Current News- 2025

On this page, the most recent article is featured up top and older articles appear in the order in which they were published.

Visit the Clippings Archive to review articles from past years.

November , 2025 Annual Report for 2024 released
With little fanfare or media coverage, the long-awaited year old report was released in November. A total of 16,499 people died by MAiD in 2024. 732 of those people were not dying and would not have died without the active life-ending action of a medical practitioner. There have been 76,475 MAID provisions in Canada since the legalization of MAID in 2016. The report seeks to allay fears of exponential growth by reporting that the uptake rate has decreased and may be stabilizing. People’s stories are lost in every type of statistical reporting, we know. The effect of overall “normalization” of both Track 1 and Track 2 MAID is undeniable. Ho hum. 732 people who weren’t dying are dead by doctor, almost 60% of them for unspecified “other” reasons. These reasons break down as shown in the graph below. Loneliness and perceived burden on others continues with alarming frequency, particularly in Track 2 recipients. Likewise existential distress, fear, and anxiety. I will continue to ask, were these people reassured, comforted by a spiritual advisor, provided with warm, friendly volunteer visitors? Or were they offered MAID as a solution to their distress?
Figure 3.4a: Reported nature of suffering, by track

November 14, 2025 (Canadian Press). Fact File: No ‘plan’ to ‘euthanize’ 15 million Canadians with MAID
This article reports on a controversy stirred up in social media. Is it anything to get upset about. Well, yes and no. Podcasters want to cause a stir and stimulate clicks. That’s the new world we’re living in. The academic paper the podcasters were commenting on was a numerical projection — a “scenario analysis”, not a government “plan“. The “scenario” in question was based on a series of “what if’s” and “worst cases” i.e. a blend of factual figures and speculative projections, seemingly designed to horrify and attract a lot of attention — more of a podcaster mentality than an academically disciplined approach, but rigorous enough to be published in a respectable academic journal.
Is there cause for concern as MAID continues to be normalized in Canada? Yes. Is there potential for abuse and pressure to accept death as an alternative to supports for life? Yes. Are people already dying who should be supported to live? Yes. Is there pressure to expand the system and further relax eligibility? Yes. Could the “scenario” play its ghastly self out over the next 20 years, with millions of excess deaths and billions of dollars in health-care savings? Yes, yes and yes.
Is there a “government plan” to make this happen. NO. But it is horrifying to see how current trends could unfold, hypothetically.

October 1, 2025 (National Post) Dementia patient gets MAID …
“Mrs. 6F, a frail women in her late 80s with dementia, received MAID after a family member brought forward a request for an assisted death, a new report reveals.” She was “deemed” to have consented based on her ability to echo the question posed by the MAID provider. While she had inquired about MAID before, what she actually chose when her mind was still sound was NOT to have MAID, but to move into long-term care instead. However, once she was in care, her family member requested it again on her behalf, possibly against her wishes, and without informed consent. The medical person agreed with the family member and went ahead with the euthanasia. They tried to get Mrs. 6F’s signature on the consent form, but … her signature was illegible. “A third-party signer, a member of the MAID provider’s clinical staff, was engaged.” I wonder just what this woman would have had to do to say “No”.

See also Sept. 29, 2025 (Canadian Affairs) Meagan Gilmore reports on the same recent Coroner’s Report. When should patients with dementia be approved for MAID? A new report highlights experts’ concerns over the factors leading patients with dementia to request and receive MAID

See also Sept. 17, 2025 (Canadian Affairs) Meagan Gilmore reports on why the Ontario Coroner’s reports on MAID deaths are not made public.

September 18, 2025 (CBC News) In a losing battle for care, she applied for MAID. Now this Halifax woman is ready to live.
It is with great pleasure that I remove this woman from my list of Lives in the Balance, as she has withdrawn her MAID application, deciding instead that, having received the medical care she needed, she is able and willing to mother her children and live her life. Good for her!!

