Last month, a 26-year-old Ontario man, Kiano Vafaeian, was euthanized because of his blindness, type 1 diabetes, and depression. His mom tried to stop him from pursuing euthanasia, but she later gave up, saying she didn’t want her son to “keep hating” her.
And in 2024, a 27-year-old woman was euthanized in Canada despite pleas from her father that she was “generally healthy” and had only been diagnosed with autism and ADHD. The woman claimed physical ailments, but her father said these simply resulted from “undiagnosed psychological conditions.”
In Canada, people can be euthanized even when their death is not “reasonably foreseeable.” They are classified as “Track 2” Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) recipients. According to new data released by the Canadian government, 732 people classified as “Track 2” were euthanized in 2024. That is an increase from 2023, when 625 people with nonterminal ailments were euthanized.
Many who are killed under “Track 2” do not have serious illnesses. People with illnesses such as “fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, irritable-bowel syndrome, some kinds of chronic headaches, [and] many types of chronic pain” have been killed, according to New York Times Magazine. In many cases, these “illnesses” are not medically detectable and would be best characterized as resulting from mental illness. In 2022, a 51-year-old woman was killed for what she called “multiple chemical sensitivity,” an obviously fake condition. (READ MORE: The Canadian Government Is Euthanizing People Who Have Nothing Wrong With Them)
“[W]e have gone so far over the line with Track 2 that people cannot even see the line that we’ve crossed.”
Starting next year, however, Canadians will be able to receive euthanasia on the basis of mental illness alone. Many in Canada, including even those who support euthanizing people with terminal illnesses, view this as a step too far. For example, Dr. K. Sonu Gaind, the chief of psychiatry at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, who was the physician chair of his hospital’s MAID group, told Canada’s National Post, “[W]e have gone so far over the line with Track 2 that people cannot even see the line that we’ve crossed.”
Apart from mental illnesses that present as physical ailments, people in Canada are currently being euthanized because of physical disabilities that do not shorten their lifespans.
Vafaeian is not the only person the Canadian government killed for being blind. In 2024, a man in his 60s was also euthanized because of his blindness. In another case, a man in his 20s was euthanized because he was paralyzed. And recently, a woman in her 60s was killed by the Canadian health system because she suffered from obesity, type 2 diabetes, and depression.
In order to be euthanized in Canada, people do not need to accept treatment for their diseases; they only need to consider treatment. In the case of the woman with obesity, her doctors believed her health could improve and offered her weight loss surgery and medications, but she declined these options.
According to the new data on 2024 euthanasia deaths, 27 young people between the ages of 18 and 44 with non-terminal illnesses were euthanized. In total, 158 people under the age of 65 were euthanized due to a condition that would not kill them anytime soon. There was a 17.1 percent growth in killings of people with non-terminal illnesses over 2023’s numbers.
In fact, euthanasia has become so endemic in Canada that more than one in 20 deaths in Canada in 2024 resulted from physicians killing their patients. This represents 16,499 deaths, an increase of 6.9 percent over 2023’s numbers.
The doctors who euthanize people in Canada tend to have many customers. Dr. Ellen Wiebe, who has for many years performed abortions, has jumped at the chance to euthanize people. As of 2024, she had killed more than 400 people under Canada’s MAID laws. Her colleague, obstetrician Stefanie Green, has a kill count of over 300. Just 102 medical professionals killed 27.2 percent of nonterminal patients. These same 102 people also killed 38 percent of people with terminal diagnoses.
People who struggle to find a doctor to approve their request for euthanasia can turn to these busy doctors. For example, the 27-year-old diagnosed with autism and ADHD at first failed to get a doctor’s approval for her killing. But she simply went to a different doctor, who then approved her request for death.
Even the U.N. has a serious problem with Canada’s euthanization of people who simply have disabilities or mental illnesses. Last year, its Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said that it is “extremely concerned” about Canada’s laws on this matter. In fact, it asked Canada to stop its provision of euthanasia to people with non-terminal illnesses and to not move forward with allowing assisted suicide for people with mental illnesses. Rosemary Kayess, the vice chair of the committee, asked, “How is Track 2 MAID not state-sponsored euthanasia?”
Canada has decided that any form of suffering is sufficient reason for execution, as killing is cheaper than care. Blindness, paralysis, autism, obesity, and depression have been marked as reasons for people to be killed by their doctors. The result is a system in which suicide is presented as the “solution” to those who suffer from disabilities, and those with disabilities are seen as a burden.
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