⭐ PART 9 — The MAiD Explosion

⭐ PART 9 — The MAiD Explosion — How Eligibility Turned Into a Nationwide Surge

How Eligibility Turned Into a Nationwide Surge

By Canadian Citizens Journal

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⭐ MAiD Was Introduced as a Rare, Last-Resort Option

When MAiD was first legalized in 2016, Canadians were told it would remain:
• rare
• tightly regulated
• restricted to extreme circumstances
• used only when suffering was truly unbearable
• a compassionate option, not a default
• never something vulnerable people would be pressured into

The promise was clear:
MAiD would never become normalized.

Eight years later, it has become one of the fastest-expanding medical practices in Canadian history.

What began as an exception has become an expectation.

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⭐ The Numbers Do Not Lie — MAiD Has Skyrocketed

Official federal reports show a surge so extreme it has no global comparison.

Within a few years:
• annual MAiD deaths increased by more than 1,000%
• MAiD became the leading cause of death in some regions
• Canada achieved one of the highest euthanasia rates in the world
• expansions continued despite warnings from disability advocates and ethics boards
• the government prepared for even broader eligibility, including mental illness

This is not a slow expansion.
It is an exponential one.

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⭐ How Canada Became the Outlier

Other countries with assisted dying programs maintain strict safeguards:
• Belgium
• the Netherlands
• Luxembourg
• Switzerland

But none of them expanded eligibility at the speed Canada did.

Canada moved from:

terminal illness → chronic illness → disability → chronic pain → “grievous and irremediable conditions” → mental illness → advance requests

…in less than a decade.

No other country has widened eligibility this rapidly.

No other government has proposed including:
• dementia patients who cannot consent
• advance directives for people not currently suffering
• chronic poverty or lack of support as “suffering”
• those whose primary issue is isolation or neglect

Canada is not following the world.
It is leading the world in expansion.

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⭐ Timeline of Expansion: From Rare to Routine

2016 — Terminal diagnosis only

Promised to be “strict and narrow.”

2019 — The push for expansion begins

Court rulings claim restrictions are too limiting.

2021 — C-7 removes the requirement for death to be foreseeable

This single change opens the floodgates.

2022–2023 — Mental illness slated to be included

Only delayed due to public backlash — not cancelled.

2024–2025 — Advance requests prepared

Meaning a future version of yourself can be euthanized without present-day consent.

Ongoing — Calls to include “structural suffering”

Which includes:
• poverty
• homelessness
• lack of medical care
• loneliness
• being unable to afford medication or housing

This is not a careful program.
It is a system expanding toward anyone who is struggling.

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⭐ The Most Alarming Trend: MAiD Moving Into Social Suffering

Ethicists once warned that MAiD must never be used to solve social problems.

But that is exactly what Canada has begun doing.

Many MAiD recipients in the last three years were approved because they:
• could not afford accessible housing
• could not get treatment for chronic pain
• could not secure disability benefits
• could not receive home care
• could not find safe shelter
• could not get medical specialists
• felt abandoned and isolated

This is not medical ethics.
This is social triage — using MAiD as a release valve for government failure.

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⭐ The Government Knew MAiD Would Reduce Costs

Internal reports, research papers, and economic analyses warned — and sometimes outright admitted — that MAiD would significantly reduce healthcare spending.

Some projections estimated cost savings in the billions within a few decades.

The expansions that shocked Canadians were not accidental.
They aligned perfectly with financial incentives.

When people who need expensive care, disability supports, surgeries, housing, or long-term treatment die earlier, systems save money.

Whether deliberate or simply tolerated, the outcome is the same.

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⭐ MAiD Has Become a “Solution” to Underfunded Systems

Across the country, MAiD has quietly become the alternative offered when care is:
• too delayed
• too expensive
• too understaffed
• too inconsistent
• too overwhelmed

People once seeking relief are now offered death.

Workers inside hospitals and long-term care facilities report the same disturbing trend:

MAiD is introduced earlier and discussed more casually than ever before.

Not because suffering is worse —
but because support is worse.

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⭐ The Rise of “Pathway Patients”

With the collapse of:
• long-term care
• disability supports
• home care
• chronic pain treatment
• mental health services

a new category of patient has emerged:

Pathway patients — people who enter a system of decline and become MAiD-eligible simply because support was never provided.

This includes:
• seniors in LTC who decline from poor nutrition
• residents palliated due to staff shortages
• disabled people exhausted from fighting for benefits
• chronic pain patients denied treatment
• youth with mental health conditions facing years-long waitlists
• people experiencing homelessness and poverty

When the system fails people long enough, they become “eligible.”

The suffering becomes the evidence.

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⭐ Why This Expansion Matters for Long-Term Care

Long-term care is now one of the largest pipelines into MAiD.

The combination of:
• faster decline (Part 8)
• poor nutrition (Part 5)
• understaffing (Parts 7–8)
• inspection fraud (Part 6)
• palliative hijack (Part 7)
• preventable suffering

…means more residents are considered to meet the MAiD criteria.

This creates a feedback loop:
1. System causes decline
2. Decline increases suffering
3. Suffering qualifies for MAiD
4. MAiD numbers rise
5. The system uses MAiD to justify fewer resources

This is not a safety net.
It is a pipeline.

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⭐ Canada Now Has Two Parallel Systems

One system for those who can pay:
• private care
• private specialists
• private clinics
• private therapists
• private home supports

And one system for those who cannot:
• long-term care collapse
• disability underfunding
• homelessness
• waitlists
• palliative pathways
• MAiD

One offers solutions.
The other offers an exit.

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⭐ The MAiD Explosion Is the Result of Policy — Not Choice

When support collapses, suffering rises.
When suffering rises, eligibility rises.
When eligibility rises, MAiD numbers explode.

This is not about “choice.”
This is about conditions — conditions shaped by government policy, corporate cost-cutting, and systemic neglect.

MAiD is expanding not because Canadians want death —
but because Canada stopped offering life.