July 19, 2025 (Toronto Star) MAiD: One woman’s legal challenge to get the care she hopes for
Written by celebrated journalist, Sandra Martin, (author of a book advocating for broadly available MAiD), this story is “factual”, except for one thing: the psychiatric community is in agreement that incurable/untreatable mental illness cannot be declared in any particular case, and that colluding with a patient’s belief that they are hopeless is neither tenable nor ethical. The subject of this article is a middle-aged woman whose life is definitely at risk, given her suicidal ideation and her belief that her condition is terminal. The journalist’s bias is evident. Should I add her to my “Lives in the Balance” page? I don’t know. She has gone to court with the well-monied support of Dying with Dignity. But I think what she is fighting for is not “care” but collusion in hopelessness.

June 24, 2025 (CBC – Gloria Macarenko) Why B.C. stopped funding a $1M drug for a girl with a terminal condition
Her name is Charleigh. She is 9 years old. She is the only person in B.C. with Batten disease, or neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis type 2 (CLN2), which is a rare terminal disease that among other things can cause multiple seizures per day. There is only one treatment available, and Charleigh has been benefitting from it — it controls the seizures. It has not prevented the disease from progressing, nor will it, but it allows her to go to school, participate in life and continue to live and be part of her family. But the treatment is expensive. And BC has decided not to pay. To learn more, listen to the story here, read a Substack article here, and sign a petition here.
Tommy Douglas established the principle that no Canadian should have to die because they can’t afford a treatment. It’s the basis of our public healthcare system, of which we are rightly proud. Don’t let them break that system by starting with a disabled child!

JUNE 17, 2025 – (FAIR – Justine Barron) How NYT Magazine Threw Away Journalistic Ethics on Suicide
Barron looks carefully at the June 1 New York Times Magazine article (see link below) from the point of view of media fairness and transparency. She finds that the article’s author, Katie Engelhart, contravened WHO journalistic ethics regarding the coverage of suicide, such as her attendance at the death of her subject, and her detailed description of the method of ending the subject’s life. The New York Times Magazine compounded and increased the journalistic breach of ethics by spotlighting the article and making it a magazine-cover sensation.

June 14, 2025 – Agence France Presse – U.K. lawmakers vote to ban assisted dying ads
“The online harm of an ad … about assisted dying shared on TikTok could be a reality’ without very tight restrictions, said U.K. MP
Opening the debate, the legislation’s sponsor MP Kim Leadbeater proposed an amendment that would require the government to introduce regulations banning advertisements promoting assisted dying services.
Protestors both for and against the bill gathered outside parliament, as lawmakers debated the contentious proposals for legalized euthanasia currently making their way through parliament.”
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is at the report stage of the lengthy parliamentary process where lawmakers can propose amendments.

June 8, 2025 – Canadian Affairs (David Shannon) Op-Ed: UN committee rightly calls out Canada’s systemic devaluation of disability. While MAID is often promoted as a liberating choice, for many Canadians with disabilities, it is really a coerced outcome
“The [UN] committee’s unequivocal recommendation is that Track 2 MAID be repealed. In making this recommendation, it flagged various concerns with the actions of the federal government. These ranged from procedural flaws (such as the government’s failure to consult marginalized groups), insufficient scrutiny of MAID, and a lack of assessment into systemic inequities faced by persons with disabilities. 
“As the committee noted, th[e decision not to appeal the Quebec court’s Truchon decision] fundamentally changed the whole premise of MAID. It assumes “‘suffering’ is intrinsic to disability rather than the fact that inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering’ for persons with disabilities.”
“As the UN committee has noted, Canada’s expansion of MAID is rooted in systemic devaluation of disability and a flawed ideology of absolute autonomy. What is presented as a voluntary option emerges instead from an environment of discrimination and deprivation imposed on a group for whom dignity, support and hope are too often withheld.”

