SAINT-CHARLES-BORROMÉE, Quebec (LifeSiteNews) — Quebec’s latest palliative care home has highlighted the province’s euthanasia crisis and aging population.
August 28 marked the opening of a new palliative care home in Saint-Charles-Borromée, Quebec, that prides itself on offering assisted suicide or so-called “medical assistance in dying” (“MAID”) to its most vulnerable patients.
“The Pavilion will offer 10 new palliative care beds, in addition to medical assistance in dying (MAID) program, which will complement the existing services in the region,” a press release, translated from French, reads.
The home is one of the first in Quebec to blend palliative care and assisted suicide. The project is funded by the public and private healthcare networks, including the government of Quebec.
“The Pavilion will welcome people at the end of life, whose prognosis is approximately three months, when home care is no longer possible,” the press release reads.
“With the completion of this project, the region is taking a concrete step toward improving access to palliative care in the province, while the use of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Quebec continues to grow,” it continued.
Quebec, a notoriously liberal province, has the highest rate of assisted suicide in Canada. The province saw a 17-percent increase in euthanasia deaths in 2023 compared to 2022, with the program claiming the lives of 5,686 people. The high figure represents a staggering 7.3 percent of all deaths in the province, putting Quebec at the top of the list worldwide.
Furthermore, according to the press release, the statistic is even higher in the Lanaudière region of Quebec where the new facility has been built. Here, 12.4 percent of the region’s deaths are a result of assisted suicide.
Quebec is at the forefront of the push to expand the practice. In 2024, the province announced that it plans to go ahead with taking euthanasia requests in advance, despite the practice being illegal at the federal level.
Assisted suicide is not just on the rise in Quebec, but throughout Canada as well. Since legalizing the deadly practice at the federal level in 2016, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has continued to expanded who can qualify for death. In 2021, the Trudeau government passed a bill that permitted the killing of those who are not terminally ill but who suffer solely from chronic disease.
The government has also attempted to expand the practice to those suffering solely from mental illness but has delayed until 2027 after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces.
Overall, the number of Canadians killed by lethal injection 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.
