If you think about how assisted suicide is applied in Canada (or at least in Quebec) it's really not that surprising.

Despite the somewhat negative coverage medical assitance in dying is really given to people with days/weeks to live as a way to skip the suffering of when your illness is not quite advanced enough to kill you, but is definitely advanced enough for the person to live in considerable pain.

It's very common among terminal cancer patients.

If, say, 50% of people who die do so from extreme old age or wasting away from a disease they'll never recover from, what's surprising about a culture where 10% of that population decides to end their life a few months early on their own terms?

Stepping back, why is something outside your own cultural norms unbelievable in a general sense instead of it feeling natural to you for there to be different cultures? You don't have to agree with another culture, but why is it uncomfortable for it to exist?

You can read all the Canadian government’s reports. I believe the latest published was 2022 (4.1% of deaths) and it has a 20-30% annual growth rate (also from the report.) So 5% for 2023 seems easily achieved.

There are a lot of other statistics in the reports. Recommended skimming.

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications...

Funny - in my mind, the ideal would be 100%. No accidents or suicides, just people choosing to end things peacefully once they’ve reached the limits of medicine.

Wikipedia only has it up to 2022 at 4.1% of all deaths, but it was up 31% YOY then [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada

Just did some searching.

According to stats Canada, in 2022 there were 334,081 total deaths (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=131003...). There were 13,241 MAID deaths reported in Canada in 2022, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada). So that's 3.96 % in 2022. So I guess the claim of 5 % is actually possible.

A fair number of those are probably terminally ill patients who don't want to wait to die in growing pain/humiliation.

Via Wikipedia for 2022:

  13241 / 334623 = 0.040

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada#Statistic...

Not surprising. There are internet forums dedicated to help young people commit suicide. Yes, these forums offer detailed guides on how to best kill yourself, a marketplace to exchange the necessary materials, and a section where undecided members receive social approval to commit suicide. I assume that's what they include as assisted suicide.