June 8, 2025 – National Post (Barbara Kay) A disabled man’s fight for life in an age of MAiD
Roger Foley, a disabled man who appears elsewhere on this website, has been in hospital in London, ON since 2016. The hospital wants him to go to long-term care, but Roger wants to go home, where he can hire his own people and regain some control over his life. There is a program in Ontario that could fund him to achieve this goal, but his care would exceed their limit.
The author states, “If euthanasia is considered a right in Canada, self-care for disabled people who do not want MAID should also be a right.” I agree with the author on this issue.

Non-subscriber alternate Source: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medical/barbara-kay-a-disabled-man-s-fight-for-life-in-an-age-of-maid/ar-AA1GiIbr?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=d2769d69bd2744179af3ca3625ecb8c5&ei=155

June 1, 2025 – The New York Times Magazine (Katie Engelhart) Do Patients Without a Terminal Illness Have the Right to Die?
Katie Engelhart has been reporting about medicine and ethics for nearly a decade. For this article, she interviewed dozens of clinicians, ethicists, lawyers, advocates and patients.
The article conducts a broad review of MAID in Canada, mentions several individuals, living and dead, who have experienced interaction with Canada’s MAID system, either as patients or as physicians, but then focuses intensely on one particular patient by the name of Paula Ritchie, whose story is briefly summarized on our Remembering Lives Lived page here. Please see the article above (June 17) for a published critique of Engelhart’s article and the New York Times Magazine’s contravention of WHO standards on journalistic ethics of covering suicide in the media.

May 15, 2025 – The Montreal Gazette (Leora Schertzer) Widow of quadriplegic man who chose MAID blames hospital for his death

More horrific details on the case of Normand Meunier, below, now before a coroner in Quebec. The coroner is expected to make a series of recommendations in a report in June, 2025.

May 13, 2025 – The Montreal Gazette (Leora Schertzer). Bedsores of man who eventually chose MAID weren’t monitored, St. Jérôme nurses testify
This is an update on a case reported in 2024 and memorialized on our Remembering Lives Lived page. It is currently being reviewed by the Quebec coroner. The patient, Normand Meunier, was a disabled man who was brought in to the hospital emergency room with respiratory problems, and while waiting on an unadapted hard bed in the hallway for more than 90 hours, developed deep and painful bedsores. Two months later, the sores were so extensive that he “chose” MAID as an escape from the pain. Evidence is now being heard about failures in providing a proper bed surface for a person with very limited mobility; failures in nursing care; failures in the tracking and monitoring of that care; nursing shortages and other excuses for letting this patient down.

May 11, 2025 – The New York Times (Dr. L. S. Dugdale) There Are Ways to Die With Dignity, but Not Like This
For those who don’t subscribe to the NYT, I will attempt to summarize this article without robbing it of its nuances. Dr. Dugdale begins by critiquing the practice of extending life artificially long past its natural end, and expresses her doubts about the wisdom of that practice. But she also opposes medically assisted suicide, which she describes as being “not about dying well. It is about relieving society — government, medical systems, even families — of the responsibility to care for those who need the most help: the mentally ill, the poor, the physically disabled.” She advocates instead for “a revival of the medieval practice of ars moriendi, or the art of dying — a more accepting, less fearful, more community-based approach to the end of life.”
Dr. Dugdale is presenting her thoughts in protest against New York State’s proposed assisted suicide bill, making its way through the legislative process now. She objects to assisted suicide being characterized as a “medical practice” which she believes lends it improper legitimacy. She questions the adequacy of attention to depressive thought patterns which are detectable and treatable. She questions the safety the law claims to provide for people with disabilities who, she notes, “are accustomed to having to prove that their lives have value“. Because, although pwd’s are not eligible for assisted death in the absence of a terminal condition in the proposed law, “a prognosis of six months can become a reality [by choice or despair] — especially if a patient stops treatment.” She also questions the reliance on the concept of autonomy, when “lack of autonomy is not unique to end-of-life situations; it is often an everyday reality for the disabled and the poor. We don’t want to offer people assisted suicide for just any loss of autonomy.” Here she refers to a Canadian case, and warns American readers that assisted death is not the compassionate response it claims to be. “Instead of investing in the infrastructure of support for the lonely, the depressed, the disabled and the poor, we offer them a prescription for death. We call it autonomy, but it’s abandonment.“
She concludes: “The art of dying well cannot be severed from the art of living well, and that includes caring for one another, especially when it is hard, inconvenient or costly. It is not enough to offer the dying control. We must offer them dignity — not by affirming their despair but by affirming their worth. Even when they are suffering. Even when they are vulnerable. Even when they are, in worldly terms, a burden.“

