killing Our Elders

Many years ago, aged 19, I travelled alone out of Kathmandu where I had been living as a bum for some months, my destination being the ancient temple complex of Bhaktapur. On the way, my tuk-tuk driver stopped at a small settlement to buy some bottled water. As I refreshed myself with a cold drink, I looked around at the little village beyond the staring faces of gathering residents. I decided that Bhaktapur could wait a day; I wanted to stay the night there in that village. With the locals, I communicated with big smiles, positive sounding noises, and the universal sign for ‘good’: giving a thumbs-up. Soon, my tuk-tuk driver was heading back to the capital without me, and I had found somewhere to sleep. Some villagers led me up a hill at whose foot their primitive buildings were strewn. A little way up, I was brought to a small hut wherein the elders sat.

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Canadian assisted suicide data suggests over 15,000 chose euthanasia last year

As we await the federal government’s release of Canada’s 2023 euthanasia data, last week British Columbia released it’s 2023 provincial euthanasia data.

According to the BC Medical Assistance in Dying 2023 report there were 2,767 reported assisted deaths, up by 10 percent from 2,515 in 2022.

It is concerning that “other conditions” represented 32.9 percent of the BC assisted deaths in 2023. Other conditions were reported under these categories:

Autoimmune Condition 2.4%, Chronic Pain 24.8%, Diabetes 9.8%, Frailty 60.5%, Other Comorbidities* 52.1%.


Frailty? Cripes they’ll be running over Granny and her walker at crosswalks soon.

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This doctor has helped more than 400 patients die. How many assisted deaths are too many?

For Wiebe, medical assistance in dying (MAID) is “incredibly rewarding” work. She hasn’t faced nearly the same sort of stigma she once faced as an abortion provider and says that while she and her MAID colleagues “all work within the law,” she’s also not as “conservative” as some.

Abortionist and “Mercy” killer. Quite a resume.

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Spina bifida patient says Montreal hospital staff twice offered MAID unprompted

Tracy Polewczuk has spina bifida, a birth defect that can cause weak bones. Two years ago, she was in an accident and broke her leg. The injury never properly healed.

She says she lives in constant pain and relies on daily home care visits from the Pointe-Claire CLSC, but recently, she says the care has been getting worse.

“They don’t bother asking like they know your name, but they don’t address you. It’s just so impersonal, and they don’t care,” Polewczuk said in a recent interview. “You get up when they tell you to. You go to bed when they tell you. You do what they tell you to. That’s it. You have zero control over your life.”

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Family sues hospital because institution wouldn’t kill their daughter

The family of a Vancouver woman who was forced to transfer hospitals before she could receive medical assistance in dying (MAID) is suing the province of British Columbia and Providence Health Care, saying the health authority’s policy to ban MAID in its facilities violates patients’ Charter rights.

Gaye O’Neill, the mother of 34-year-old Samantha O’Neill, is the lead plaintiff in the case, along with Dr. Jyothi Jayaraman, a palliative care doctor who quit over Providence’s policy that bars patients from accessing MAID in its facilities.

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Why the Dutch are euthanising physically healthy young adults – and could the UK be next?

Lisa, 40, is waiting to hear if she will be allowed to die. She is married and has two young children who don’t know she plans to end her life. There is just one more medication she has been told to try to treat her chronic depression, and then, she says, her request for euthanasia will be approved. The hardest part will be leaving her children, but she feels she has no choice. She plans to tell them, with the help of a grief counsellor, when she has set a date for her death.

“It’s not that I want to die, it’s that I don’t want to live this life anymore,” she says. “I’ve tried everything there is.”

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Father’s desperate battle to stop his autistic daughter, 27, from killing herself through Canada’s lax euthanasia laws

A Calgary woman whose father has challenged her euthanasia request in court is starving herself to death and expects to die within weeks.

The 27-year-old autistic woman, who can only be identified as MV because of a court order, has asked judges to let her get a lethal injection — despite objections from her dad.

She’s now starving herself to death, and wants judges to greenlight her euthanasia request so she doesn’t perish in an ‘incredibly unpleasant’ manner.

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‘I was offered assisted dying over cancer treatment’ – In Canada, a broken healthcare system is killing patients

Two years ago, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison Ducluzeau started to feel pain in her stomach. At first, she assumed she had eaten too much turkey, but the pain persisted. A couple of weeks later, she saw her family doctor who requested CT scans, although none were sorted. Soon after, as the agony worsened, her partner insisted she went to the emergency unit at their local hospital on Vancouver Island. Finally, doctors confirmed the couple’s worst fears: she was almost certainly suffering from advanced abdominal cancer.

Bastards.

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