Following the death of a beloved grandmother who was killed without her consent through Canada’s government-run assisted suicide program, public outcry is building against the 10-year-old scheme that has killed over 100,000 Canadians.
In July, the family of 83-year-old Brigitte Stegemann, an assisted living resident in Belleville, Ontario, chronicled their anguish after the beloved grandmother was put to death by a doctor under highly controversial circumstances. Stegemann suffered from cognitive impairment, was hard of hearing, and was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 stomach cancer, although she had been responding well to treatment.
Shortly thereafter, a dispute arose over whether Stegemann had verbally consented to being killed via Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program, in which doctors administer fatal drugs to those who have been diagnosed with terminal illnesses and consent to ending their lives.
Even though Stegemann’s family argued that her Christian faith would have stopped her from knowingly agreeing to assisted suicide, the doctor went ahead with the killing in the family’s presence over their objections and without Stegemann verbally consenting to the lethal drugs just prior to them being administered, which is what MAiD regulations technically require.
The incident has become the latest flashpoint in the debate over what observers say are severe ethical shortcomings in the regulations that govern MAiD. The program became legal in 2016, and by the next year, MAiD had claimed almost 4,000 lives. Every year since then has seen precipitous surges in deaths, with the rate swelling by 30% annually from 2019 to 2022. By 2024, over 16,000 lives were taken that year alone. In April, the program officially passed over 100,000 deaths.
Notably, this number dwarfs the amount of assisted suicides that have been carried out in the U.S. (approximately 14,500), where the practice is legal in 14 states plus the District of Columbia, representing around 110 million people. Despite Canada’s vastly smaller population of 42 million, it has now carried out almost seven times the amount of assisted suicides than the U.S. has.
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Experts like Alex Schadenberg, who serves as executive director at the Canada-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, say that the reason the number of deaths has continued to escalate is because the criteria for being approved for an assisted death has continually expanded, as has the endorsement of the medical establishment.
“The program’s gone crazy in Canada because the original law required that the person would have a terminal condition, and also that there had to be a waiting period, etc. — that was removed in 2021,” he explained during “Washington Watch” Monday. “… Now you don’t have to be terminally ill.
There’s often no waiting period. … The other thing is they’re selling it. … Every major hospital in Canada now has a MAiD team where they sell it. They’re the ones who sign you up. They’re also the ones who sell it. So they make sure people know that, ‘Oh, by the way, you have this medical condition, you probably qualify for MAiD.’ … And you see the numbers of deaths just going through the roof.”