(Dr. Dugdale has written a book entitled “The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom” which I have not yet read, but intend to).

May 8, 2025 – The Conversation. (Trudo Lemmens) Ontario Chief Coroner reports raise concerns that MAID policy and practice focus on access rather than protection
If they’d pay anywhere near as much attention to access to life’s necessities — adequate income, housing, food, supports, education, transportation, health care, etc. — people with disabilities could live with dignity and would be less likely to choose an easily available option to die!
The Ontario Coroner’s MAID Death Review Committee report spells out details of some very troubling cases, some of which strain the boundaries of legality. I have added these cases to my Remembering Lives Lived page.

May 3, 2025 – UnTold (Alexander Raikin). A father battles Canada’s suicide machine. His autistic daughter has been cleared for MAiD
This is an update on one of our “Lives in the Balance” cases of concern reported last year. It seems the legal battle is over based on little more than deference to medical opinion, even though that opinion was contradictory and failed to conform to the supposed “safeguards” around Track 2 MAID. “Any criminal prosecution, the judge ruled, could only happen after Marge is dead: “Parliament has put its trust in doctors and nurse practitioners, and it is not for this Court to second guess that choice.”” The daughter is still alive, but the father “waits, angry and terrified, to receive the scheduled appointment of his daughter’s death. It could happen anytime.”
So much for the British parliament’s hope and belief that judicial review might keep its process honest and contained.

April 24, 2025 – Canadian Affairs (Meagan Gillmore) Parties offer few details on plans for MAID, despite UN criticisms
“The platforms of the four English-language parties are silent on MAID, despite recent UN concerns about Canada’s MAID practices“.
Only the Green Party responded to the UN report calling MAID for disabled people who are not dying into question.
Liberals, Conservatives and NDP ignored the UN report and failed to say how their governments would respond to the UN’s concerns. Gillmore reviews various statements and positions taken in the past by each of the parties.

April 18, 2025 – The Hill Times (James Downar and Jocelyn Downie) If you think that assisted dying in Canada is a mess, think again
This publication operates behind an expensive paywall. Both of the authors are well-known advocates for assisted suicide. Their article was published just after the UN Report (see March 21 below) directing Canada to repeal Track 2 MAID if it wanted to be in compliance with the UNCRPD treaty which it signed and ratified. This article dismisses that report and recommendation, asserting that the system is doing just exactly what it was designed to do. Disabled people and their opinions on the matter are of no consequence to these folks.

April 7, 2025 – Macdonald-Laurier Institute – Rushing to death in Canada’s MAiD regime: Ramona Coelho for Inside Policy
As a member of Ontario’s MAiD Death Review Committee (MDRC), Dr. Coelho reports on the findings of two Ontario Coroner’s reports, and some patterns that remain obscure to the public. She concludes: The fundamental expectation of health care should be to rush to care for the patient, providing support through a system that embraces them—not rush them toward death without efforts to mitigate suffering or ensure free and informed consent. If we truly value dignity, we must invest in comprehensive care to prevent patients from being administered speedy death in their most vulnerable moment, turning their worst day into potentially their last..

