1 In 20 Canadian Deaths Were Through Assisted Suicide Last Year, Country Says

One in 20 Canadians who died last year were killed through medically assisted suicide, new government data shows.

A total of 15,343 people died through Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program in 2023, according to Canada Health’s annual report released Wednesday.

This means assisted suicide deaths made up about 4.7% of Canada’s 326,571 total deaths last year.

A total of 60,301 people have now killed themselves through the MAID program since it was legalized in 2016 — more than the population of Sarasota, Florida.

In the first year, 1,018 people died. Since then though, Canada has seen an explosion of people requesting assisted suicide. Poison is administered through their veins or orally.

Last year alone, nearly 20,000 people applied to end their lives through MAID. Only 915 people who requested assisted suicide were deemed ineligible, and nearly 500 people withdrew their requests to die. Some died before they could get assisted suicide.

Canada’s program has come under intense scrutiny for its liberal approach to approving applicants, especially people who have mental illness.

At first, only adults whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable” could get approved. In 2021, Canada expanded it to adults whose natural death is not “reasonably foreseeable,” such as those with non-terminal illnesses and disabilities.

In early 2027, people suffering “solely from a mental illness” will be eligible to end their lives.

Already though, Canadians with a history of mental illness have done so.

Alan Nichols, 61, was hospitalized in 2019 over fears he might be suicidal and asked his brother to “bust him out” as soon as possible. However, within a month, he had applied for assisted suicide and was killed. He listed “hearing loss” as the one reason he wanted to die.

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Another man, Amir Farsoud, 54, was living with agonizing chronic back pain and took depression and anxiety medication. He wanted to end his life using MAID in 2022 as he was unable to work, lived on government checks, and felt there was no way to avoid homelessness when the shared house he rented was listed for sale.

He changed his mind, however, only after good Samaritans stepped up and raised more than $60,000 for him.

“I’m a different person,” Farsoud said. “I had nothing but darkness, misery, stress and hopelessness. Now I have all the opposite of those things.”

Earlier this year, The Washington Post urged Canada to “rethink” its “risky expansion” of euthanasia, saying the upcoming expansion to mental illness “goes too far.”

“Many in the grips of psychiatric distress view, temporarily, suicide as their only way out, only to later be grateful they did not kill themselves in the depths of their suffering,” the editorial board wrote.