Euthanasia skyrocketed in Canada last year and is set to get worse under Trudeau

Canada now leads the world in having an almost uniquely predatory euthanasia regime, and unless there is a change in government before March, that will only get worse

On September 28, journalist Alexander Raikin made a prediction. Raikin has been reporting on Canada’s euthanasia regime for several years, producing some of the best journalism available on the subject and exposing how “MAiD” – the euphemism used by the government and medical professionals to describe death by lethal injection – is administered. “I’m calling it,” he wrote on X. “The reason that the MAiD annual report still isn’t out is because it’ll show that MaiD caused more than 4% of all deaths in Canada, which will mean that MaiD will be around the 4th leading cause of death in Canada. It’s not linear growth: it’s exponential.”

Raikin was right. The “Fourth annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2022” was released this week, and the numbers are staggering. Over 13,200 Canadians died by assisted suicide in 2022. This is a 31.2% increase from 2021 and brings the total number of deaths by lethal injection in Canada since 2016 to 44,958. All of this is unfolding in the midst of a healthcare crisis in which we are incapable of offering comprehensive psychiatric services, suicide prevention, or palliative beds. As we have seen from the conveyer belt of horror stories being reported around the world, many Canadians are opting for state-sanctioned and state-funded suicide simply because they feel they have no other choice.

In many cases, “MAiD” is the only thing they’re eligible for.

The report is packed with dry data that should cause acute alarm. Every province but Manitoba and Yukon “continue to experience a steady year-over-year growth in 2022.” Males accounted for slightly more of the death count – 51.4% against 48.6%. The average age of the person was 77. While cancer remains the most cited medical condition amongst those requesting assisted suicide, “other conditions,” not specified, account for 14.9% and “neurological conditions” account for 12.6%. Of the total, at least 463 of the people who died by assisted suicide “were individuals whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable,” an increase from 223 in 2021. These numbers, it must be pointed out, are only those officially recorded.

Of those who did not have a “reasonably foreseeable death,” most of them had “neurological conditions” (50%) or “other conditions” (37.1%). According to report, “the most commonly cited sources of suffering by individuals requesting MAID were the loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities” at 86.3%. This, says the report, continues “to mirror very similar trends seen in the previous three years (2019-2021), indicating that the nature of suffering that leads a person to request MAID has remained consistent over the past four years.”

The steady rise in the number of Canadians requesting assisted suicide has also led to a growing number of medical professionals opting to perform it. In 2022, the total number of practitioners dispatching patients by lethal injection was 1,837, up 19.1% from 1,542 in 2021. Of these, 95% were doctors and 5% were nurses. 39.5% of assisted suicides were carried out in private homes. The report also noted that the number of requests is rising sharply, and that few are declined:

There were 16,104 written requests for MAID in 2022. This represents an increase of 26.5% over the number of written requests in 2021. Written requests for MAID have grown by an average of 28.2% per year between 2020 and 2022. In 2022, the majority of written requests (13,102 or 81.4%) resulted in the administration of MAID.

Despite these numbers – which will certainly rise sharply if assisted suicide for mental illness, addiction, and other afflictions are approved next March, which seems likely at this point – Trudeau’s health minister Mark Holland noted that: “As Minister of Health, I am proud to present Health Canada’s Fourth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada (2022).” It is unclear what, specifically, he is proud of. Canada now leads the world in having an almost uniquely predatory euthanasia regime, and unless there is a change in government before March, that will only get worse.

Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.

Related Topics:#JonathonVanMaren #LifeSiteNews #MAID #MedicalAssistanceInDying

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Massive government child-care plan wreaking havoc across Ontario

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Massive government child-care plan wreaking havoc across Ontario

Published on June 30, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

It’s now more than four years since the federal Liberal government pledged $30 billion in spending over five years for $10-per-day national child care, and more than three years since Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government signed a $13.2 billion deal with the federal government to deliver this child-care plan.

Not surprisingly, with massive government funding came massive government control. While demand for child care has increased due to the government subsidies and lower out-of-pocket costs for parents, the plan significantly restricts how child-care centres operate (including what items participating centres may purchase), and crucially, caps the proportion of government funds available to private for-profit providers.

What have families and taxpayers got for this enormous government effort? Widespread child-care shortages across Ontario.

For example, according to the City of Ottawa, the number of children (aged 0 to 5 years) on child-care waitlists has ballooned by more than 300 per cent since 2019, there are significant disparities in affordable child-care access “with nearly half of neighbourhoods underserved, and limited access in suburban and rural areas,” and families face “significantly higher” costs for before-and-after-school care for school-age children.