April 1, 2025 – Globe and Mail (Mike Hager) – United Nations report recommends Canada repeal MAID for people without terminal illnesses.
Behind a paywall, the Globe journalist reviews the Concluding Observations of the Committee reviewing Canada’s compliance with the treaty it signed and ratified concerning people with disabilities UN-CRPD. He notes that the report also recommends Canada create a federal MAID watchdog to investigate complaints, and that the country invest heavily in addressing the systemic failures that lead disabled people to apply for assisted death in the first place. The systemic failures, he notes, are not only health related, but also housing, and the prevention of homelessness; gender-based violence; failures to provide adequate welfare support ;and inadequacy of at-home mental-health care. Track 2 MAID for persons with disabilities is “based on negative and ableist perceptions of the quality and value of their lives, including that “‘suffering’ is intrinsic to disability rather than the fact that inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering’ for persons with disabilities.”

March 31, 2025 – Compact Magazine – How assisted suicide will undo the NHS (Dan Hitchens)

In the UK, “a single sentence, tabled by the bill’s chief architect Kim Leadbeater, quietly altered the definition of the National Health Service. In its founding charter, the NHS must “secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of England…and the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness.” Leadbeater’s tiny little sentence “allows the Health Secretary to declare that “commissioned VAD [voluntary assisted dying] services” are in fact part of the NHS’s legislative charter.”  This change effectively turns the NHS into the National Health and Assisted Suicide Service, claims one MP.
Hitchens examines the “tweaking” of language — something I’ve called gaslighting elsewhere in these pages — as follows: Taking your own life isn’t suicide, the provision of lethal drugs is suicide prevention, begging a loved one to stay alive is coercion, and the rejection of a safeguard “creates safeguards.” It is sometimes worth asking, in the words of WS Graham, what is the language using us for? This kind of language, this style of thought, uses us to obliterate what we thought we knew about our duties to each other. 
Hitchens states, “knock out the universal principle—we will care for you until the very end—and the atmosphere shifts decisively. There are two kinds of existences: those worth living, and those not worth living. A colder, more impatient, more utilitarian logic begins to work its way into our relationships.”
In the UK, adoption of Leadbeater’s one sentence may open the government’s intention to introduce assisted suicide to legal challenge. I’ll hope for that!

March 30, 2025 – Canadian Affairs, (Meagan Gillmore) – ‘Extremely concerned’: UN tells Canada to stop Track 2 MAID
“Disability organizations are praising a United Nations committee’s recommendation that Canada stop allowing medically assisted deaths for people whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable.
“We are absolutely thrilled,” said Krista Carr, chief executive officer of Inclusion Canada, a national organization that advocates for people with intellectual disabilities.”
Gillmore reviews the facts and implications of this important international report. She notes that the Committee also opposes moving ahead with MAID for minors, for people with sole mental illness, and by “advance directive”.

March 21, 2025 – A 20-page Report from the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities concerning Canada’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)
In sections 19 and 20, The Committee called for Canada to repeal Track 2 MAiD, which they judged NOT to be in compliance with its obligations under the Convention.
Click on Download to read the whole document.

March 2025 (Podcast) ASSISTED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgcT7ODaB4&t=62s
“The Other Half’s Fiona Mackenzie MBE and eating disorder recovery expert Chelsea Roff of Eat Breathe Thrive as we respond to the urgent need to discuss what state-delivered death might do to our society.”
What are the patterns we’re not spotting? Are safeguards really effective?
As Chelsea says “We hope you’ll come on this journey with us. My mind has changed on this issue, and it may change again. We have a duty as citizens to go into this with our eyes open”. (This is one of 11 episodes in this Podcast series)

February 18, 2025 (The National Post). Yuan Yi Zhu: MAiD’s decade of expansion shows how Canada’s slippery slope was actually a cliff
A 10th Anniversary article of the Supreme Court’s decision in Carter, reveals how we got where we are today, and queries the failures or triumphs (depending on your point of view) along the way. “There would be no slippery slope, the court promised us.” The writer invites the reader to consider how the Supreme Court’s assurances have aged. … “What about the “regulatory regime” on which the learned judges of the Supreme Court rested their hopes to protect the vulnerable? In Ontario, the chief coroner’s office recorded at least 428 cases of non-compliance with Canadian law by MAiD providers over a five-year period, in what was described as “a pattern of not following legislation, a pattern of not following regulation.” Most cases led to nothing more than an email to the provider; only four cases were referred to professional regulators. Not a single law-breaker was referred to the police.
There seems to be little concern about this practice in the general population. Even the most progressive and thoughtful public intellectuals have little to say about a pattern of behaviour that endangers the lives of an entire population that is supposedly protected under human rights law. This article is a timely reminder that things were not always thus.

