Pro-euthanasia group advocates for 12-year-olds to access state-sponsored suicide in Canada

Dying with Dignity Canada (DWDC) would like to see MAiD available to minors – children aged 12 years and up.

As The Publica reports, DWDC wants to lower the age limitations for MAiD in tune with its stated objective of “improving the quality of dying” and is asking the Trudeau government to “amend the existing age requirement of 18 years of age to extend to persons at least 12 years of age and capable of making decisions with respect to their health.”

The group has been seeking additional changes to the MAiD program since Bill C-7 expanded MAiD to people who could not expect a “reasonably foreseeable,” death.

A Parliamentary Review of the bill anticipated that Canada’s euthanasia program could someday include the “eligibility for MAID of mature minors.”

DWDC has latched on to this assurance in its desire to expand MAiD to so-called “mature minors” with a crippling or incurable medical condition.

“DWDC acknowledges that Canadian society will likely expect a minimum age for mature minors in the legislation, even though the emphasis at common law is on capacity and maturity and not chronological age,” reads the post.

“For this reason, DWDC asks that Parliament amend the existing age requirement of 18 years of age to extend it to persons at least 12 years of age and capable of making decisions with respect to their health. As with adults, there should be a presumption of capacity for these minors.”

As The Publica notes, creating a category of something called “mature minors” could well redefine age of consent laws in Canada in a myriad of areas, including sexual activity.

In March, Canada could extend the “eligibility” of its euthanasia program to the mentally ill, a category that could also include drug addicts and alcoholics. Critics say that is not just euthanasia but eugenics.

The federal government postponed the expansion in 2023, after receiving considerable push-back from some prominent psychiatrists who questioned the prudence of the change in an open letter.

Among the authors of this correspondence was the chief of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s psychiatry department and University of Toronto professor Sonu Gaind, who wrote, “There remain no meaningful safeguards to prevent vulnerable and marginalized individuals, who could get better, from getting MAiD during periods of despair and suicidality fueled by mental illness,” wrote Gaind in a briefing submitted to the committee last November.

“I can assure you that Canada simply is not ready to implement MAiD for mental illness,” he added.

Statistics Canada has been disguising the number of deaths attributable to MAiD since the program began in 2016.

Information about MAiD deaths can still be found on the Health Canada website, which reports that in 2022 “there were 13,241 MAID provisions reported in Canada, accounting for 4.1% of all deaths in Canada.”

Health Canada even provides the total figure of MAiD fatalities: “When all data sources are considered, the total number of medically assisted deaths reported in Canada since the introduction of federal MAID legislation in 2016 is 44,958.”

Given the annual increase in the use of the MAiD program, when the numbers for 2023 are considered, the total number of deaths could now total 60,000.