In addition, Ottawa families find the system “complex and difficult to navigate” and “fewer child care options exist for children with special needs.” And while 42 per cent of surveyed parents need flexible child care (weekends, evenings, part-time care), only one per cent of child-care centres offer these flexible options. These are clearly not encouraging statistics, and show that a government-knows-best approach does not properly anticipate the diverse needs of diverse families.

Moreover, according to the Peel Region’s 2025 pre-budget submission to the federal government (essentially, a list of asks and recommendations), it “has maximized its for-profit allocation, leaving 1,460 for-profit spaces on a waitlist.” In other words, families can’t access $10-per-day child care—the central promise of the plan—because the government has capped the number of for-profit centres.

Similarly, according to Halton Region’s pre-budget submission to the provincial government, “no additional families can be supported with affordable child care” because, under current provincial rules, government funding can only be used to reduce child-care fees for families already in the program.

And according to a March 2025 Oxford County report, the municipality is experiencing a shortage of child-care staff and access challenges for low-income families and children with special needs. The report includes a grim bureaucratic predication that “provincial expansion targets do not reflect anticipated child care demand.”

Child-care access is also a problem provincewide. In Stratford, which has a population of roughly 33,000, the municipal government reports that more than 1,000 children are on a child-care waitlist. Similarly in Port Colborne (population 20,000), the city’s chief administrative officer told city council in April 2025 there were almost 500 children on daycare waitlists at the beginning of the school term. As of the end of last year, Guelph and Wellington County reportedly had a total of 2,569 full-day child-care spaces for children up to age four, versus a waitlist of 4,559 children—in other words, nearly two times as many children on a waitlist compared to the number of child-care spaces.

More examples. In Prince Edward County, population around 26,000, there are more than 400 children waitlisted for licensed daycare. In Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County, the child-care waitlist is about 1,500 children long and the average wait time is four years. And in St. Mary’s, there are more than 600 children waitlisted for child care, but in recent years town staff have only been able to move 25 to 30 children off the wait list annually.

The numbers speak for themselves. Massive government spending and control over child care has created havoc for Ontario families and made child-care access worse. This cannot be a surprise. Quebec’s child-care system has been largely government controlled for decades, with poor results. Why would Ontario be any different? And how long will Premier Ford allow this debacle to continue before he asks the new prime minister to rethink the child-care policy of his predecessor?

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

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Canada Caves: Carney ditches digital services tax after criticism from Trump

Published on June 30, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

Canada caved to President Donald Trump demands by pulling its digital services tax hours before it was to go into effect on Monday.

Trump said Friday that he was ending all trade talks with Canada over the digital services tax, which he called a direct attack on the U.S. and American tech firms. The DST required foreign and domestic businesses to pay taxes on some revenue earned from engaging with online users in Canada.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” the president said. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”

By Sunday, Canada relented in an effort to resume trade talks with the U.S., it’s largest trading partner.

“To support those negotiations, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, announced today that Canada would rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States,” according to a statement from Canada’s Department of Finance.

Canada’s Department of Finance said that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump agreed to resume negotiations, aiming to reach a deal by July 21.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday that the digital services tax would hurt the U.S.

“Thank you Canada for removing your Digital Services Tax which was intended to stifle American innovation and would have been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America,” he wrote on X.

Earlier this month, the two nations seemed close to striking a deal.

Trump said he and Carney had different concepts for trade between the two neighboring countries during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian Rockies.

Asked what was holding up a trade deal between the two nations at that time, Trump said they had different concepts for what that would look like.

“It’s not so much holding up, I think we have different concepts, I have a tariff concept, Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like, but we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today.”

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump hit Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs for allowing fentanyl and migrants to cross their borders into the U.S. Trump later applied those 25% tariffs only to goods that fall outside the free-trade agreement between the three nations, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump put a 10% tariff on non-USMCA compliant potash and energy products. A 50% tariff on aluminum and steel imports from all countries into the U.S. has been in effect since June 4. Trump also put a 25% tariff on all cars and trucks not built in the U.S.

Economists, businesses and some publicly traded companies have warned that tariffs could raise prices on a wide range of consumer products.

Trump has said he wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, shift the tax burden away from U.S. families, and pay down the national debt.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods paid by the person or company that imports them. The importer can absorb the cost of the tariffs or try to pass the cost on to consumers through higher prices.

Trump’s tariffs give U.S.-produced goods a price advantage over imported goods, generating revenue for the federal government.