Feb. 3, 2025 (SaskToday – The Kids Brain Health Network). Opinion: Disability Policies failing Canadians with Disabilities
Provinces and Territories are missing the mark, says a report issued by KBHN and McGill University, titled Disability Policy in Canada: Provincial and Territorial Report.
The “mark” to which they refer is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The report reveals gaps and shortcomings of policy across Canada and underscores the fact that not every disabled person in Canada has equal access to supportive programs and services. Although the CRPD was signed and ratified by all provinces and territories, not all are making serious progress towards its goals.

January 10, 2025 (The American Journal of Bioethics, authors Christopher Lyon, Trudo Lemmens and Scott Y. H. Kim) Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying: Provider Concentration, Policy Capture, and Need for Reform
This long, scholarly article reviews the history of the advocacy for and development of doctor-assisted death policy and practice in Canada. It becomes alarmingly clear that there is zero daylight between advocates, regulators, practitioners and educators — the same people perform overlapping roles in all areas. MAiD as a medical “specialty” is cast into doubt and a small number of practitioners are ending the lives of a frightening number of people, while most doctors have little or no involvement in doctor-assisted death. The paper argues for “reform” of the regulatory system, whereas we question whether reform would even begin to dismantle the powerful influence that death-promotors have had and continue to have on public policy. And whether reform could possibly make doctor-assisted death less of a threat to people with disabilities.

January 16, 2025 (Globe and Mail). Vancouver clinic bars doctor from offering MAID to Alberta woman on site, using staff as legal witnesses
The Willow Reproductive Health Centre in Vancouver, founded by Dr. Ellen Wiebe, is now run by a non-profit society, headed by Board Chair, Lisa Redekop. Dr. Wiebe rents an office from them, but her euthanasia practice is not part of their business of reproductive health and abortion.
“[Ms. Redekop]committed in an affidavit to ensuring that Dr. Ellen Wiebe would not use clinic facilities to end the life of an Alberta woman who had sought Dr. Wiebe’s help.”  The affidavit was submitted to the court overseeing that case.
“The injunction was one of at least three lawsuits* last year involving how MAID applications are approved and what rights family members have to intervene. Last month, Canada’s oldest civil-liberties organization, which led the push for MAID to be legalized a decade ago, called on Ottawa and the provinces to review and enforce appropriate safeguards.”
*Visit the “Archives” for articles on these three cases. (December 19, 2024; October 29, 2024; March 11/12, 2024)

January 12, 2025 (SP – The Bullet). Assisting Death Without Supporting Life
John Clarke, former head of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), weighs in on the moral incompatibility of a government constrained by austerity measures trying to regulate a system of assisted suicide.
“As someone who has been involved in the debate around MAID, I have argued that the social context of austerity and social abandonment in which the program is operating is a decisive consideration. In an article in Canadian Dimension, I wrote that “(t)he proposition that assisted death has been introduced in a social context dominated by the systematic undermining of systems of social provision needs no supporting evidence. The lack of affordable housing, the inadequacy of social benefits, the weakening of public healthcare and a general decline in the standards of public services are all well established.”
“… no one on the left can viably be part of an uncritical cheering section for the present system of assisted dying in Canada. The link between what is actually being implemented and the intensifying assault on the social infrastructure, with all the suffering this causes, is too clear to disregard. We must force the state to provide full and adequate supports, mental and physical, for the living as the necessary precondition for ethical and responsible choices in medically-assisted dying.“