MAID is ‘Medical Assistance in Dying.’ The 2022 data on MAID in Canada have been released. I have graphed them above.1
Here’s what the data show:
In 2022, there were 13,241 MAID deaths in Canada. This comprised 4.1% of all deaths.
This is a 31% increase relative to 2021. MAID deaths have continued their rapid growth, and the growth shows no sign of slowing.
MAID deaths are now likely to be three times as common as all Canadian non-MAID suicides. (We will not know for sure until the 2022 suicide data are available.)
About two-thirds of MAID deaths were cancer patients.
For comparison, California also permits some forms of physician-assisted death, and it has a slightly larger population (there are 39.2 million Californians versus 38.2 million Canadians). In 2022, there were 853 physician-assisted deaths in California. That means this cause of death was 16 times higher in Canada.
It’s possible that, from your point of view, the number of physician-assisted deaths in California was too small; that is, some people who would have been better off ending their lives were unable to. To me, the data suggest that in Canada, there are few controls on this form of suicide. We should freeze further expansion in access to MAID and review what has happened.
Important note: The 2022 count of suicides in Canada—the turquoise point at the far right—has not yet been released. I imputed the point on the graph, assuming that the 2022 data will follow the trend from 2016 to 2021.