1.4x
Male Suicide Rate vs Civilian
1.9x
Female Suicide Rate vs Civilian
42
Years of Elevated Risk
24%
Mental Health Claims Denied

The Data

VAC Mortality Study — 42 Years of Evidence

Persistent Elevated Risk — Not Declining

The VAC mortality study tracks veteran deaths from 1976 to 2018 — 42 years of data. The elevated suicide risk does not decline significantly with time after release from service. Veterans remain at higher risk for decades after serving. This is not a transition issue — it is a lifelong consequence of military service that the system has documented but not addressed.

24% of Mental Health Claims Denied

Of approximately 15,000 veterans who applied for mental health disability benefits, 24% — nearly one in four — were denied. Veterans whose service-related mental health conditions are denied coverage lose access to the treatment programs tied to approved disability claims. Denied veterans are left to navigate provincial healthcare systems that have 47,500+ days of ER closures and 6.5M Canadians without a family doctor.

The MAID Intersection

Offered Death Instead of Care

Christine Gauthier — Paralympian, Veteran, Offered MAID

In December 2022, former Paralympian and Canadian Armed Forces veteran Christine Gauthier testified before Parliament that a Veterans Affairs employee offered her MAID after she spent years requesting a wheelchair ramp for her home. The government's response to a veteran who served Canada as a Paralympian: we can help you die.

Source: CTV News, December 2022; House of Commons testimony

The Economics of Veteran Death

MAID procedure: ~$2,500. Wheelchair ramp: $3,000-$8,000. Annual disability benefits: $15,000-$40,000. It is cheaper to kill a veteran than to provide a wheelchair ramp for two years. When the PBO calculates $149M/year in MAID savings, veterans are part of that calculation.

The Veteran-to-MAID Pipeline

Inadequate transition → denied disability claims → untreated conditions → crisis → call to VAC → offered MAID. The pipeline is documented at every stage by the government's own data. The MAID programme saves the government $20,685 per death compared to palliative care. Veterans who die by MAID stop generating disability benefit costs. The financial incentive structure is aligned against veteran survival.

Sources: Veterans Affairs Canada — Mortality Study (1976-2018); VAC — Disability Benefits Processing Statistics; CTV News — Christine Gauthier testimony (December 2022); House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs (ACVA) transcripts; Health Canada — MAID Annual Reports; Parliamentary Budget Officer — MAID Cost Estimate (2020). All data from official government records and published veteran mortality studies.