The grisly machinery of euthanasia continues to expand beyond all promised safeguards directly north of the United States. A “member of Ontario’s MAiD [Medical Assistance in Dying] Death Review Committee” wrote that citizens are being ushered into the Great Beyond in Canada’s largest province by population despite not being irreversibly ill and amid evidence of a “lack of thorough capacity assessments and concerns that individuals may not have freely chosen” to die.
“Despite its compassionate framing, investigative journalists and government reports reveal troubling patterns where inadequate exploration of reversible suffering – such as lack of access to medical treatments, poverty, loneliness, and feelings of being a burden – have driven Canadians to choose death,” Dr. Ramona Coelho, a longtime MAiD critic, stated April 7 in an eye-opening article for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a public policy think tank based in Ottawa.
The snowball-rolling-down-a-hill increase in MAiD can be directly attributed to a government health care system focused on economic priorities as well as a modern culture in which family and community ties have been frayed (or is demolished a better word?) and individuals increasingly feel detached from the greater whole.
Dead Before Dawn
What was once pledged to be a carefully thought-out process is rapidly becoming a drive-thru for death. Canadians can become eligible for state-practiced euthanasia in as little as 24 hours. Coelho references a report from the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General’s Office of the Chief Coroner titled “Navigating Complex Issues within Same Day and Next Day MAiD Provisions,” which “includes cases where MAiD was provided on the same day or the day after it was requested.”
These rush-job deaths involve so-called Track 1 MAiD candidates, who are identified as facing a reasonably foreseeable natural death. But the optics of Canadians going from inquiring about MAiD to being dead before the next sunrise are problematic.
“Some members familiar with MAiD practice identified a possible pattern where the exploration of MAiD starts much earlier than the formal assessment process,” the Ontario Chief Coroner’s report asserted. “Persons often wish to delay their formal request until they are closer to their decision to access MAiD. In many of these cases, the relationship and assessment for MAiD has begun long before the formal written request.”
That is how easy it is for Ontario to extinguish you in less time than it takes to get your Amazon Prime package delivered. Using medically meaningless words like “some,” “possible,” and “often” allows authorities to diagnose you as being fully informed about and disposed toward the ending of your existence.
Coelho highlighted the alarming power over life and death being wielded by MAiD staffers and how casually it is applied:
“In the same-day or next-day MAiD report, Mr. C, diagnosed with metastatic cancer, initially expressed interest in MAiD but then experienced cognitive decline and became delirious. He was sedated for pain management. Despite the treating team confirming that capacity was no longer present, a MAiD practitioner arrived and withheld sedation, attempting to rouse him.
“It was documented that the patient mouthed ‘yes’ and nodded and blinked in response to questions. Based on this interaction, the MAiD provider deemed the patient to have capacity. The MAiD practitioner then facilitated a virtual second assessment, and MAiD was administered.”
Then there is the Track 2 pool of MAiD candidates. This would be Canadians diagnosed as having a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” whose “natural deaths are not reasonably foreseeable.” While still a statistically small number overall, not surprisingly, these euthanasia fatalities are on the rise.
Euthanasia in the Big City
“To compare to previous years, between 2021 and 2022, the number of Track 2 MAiD provisions doubled (from 223 provisions in 2021 to 463 provisions in 2022),” the Canadian government’s Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada, which covers 2023, stated. “The increase between 2022 and 2023 was comparatively smaller, with 34% more Track 2 MAiD cases reported.”
A look at these Canadians choosing to die when not suffering from a terminal illness is disheartening. “Track 2 recipients were more commonly women (60 percent). No matter the age at which they sought medical assistance in dying, Track 2 recipients were more likely to live alone,” the CBC reported in October.
“Ninety percent of Track 1 recipients provided a family member as next of kin, compared to 73 percent of Track 2 recipients. Track 2 recipients were more likely to provide a friend, extended family member, case worker, lawyer or doctor as their next of kin … Track 2 recipients were more likely to live in areas of the province with high levels of marginalization.”
Does the urbanized lifestyle favored by the progressive left play a part in all this? “Geographic clustering, particularly in Western Ontario, where same-day and next-day MAiD deaths occur most frequently, raises concerns that some MAiD providers may be predisposed to rapidly approve patients for quick death rather than ensuring patients have access to adequate care or exploring if suffering is remediable,” Coelho wrote.
‘You May Be Eligible’
Above all, one sees the predictable pattern of endless enlargement of the state-controlled euthanasia machinery. The wording used by the Canadian government on its official website to explain MAiD Track 2 eligibility evokes just such a feeling.
“You do not need to have a fatal or terminal condition to be eligible for medical assistance in dying,” the government informs its citizens. The word “not” is in bold. “If your only medical condition is a mental illness, you are not eligible for medical assistance in dying until March 17, 2027,” the website advises. It goes on to say, “If you have a mental illness along with other medical conditions, you may be eligible for medical assistance in dying.” Check with us, we might be able to speed up the process.
This may be expected in growing materialistic societies that reduce human beings to economic units: Death is offered up as a transactional experience akin to buying a burger from the menu of a fast-food restaurant.