REVEALED: More Canadians die from MAID each year than Americans do from gun homicides
Canada's medical assistance in dying (MAID) program accounted for more deaths than gun homicides in the United States in 2024. This is despite the US having roughly eight times the population as Canada.
A total of 16,499 people received MAID in Canada in 2024, according to Health Canada's Sixth Annual Report on MAID, the latest report available. In the US, 15,364 people were killed by a gun in 2024, per a report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. The MAID total is 1,135 higher.
MAID deaths reached a record high in 2024 and made up around 5 percent of all deaths in Canada, or about 1 in 20.
Senator Mike Lee commented on the difference between the death rates with MAID and gun homicide and responded, “State-administered death is now more common in Canada than gun homicide is in the U.S. That didn’t happen by accident.”
Over the last 10 years, the MAID program has been expanded after the initial law was passed in June 2016. At first, it was only available to those whose death was “reasonably foreseeable.” That was expanded in March 2021 to allow those with chronic disabilities and other conditions even though their death is not in the foreseeable future.
Some have been pushing to expand the program to those whose only underlying condition is a mental health issue, which would likely radically increase the number of people who commit medically assisted suicide.
The program, which is already among the most expansive in the world for allowing people to kill themselves, has faced heavy scrutiny for deaths in circumstances that have appeared even more morally questionable than the program itself. One recent report indicated that an 83-year-old woman was killed “against her will,” according to her granddaughter.
Doctors at the Quebec College of Physicians have also said that MAID “may be an appropriate treatment for babies suffering from extreme pain."
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