Most assisted deaths in Canada come after cancer diagnosis, annual report finds

OTTAWA — A majority of the people who died with medical assistance in Canada in 2024 had a cancer diagnosis, new data shows.

Health Canada’s annual report on medical assistance in dying shows that more Canadians are choosing assisted dying each year, but the rate of growth has slowed.

Overall, about five per cent of the people who died in Canada in 2024 had a medically assisted death.

The median age of those who chose MAID was 78.

Nearly all of the 16,499 people who had an assisted death last year had a condition that made their deaths “reasonably foreseeable.”

Just 4.4 per cent were “track 2” MAID patients, whose deaths were not deemed to be foreseeable but who said they were suffering intolerably.