From Donut Shop to Death: Fast-Tracking Euthanasia in Canada

State-assisted suicide in Canada is becoming more casual than its sternest critics a decade ago could have ever feared. The machinery of death is clanking in Ontario, the nation’s most populated province, and if things appear to get out of hand, only a bureaucratic slap on the wrist ensues.

They’re calling it death by donut shop. “A London, Ont., doctor who assessed a patient with inflammatory bowel disease and a history of mental health issues for MAID outside a Tim Hortons location and later personally drove the man to the place his life was ended has agreed to a minimum six months’ supervision,” Canada’s National Post reported May 25. Tim Hortons is a chain donut franchise popular throughout the Great White North.

This jarringly breezy determination to end a human life by the physician involved is not his only transgression against euthanasia protocol. It gets more horrifying.

“In another case, Dr. James MacLean failed to administer one of three drugs used in assisted deaths – one that paralyzes the body’s muscles, including the muscles involved in breathing. The patient resumed spontaneously breathing again after initially being pronounced dead, and after MacLean had already left the home,” the news site related.

How did it ever get this bad? Canada’s blasé approach to state-abetted suicide, first introduced in 2016, has gotten so out of hand that European nations – the cutting-edge forerunners in the modern euthanasia movement in the West – regularly express their dismay.

Troubling Statistics in Canada

“In Ontario alone, 219 people were killed by the end of the next day following their request for ‘medical assistance in dying’ (MAID) in 2023, according to a 2024 report by an advisory committee,” the Free Press reported in March. “About 30 percent of those deaths occurred on the same day that the person sought the government’s permission to die. The committee hasn’t published comparable numbers since then.”

The numbers are staggering. Last November, the Canadian government released its “Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada.” One thing that immediately jumps out is that the program doesn’t turn down many people.

“In 2024, Health Canada received 22,535 reports of MAID requests. As outlined in Table 2.1a, of these requests, a total of 16,499 people received MAID. The remaining requests did not result in a MAID provision (4,017 died of another cause, 1,327 individuals were assessed as being ineligible and 692 individuals withdrew their request),” the report states.

Dying via government assistance is slowly becoming a norm in Canada. “In 2024, 5.1% of people in Canada who died received MAID, a small (0.4%) increase from 2023,” the report continued.

And just what are we to make of this statistic?

“A total of 15,927 of the 16,499 people who received MAID in 2024 … (95.6%) identified as Caucasian (White). For context on how this compares to the overall population of Canada, approximately 70% of people in Canada identified as Caucasian in the most recent Census. The second most commonly reported racial, ethnic or cultural identity among MAID recipients was East Asian (1.6%),” a racial breakdown of MAID deaths read.

White Canadians are responsible for almost all MAID deaths. This in a nation that frequently boasts of its multicultural nature. Is it a matter of well-off elderly white Canadians choosing to control their exit from life, or is it something more ominous? In a country where racial minorities benefit from a host of officially sanctioned preferences, it seems odd that assisted death is the one government program in Canada that monolithically favors white people.

‘My Assessors Thought Deeply About It’

The language surrounding this culture of state death is deliberately formal in a way that makes euthanasia appear to be just another social service. Track 2 is the label assigned to MAID applicants whose “natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.” Before 2021, these assisted suicides were not legal in Canada. Once they were approved, Canadians were assured that the vetting process would be rigorous. You couldn’t just stop off at a donut shop, as if anyone was even thinking of such a scenario a mere five years ago.

Yet there are telltale signs that getting through the MAID apparatus is about as difficult for Canadians as snagging a prescription for a pharmaceutical drug in the United States.

Dying With Dignity is the leading pro-euthanasia organization in Canada. Its website features numerous “personal stories” of those who have undergone MAID. John Maloney, 54, an Edmonton native, detailed his account of navigating the Track 2 path. Maloney said he had lost “functional vision” in his eyes as a result of glaucoma related to being “born with congenital cataracts.”

“The idea that this is something doctors approve easily just isn’t true,” he is quoted as saying. “My assessors thought deeply about it. One told me he never makes his decision the same day as the assessment. He reflects on everything first. It’s a legal process with strict safeguards … People can’t just access it willy-nilly.”

Is it really that reassuring that a credentialed professional authorized by the state to approve the death of a citizen who would otherwise go on living takes more than one day to make his decision? “John Maloney was approved for MAID and had his provision on Friday, March 27, 2026,” Dying With Dignity coldly writes in bold text above his personal story. Provision? What a strangely antiseptic word to use when describing the extinguishing of a human life.

There’s one more ugly aspect to this whole slippery slope on steroids.

As Liberty Nation News has documented, Trillium Gift of Life Network is the official organ-donation intermediary of Ontario’s government. “Trillium staffers are a mandatory part of the euthanasia process in Ontario. They don’t merely engage in discussions on organ donation with suicide candidates; they initiate them,” LNN reported in 2023.

“[A]s part of high-quality end-of-life care, we make sure that all patients and families are provided with the information they need and the opportunity to make a decision on whether they wish to make a donation,” Trillium CEO Ronnie Gavsie told The Ottawa Citizen in 2020.

From donut shop coffee klatch to appointment with death, with required inquiry about those organs of yours along the way. This is how alarmingly cheap human life has become in the progressive country directly bordering the United States.