Canada's Culture Of Death: 60,000 Canadians Have Been Euthanized

Something dark has taken root in Canada. In less than a decade, medical assistance in dying (MAID) has shifted from a narrowly defined "compassionate option" for the terminally ill to a normalized, even celebrated, feature of Canadian society. The result is nothing short of a culture of death -- one in which thousands of lives are being ended not by disease or accident, but by deliberate design.

The numbers alone should give us pause. In 2023, more than 15,300 Canadians died through MAID, accounting for 4.7% of all deaths nationwide -- about one in every twenty. In Quebec, the percentage is even higher, surpassing 7% of all deaths, the highest rate in the world. Since its legalization in 2016, over 60,000 Canadians have been euthanized. If tallied alongside other causes of death, MAID would now rank among the top five causes of death in the country. This is not a marginal issue. It is a seismic cultural shift.

But the numbers tell only part of the story. Behind them are real people who chose death not because modern medicine could do nothing more, but because society failed them. A quadriplegic man who developed a bedsore requested MAID because he didn't want to be a burden. A Winnipeg woman with ALS chose assisted death when her government-provided home care was capped at 55 hours. And in one chilling case, a Canadian veteran was denied a wheelchair lift but offered euthanasia instead. When death becomes cheaper and easier than care, vulnerable lives are not protected -- they are discarded.

This is the very definition of a culture of death: when a society treats the suffering, the disabled, and the elderly not as people to be upheld but as problems to be solved by elimination. The original safeguards promised in 2016 -- that MAID would be strictly limited to terminally ill, mentally competent adults -- have steadily eroded. The law now includes those with chronic illnesses and disabilities. Plans to extend it further to those suffering solely from mental illness have been delayed until 2027, but the trajectory is clear. Once the principle is established that death is a solution, there are always more categories of suffering to expand it to.

And Canadians are becoming numb to it. What was once shocking is now routine. The rapid normalization of euthanasia has turned MAID into not just a medical service, but almost a national ideology. It's presented as "dignity." It's offered as "compassion." Yet compassion without protection for the vulnerable is no compassion at all -- it is abandonment dressed up as mercy.

For Americans, the warning could not be clearer. Eleven U.S. states have already legalized some form of physician-assisted suicide, with oversight often thin and rules steadily loosening. Washington state recently approved mailing lethal drugs. Oregon and Vermont have become destinations for so-called "suicide tourism." Legislators assure us there are safeguards, but Canada shows us where this road leads: once the door is opened, the boundaries collapse.

So we must ask: what happens to a nation that embraces death as policy? What happens to our understanding of medicine, family, and human worth when killing the vulnerable becomes an acceptable -- even promoted -- solution? History teaches us that when societies devalue the weak, it is never long before more categories of people are deemed expendable.

Canada's culture of death is already here. America still has time to resist. We can insist that doctors remain healers, not executioners. We can reaffirm that every life -- no matter how fragile, costly, or dependent -- is worth protecting. The choice before us is stark, and it is moral at its core: Will we build a culture that guards life, or one that eliminates it? Canada has chosen the latter. We must not follow.