76,800 Dead: Canada's MAID Program Under the Liberals
The government that legalized and expanded assisted dying also funds the organization that promotes it — and the numbers are staggering.
In 2016, Justin Trudeau's Liberal government passed Bill C-14, legalizing Medical Assistance in Dying for the first time in Canadian history. That year, 1,018 Canadians died by MAID. The government assured the public that strict safeguards were in place. Terminal illness was required. Natural death had to be "reasonably foreseeable."
Eight years later, those safeguards are largely gone. In 2024, 16,499 Canadians died by MAID — a 1,521% increase from year one. That figure accounts for nearly 1 in 20 deaths in Canada. No other cause of death has grown anywhere close to this rate.
Total MAID deaths since legalization: approximately 76,800 Canadians.
The Expansion Liberals Don't Want to Talk About
The original law restricted MAID to those with terminal illness. In 2021, Bill C-7 changed that fundamentally: terminal illness is no longer required. Canadians with a "grievous and irremediable medical condition" — a category broad enough to include chronic pain, disability, and degenerative conditions — can now access MAID without being near death.
The next expansion is already legislated. In March 2027, mental illness alone will become a qualifying condition under Canadian law. A person could seek assisted death for depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions — with no requirement that they be dying, or even that their condition be treatment-resistant.
Each expansion was championed by the Liberal government. Each expansion was opposed by disability advocates, psychiatrists, and medical ethicists. Each expansion passed anyway.
The Government Funds Its Own MAID Promotion Machine
CANMAP — the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers — is the professional body that trains and represents MAID providers across Canada. It developed the nationally accredited curriculum for MAID practitioners. It sets standards. It promotes the program.
And it operates with support from Health Canada.
Health Canada's own Annual Reports confirm the government "continued to support several initiatives" under which CANMAP developed its MAID curriculum and training programs. The 2024 Annual Report states explicitly that CANMAP developed "Canada's first nationally accredited bilingual education program for MAID" — with Health Canada's support.
Specific dollar amounts have not been publicly itemized. An Access to Information request would be required to know exactly how much. But the relationship is confirmed in the government's own documents: the government that funds healthcare also funds the organization that trains people to perform assisted death.
Miriam Lancaster: 84 Years Old, Fractured Sacrum, Offered Death
The statistics are damning enough. But behind them are people.
In 2025, Miriam Lancaster — 84 years old — arrived at Vancouver General Hospital with a fractured sacrum. She was in pain. She had not asked about MAID. She had not raised the subject. But a doctor approached her in the emergency department and offered it anyway.
Her daughter recounted the conversation: "(The doctor) came in and said, 'Miriam, I understand you're in a lot of pain. We can offer you MAID.' Just like that."
Miriam said no. She underwent rehabilitation. She recovered. She climbed a volcano in Guatemala.
Vancouver Coastal Health said it was "not aware of a conversation" matching that description.
This is not an isolated case. Roger Foley, an Ontario man with a degenerative brain disease, secretly recorded hospital staff offering him MAID while he was asking for home care. Veterans Affairs Canada was rocked by scandal in 2022 when it emerged that a caseworker had raised MAID with a veteran seeking PTSD treatment and hearing aids — conditions that don't even qualify for MAID under current law.
In April 2026, psychiatrist Dr. John Maher testified before the Special Joint Committee on MAID that Canadians are "getting MAID for reasons that are frankly illegal" and that it is being offered to "veterans, disabled people and people with very treatable illnesses."
Who Gets MAID?
Health Canada's own data reveals a portrait that deserves scrutiny. In 2024, the median age of MAID recipients was 78 years old. More than 60% were over 75. The program is overwhelmingly concentrated among elderly Canadians — the population least able to push back against a system that presents death as a solution.
The program is not a quiet, rarely-used option. It is, by growth rate, the fastest expanding cause of death in Canada. The government publishes annual reports celebrating its reach. It funds the organization training its practitioners. It manages the organ donation program that benefits from its dead.
The Questions That Don't Have Answers
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has written to Canada expressing concern that MAID expansion could "undermine the right to life" of disabled people. European bioethicists — from Belgium and the Netherlands, countries that have had legal euthanasia for over two decades — have cited Canada as a cautionary example of how fast these programs can expand once the first safeguards are removed.
Ontario requires doctors who object to MAID on conscientious grounds to provide "effective referrals" to willing providers — a requirement upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2019. Objecting doctors cannot simply decline. They must actively facilitate.
Dr. Ramona Coelho, who served on Ontario's Chief Coroner's MAID death review committee, published a warning in the British Medical Journal this year: "When death is offered alongside, and sometimes before, comprehensive care, medicine drifts from its commitment to healing."
4.7% of all Canadian deaths. A government that funds both healthcare and the organization promoting assisted death. And a program expanding toward mental illness as a qualifying condition. Is this compassion — or something else?
Sources: Health Canada 5th Annual Report on MAID in Canada (2023); Health Canada 6th Annual Report on MAID in Canada (2024); National Post, March 27, 2026 (Miriam Lancaster); National Post (Dr. John Maher, parliamentary testimony); La Presse / CBC / National Post, November 2022 (VAC caseworker scandal); National Post, March 27, 2026 (Dr. Ramona Coelho, BMJ); Ontario Court of Appeal, Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada v. CPSO, 2019.