Canada the Cruel

The cheaper method:

While proponents say the numbers reflect a pent-up demand for an end-of-life option that’s long had broad support among Canadians, critics fear MAID is being sold as a medicine, a “death therapy,” and that some lives are being ended based on overly loose and questionable interpretations of the law.

“I think most people in Canada would at least acknowledge that we’ve gone way beyond an exceptional practice that is a last resort measure,” said Trudo Lemmens, a University of Toronto health law and policy professor.

The curve may be flattening: The year-over-year rate of growth has fallen further and faster than some expected. However, the number of Canadians who died by a doctor-administered lethal injection in 2024 reached its highest level, a total of 16,499 people, to date.

What was once considered antithesis to the Hippocratic oath by the country’s largest doctors’ organization — actively expediting death — has become a relatively common medical act.

While a new paper argues Canada should expect the absolute number of MAID deaths to rise as the population grows older, and that there’s no ideal or correct number of assisted deaths, others are calling for an overhaul of the system, arguing reviews of select MAID cases in Ontario point to some serious problematic practices.

“It is troubling that documented problematic applications of MAID have not yet resulted in either criminal or professional regulatory intervention,” Lemmens wrote in a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Bioethics devoted to MAID.

In Ontario, all MAID deaths are retrospectively — after the fact — reviewed by the Office of the Chief Coroner.

In January 2024, a special MAID death review committee was also set up to highlight cases chosen to “generate discussion, thought and considerations” to improve practices.

Of 4,356 MAID deaths in Ontario in 2024, most, 88 per cent, met all legislative requirements, according to the coroner’s office.

But concerns flagged by the death review committee, of which Lemmens is a member, include lax interpretations of legislated safeguards, minimal or sloppy assessments of a person’s capacity to choose an assisted death, minimal discussions around alternative means to relieve someone’s suffering, risks of coercion from family members or burned out caregivers and doctors accepting nods and hand squeezes as signs of final consent in the moments before the first injection.

The law no longer requires that a person’s natural death be reasonably foreseeable, nor must people exhaust all available options to relieve suffering. For those whose natural deaths are near, same-day or next-day MAID are possible. In Canada’s wait-list-beleaguered health system, it can be easier to get access to MAID than to needed care, Lemmens and others have argued.

 

 Canadians are not doing anything of their own volition.

 The government is merely making them think that.

 

The animals were all at work weeding turnips under the supervision of a pig, when they were astonished to see Benjamin come galloping from the direction of the farm buildings, braying at the top of his voice. It was the first time that they had ever seen Benjamin excited—indeed, it was the first time that anyone had ever seen him gallop. "Quick, quick!" he shouted. "Come at once! They're taking Boxer away!" Without waiting for orders from the pig, the animals broke off work and raced back to the farm buildings. Sure enough, there in the yard was a large closed van, drawn by two horses, with lettering on its side and a sly-looking man in a low-crowned bowler hat sitting on the driver's seat. And Boxer's stall was empty.

 The animals crowded round the van. "Good-bye, Boxer!" they chorused, "good-bye!"

 "Fools! Fools!" shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the earth with his small hoofs. "Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van?"

 That gave the animals pause, and there was a hush. Muriel began to spell out the words. But Benjamin pushed her aside and in the midst of a deadly silence he read:

 "'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.' Do you not understand what that means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker's!"

A cry of horror burst from all the animals. At this moment the man on the box whipped up his horses and the van moved out of the yard at a smart trot. All the animals followed, crying out at the tops of their voices. Clover forced her way to the front. The van began to gather speed. Clover tried to stir her stout limbs to a gallop, and achieved a canter. "Boxer!" she cried. "Boxer! Boxer! Boxer!" And just at this moment, as though he had heard the uproar outside, Boxer's face, with the white stripe down his nose, appeared at the small window at the back of the van.

 "Boxer!" cried Clover in a terrible voice. "Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly! They're taking you to your death!"

All the animals took up the cry of "Get out, Boxer, get out!" But the van was already gathering speed and drawing away from them. It was uncertain whether Boxer had understood what Clover had said. But a moment later his face disappeared from the window and there was the sound of a tremendous drumming of hoofs inside the van. He was trying to kick his way out. The time had been when a few kicks from Boxer's hoofs would have smashed the van to matchwood. But alas! his strength had left him; and in a few moments the sound of drumming hoofs grew fainter and died away. In desperation the animals began appealing to the two horses which drew the van to stop. "Comrades, comrades!" they shouted. "Don't take your own brother to his death!" But the stupid brutes, too ignorant to realise what was happening, merely set back their ears and quickened their pace. Boxer's face did not reappear at the window. Too late, someone thought of racing ahead and shutting the five-barred gate; but in another moment the van was through it and rapidly disappearing down the road. Boxer was never seen again.

(Animal Farm, Chapter Nine)