CALGARY, AB: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces the release of a new report by veteran journalist and public policy analyst Nigel Hannaford, Canada’s assisted suicide crisis: The sinister culture of death in Canadian healthcare. The report warns that Canada’s assisted suicide regime is expanding rapidly, placing vulnerable Canadians at risk and undermining freedom, autonomy, and human dignity.
The report explains that assisted suicide was originally introduced in Canada as a narrowly limited exception, with strict safeguards requiring contemporaneous, voluntary, and informed consent. That foundation is now increasingly threatened by expanding eligibility and mounting pressure from advocacy organizations.
Key findings from the report include:
- Canada now has the dubious distinction of being a global leader in assisted suicide. Assisted suicide accounted for 5.1 percent of all deaths in Canada in 2024 – 7.9 percent in Quebec – surpassing “high rates” in countries like Belgium, where the rate is 3.6 percent.
- True informed consent is increasingly at risk. The report warns that people who are depressed, in pain, or living in poverty may have reduced decision-making capacity, thereby eclipsing true informed consent, particularly since some patients are repeatedly offered assisted suicide as a “treatment” option, including Canadian veterans.
- Advocacy groups are pushing for “advance requests” for assisted suicide. These proposals would allow a person to pre-authorize assisted suicide in writing, to be carried out later after they lose the capacity to understand, confirm, or revoke the decision, severing the link between consent and the act that follows.
- Some medical professionals are now discussing euthanasia without consent. The report highlights emerging professional discourse around “involuntary euthanasia,” including proposals raised in parliamentary testimony that could allow euthanasia for those incapable of consent, such as infants with severe disabilities or elderly individuals perceived to be “failing to thrive.”
- Canada’s failing healthcare system creates a dangerous incentive to treat death as a cost-saving measure. A growing policy discourse suggests that expanding assisted suicide eligibility to include vulnerable populations could generate massive projected cost savings, creating a perverse incentive to view assisted suicide as a “solution” to suffering, disability, or inadequate care.
The report calls on governments to strengthen assisted suicide safeguards, reject any form of non-consensual euthanasia, protect assisted-suicide-free spaces for those who want them, and improve access to high-quality palliative care across Canada.
Report author Nigel Hannaford said, “Canada was promised a tightly restricted assisted suicide regime with robust safeguards and informed consent. Instead, assisted suicide has become increasingly routine, and activists are now demanding changes that would make true informed consent impossible.”
“If Canadians want to remain a free people, informed consent must remain non-negotiable. No one should ever face pressure, suggestion, or expectation that death is the answer to suffering, disability, poverty, or inadequate healthcare,” he added.
