GUNTER: When death comes casually, MAID out of control

Now a doctor will meet you in the parking lot of Tim Hortons and sign off on your MAID request.
By Lorne Gunter

Last week saw the 10th anniversary of legalized MAID (medical assistance in dying) in Canada.
And since Parliament approved the procedure, at the insistence of the Supreme Court, we have become the leading country in the world for having doctors speed the deaths of their patients with a suicidal cocktail of powerful drugs.
First, there is usually an IV of sedatives to ease the patient’s stress and anxiety. Then comes a high concentration of anesthetics that lead to deep unconsciousness or coma. Finally, death is induced through neuromuscular blockers that stop the heart and end breathing.
In 2025, nearly 16,500 Canadians were killed in this manner, far and away the most of any other nation. The second-place country was the Netherlands where 10,300 citizens died by the hand of a medical professional.
The rate of death from “euthanasia,” as it is commonly referred to in the Netherlands, is roughly the same in our two countries — about six per cent of total deaths each year. The raw Dutch numbers appear smaller because they have around half of Canada’s population.
So far, in just 10 years, 93,000 Canadians have died by medically assisted suicide, a number almost no one conceived of in 2016 when MAID legislation was passed.
Its staggering. That’s the entire population of Lethbridge or Pickering, Ont., or Kamloops, B.C.
Medically assisted death is now the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada, but don’t go looking for that fact on StatsCan’s annual list of Top 10 causes of death. You have to take the separately published MAID figures and insert them into the general list.
Just cancer, heart disease, accidents and stroke claim more lives each year. MAID surpasses even lung diseases, diabetes, the flu, Alzheimer’s and liver disease.
Only in the deadliest year of COVID in Canada (2022), did more people (20,293) die of the pandemic than of MAID now.
The main reason for the ever-increasing numbers has been a rapid lowering of the requirements to apply for MAID.
Another problem is the growing number of doctors who are prepared to sign off on just about anyone’s request.
When MAID began there were between 800 and 1,200 approved cases a year because patients had to have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” — an incurable illness, disease, or disability in an advanced state of irreversible decline. Death had to be expected within six months or patients often had to wait until they were nearing the end.
Now a doctor will meet you in the parking lot of Tim Hortons and, in between ordering a double-double and some Timbits, sign off on your MAID request.
That’s not an example I made up for emphasis. It actually happened in Ontario.
A London, Ont. physician, Dr. James MacLean, met with a man who had inflammatory bowel disease outside a local Tims. Inflammatory bowel disease is often very painful and there is no cure, but there are surgeries and medications to control the symptoms. The man’s other complaint was a history of mental health issues, which are not supposed to be a basis for MAID. After meeting with the man outside Tims, MacLean personally drove him to the place MAID was performed.
Kiano Vafaeian, a 26-year-old Ontario man died by MAID last Dec. 30 in a Vancouver funeral home. He had tried several times in his home province to receive MAID for a painful nerve disorder and blindness, both resulting from his Type 1 diabetes.
But after calling a Vancouver-area clinic, he flew out unbeknownst to his family and was promptly euthanized.
It’s not MAID, in and of itself, that is the problem. It is now the absolute casualness with which it is being administered by many doctors and advocates.
Thankfully, Parliament seems ready to extend the MAID ban for patients with mental illness. But an entire rethink is in order.
Source: https://torontosun.com/opinion/lorne-gunter-when-death-comes-casually-maid-out-of-control/wcm/cb50ba8f-113d-45c7-b2c3-7c6c7468745f