#Canada – Euthanasia made up more than 1 in 10 deaths in several regions of Canada last year, even as the national growth rate slowed, according to government data released in late 2025 and early 2026. The pattern emerged in a country where a slim majority of residents still identify as Christian in the last full census, though that share had fallen for decades and later surveys suggested it had slipped further.
Health Canada’s sixth annual report showed that 16,499 people received assisted suicide in 2024, representing 5.1 percent of all deaths in the country. That marked a 6.9 percent increase from the 15,343 cases recorded in 2023. Officials noted that the pace of growth had fallen sharply from the 30-percent-plus annual jumps seen between 2019 and 2022. They said the figures suggested the program was beginning to stabilize, though they cautioned that several more years of data would be needed to confirm a long-term trend.
Quebec recorded the highest provincial rate. In the 2024–2025 reporting period, 6,268 people died by assisted suicide, accounting for 7.9 percent of all deaths in the province — the highest share of any jurisdiction in the world at the time. Regional differences inside Quebec were stark. In Lanaudière, north of Montreal, assisted deaths reached 13.4 percent of all deaths. Bas-Saint-Laurent recorded 10.6 percent and Capitale-Nationale 10.4 percent. Montreal itself sat far lower, at 4.7 percent.
Those high-euthanasia regions were also among the areas where French-speaking Quebecers had most thoroughly left regular church life. The 2021 census still showed 64.8 percent of Quebec residents identifying as Christian, including 53.8 percent Catholic — higher than the national figure of 53.3 percent Christian. Weekly church attendance in the province, however, was among the lowest in the country. Commentators and clinicians in Quebec often described the rise of assisted suicide as part of a longer secular turn after the Quiet Revolution, when many residents kept a cultural Catholic identity while rejecting traditional teaching against ending life. One Lanaudière physician who performed hundreds of assisted deaths said older patients told him they had been raised to believe they had to suffer to reach heaven, “but now they say that makes no sense at all.”
Parts of British Columbia also crossed the 10-percent threshold in quarterly figures. Data compiled for the second quarter of 2025 showed Island Health, which covers Vancouver Island, at 12 percent of deaths. British Columbia had the highest share of residents reporting no religion in 2021, at 52.1 percent.
Nationally, Christian identification had dropped from 77 percent in 2001 to 53.3 percent in 2021, while the share reporting no religion rose to 34.6 percent. Independent surveys in 2023 and 2025 put Christian affiliation lower still, in the low-to-mid 40s. Polling on euthanasia itself showed a clear gap by belief: people with no religion were more likely to support the practice than Protestants, while many Catholics backed access even though Catholic teachings oppose the practice. Canadians as a whole were split on whether doctors should be allowed to refuse euthanasia on religious grounds.
The vast majority of cases remained Track 1, meaning the person’s natural death was reasonably foreseeable. In 2024 those cases made up 95.6 percent of provisions nationally. Cancer was the most commonly cited underlying condition. The median age of recipients was 77.9 years. Track 2 cases — those whose deaths were not reasonably foreseeable — accounted for 4.4 percent. Almost all provisions were clinician-administered; self-administration remained rare.
Since legalization in 2016, Canada had recorded more than 76,000 assisted suicide deaths by the end of 2024. Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia together accounted for nearly 85 percent of the 2024 total. Three provinces — New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatchewan — actually saw declines that year.
The rapid expansion had already made euthanasia one of the leading manners of death in Canada, though official vital-statistics agencies did not classify it as a cause of death under World Health Organization rules. Critics pointed to the regional spikes and the program’s speed of growth as evidence that safeguards had proven insufficient. Supporters argued the numbers reflected pent-up demand, an aging population, and growing public acceptance of the option at the end of life in a society that was less churchgoing than a generation earlier.
In the past month, the family of a Christian grandmother went public and accused health care providers with coercing their grandmother into euthanasia. Likewise, members of the public have come forward with their own experiences in the Canadian health care system as they describe being coerced and pressured to accept euthanasia over pragmatic and reasonable treatment or therapy options. Despite these trends, euthanasia has demonstrated an increase in its usage and its availability in Western countries continues to rise, although the United Kingdom most recently blocked its legalization while France approved it in the past year.
Cover Image: Health Canada government offices in Quebec.
