As tensions between Canada and the United States continue to grow, headlines about our grotesque euthanasia regime are dominating the discussion. On September 20, the Daily Mailran this headline – a quote from a grief-stricken and angry young Canadian woman: “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother was euthanized against her will under Canada’s assisted dying system – she died covered in blood with her hands clasped in prayer.”
“This … is … evil,” Senator Ted Cruz wrote on X.
“The intersection of assisted suicide and socialized medicine results in state-led horrors, treating the young, old, infirm, and distressed as disposable people,” Senator Mike Lee concurred. “We must never allow this barbarity to spread in America.” Many American commentators picked up the story as well.
In the ongoing trade war with the United States, many Canadians have indulged in a spasm of the anti-American machismo that has always been a key aspect of Canadian nationalism. But what many Canadians have been slow to realize is that our international reputation is increasingly defined by what we are doing to the elderly, the very ill, the disabled, and the vulnerable. Canada doesn’t show up in international headlines often. Over the past few years, when we have, it has usually been another “MAiD” horror story.
Indeed, another viral X post by Senator Lee highlights this. “State-administered death is now more common in Canada than gun homicide is in the U.S,” he wrote. “That didn’t happen by accident.”
Canadians who enjoy responding with contempt to every mass shooting story coming out of the United States should be aware that this comparison is accurate. According to Health Canada, 16,499 people were euthanized in 2024, as cited in the post. Conversely, according to the CDC, there were 15,364 firearm homicide deaths in the United States in 2024. Canadians should consider the grim fact that our healthcare system killed 1,135 more people by lethal injection than American criminals killed by gunfire.
There are other stories as well. A Laura Ingraham interview with a Canadian who had to come to America because the only thing available to her was euthanasia has already racked up 152 million views on X:
I’ve seen plenty of Canadians online attempting to push back, insisting that these stories do not characterize the “average MAID” (as if that were a coherent defense). For example:
But the problem is that these stories keep happening, over and over again. Here’s another:
Many Canadians simply don’t want to admit that offering euthanasia to people in an inherently vulnerable condition doesn’t just happen once in a while, providing stories for the media and American commentators to exploit. It is standard practice, as Tristin Hopper of the National Post recently highlighted:
As commentator Yuan Yi Zhu put it, “As euthanasia is responsible for more and more deaths, societies become increasingly resistant to admitting abuses that occur in relation to its administration, since doing so would disturb the peace of mind of too many people who had relatives die in that manner.”
Canada’s euthanasia numbers remind me of a pro-life t-shirt that an American outfit used to sell: “Would it bother us more if they used a gun?” Someone should make Canadian t-shirt asking the same question about “MAiD.”
