Canada requires doctors not to list euthanasia as the cause of death.
Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
On April 23, I republished an article by Wesley Smith concerning a US Senate committee hearing whereby Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) asked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about assisted suicide. Kennedy said assisted suicide is abhorrent. (starting at minute 3:30).
Smith’s article corrected Kennedy who mistakenly stated that euthanasia was the No. 1 cause of death in Canada. Smith wrote that:
It is the fifth, with some 16,000 people being killed by doctors — and rising — each year.
Marissa Birnie was published by The Canadian Press on April 28, 2026 stating that Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s statement was false, but the article inadvertently points out how Canada’s euthanasia (MAiD) law lacks effective oversight by requiring that euthanasia not be listed as a cause of death. Birnie reports:
MAID does not appear on the list because it is not listed as a cause of death.
Statistics Canada codes and classifies causes of death in line with a system created by the World Health Organization, which records deaths according to their underlying cause.
The World Health Organization death reporting system is based on the fact that very few countries have legalized euthanasia.
Birnie points out that cancer is the most common reason for someone to be killed by euthanasia in Canada.
When patients die through MAID, the cause of death is coded to match the health condition that led them to seek MAID, Statistics Canada notes. Cancer was the most frequently reported underlying medical condition among Canadians who received MAID, accounting for 63.6 per cent of cases among patients whose death was reasonably foreseeable.
Birnie writes that Health Canada does not consider euthanasia to be a cause of death.
“The number of MAID provisions should not be compared to cause of death statistics in Canada in order to determine the prevalence (the proportion of all decedents) nor to rank MAID as a cause of death,”
But euthanasia (MAiD) is the cause of death. A person may have asked to be poisoned to death based on a medical condition but they are not required to attempt effective treatments before being killed by euthanasia in Canada.
Canada also approves (Track 2) euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill but rather have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” which means they have a disability.
For Track 2 euthanasia deaths, the cause of death is always MAiD or death by lethal poison.
In the Netherlands euthanasia is considered a “last resort”, even though doctors will ignore that requirement. In Canada terminal condition is not dependent on whether or not the condition can be effectively treated because there is no requirement to even attempt effective treatments.
Another factor is that (MAiD) euthanasia is not listed on the death certificate. Research in the Netherlands indicates that approximately 20% of the euthanasia deaths are not reported. When a person is killed by euthanasia, the doctor will sometimes fail to send in the required report to the Netherlands oversight commission. Some doctors do not report their euthanasia deaths as they consider it to be a private act.
The same could be happening in Canada except that the Canadian government has not commissioned a neutral research study to determine how Canadians are dying.
Therefore, if a Canadian doctor does not submit the required report to the Provincial oversight body and since the death certificate does not indicate that MAiD was the cause of death, therefore it is nearly impossible to know how many euthanasia deaths go unreported in Canada.
The death certificate needs to be accurate to assure at least a reasonable level of oversight exists when a person is poisoned to death by euthanasia.
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