A new poll has found that most Canadians fear the nation’s euthanasia regime unfairly targets those who are financially and socially vulnerable but still support the practice in general.
The poll, conducted by Angus Reid and released on November 21, showed that roughly three-in-five respondents, or 62 percent, “worry financially or socially vulnerable people will consider MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) because they lack adequate care.”
Worryingly, the poll also found that 63 percent of respondents were fine with Canada’s current euthanasia laws.
The poll was gathered from the responses of 468 people including many who work in the healthcare setting. It found that 24 percent of Canadians have some “level of personal experience with MAID” whether through knowing a friend or family member who has gone through the procedure to take their own life.
The results from the poll also found that 6 percent of respondents knew someone who had been offered MAiD without asking for it. Of those 6 percent, 37 percent of these said the person offered MAiD accepted it and died by euthanasia.
The poll also found that about 4 in 10 healthcare workers said that Canadians with disabilities have slower experiences in getting proper healthcare, as well as a lower quality of care in general.
Overall, 45 percent of respondents said they think those living with disabilities get poor healthcare service in their province.
In a blog post about the poll, Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, observed that it has “received many phone calls from people who were upset that healthcare professionals (often a hospital MAiD team) had asked them or a loved one if they wanted euthanasia.”
“One person contacted me after being asked 5 times if they wanted euthanasia,” he wrote.
When it comes to MAiD, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government sought to expand it from the chronically and terminally ill to those suffering solely from mental illness.
However, in February, after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government delayed the mental illness expansion until 2027.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, some provincial governments are fighting back against Trudeau’s expansion of legal assisted suicide.
Recently, the Conservative provincial government of Alberta said it would push back against the Canadian federal government’s continued desire to expand euthanasia in the nation, saying it will launch a review of the legislation and policies surrounding the grim practice, including a period of public engagement.
The number of Canadians killed by lethal injection under the nation’s MAiD program since 2016 stands at close to 65,000, with an estimated 16,000 deaths in 2023 alone. Many fear that because the official statistics are manipulated the number may be even higher.
Canada had approximately 15,280 euthanasia deaths in 2023.
