Current News- 2025/26

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.

June 13, 2026. (Globe and Mail). Chronically ill people are turning to MAID for a dignified death. Why can’t we give them a dignified life? (Jonathan Garfinkel)
Our health care systems do not have the support in place required to accommodate people living with chronic illness

Another long and thoughtful piece of writing by an author who has lived with a lifelong condition, Type 1 diabetes and in addition, more recently, long COVID. Garfinkel asks many excellent questions, among them, “How can I live independently and freely, while recognizing that I depend on others to live? Which is to ask: is it morally acceptable for a society to assist in death for groups of people it is doing so little to help live?” He consulted ethicist Dr. George C. Webster, who believes that “even well-intentioned clinical assessments can work against patients when they fail to think critically about what autonomy actually requires – adequate options, genuine support, freedom from coercive circumstances. These are conditions often absent for people living under the wide umbrella of chronic illness.” (italics added by LWD)

Garfinkel’s research revealed a huge and growing population with autoimmune illnesses and post-viral acute and chronic illnesses. “Patients often navigate a fragmented system ill-equipped for the complexity of chronic, multi-system illness.” He writes, “My 15-minute diabetes appointments, once every six months, barely scratch the surface of trying to address the daily demands and complexities that comprise a life with chronic illness, and the anxiety and burnout that so often overwhelms me.” He goes on, “I have often fantasized about my various specialists gathering together to co-ordinate a complex and multi-faceted approach to long COVID and diabetes, not as separate diseases but as one continuous illness experience. While this sounds like a pipe dream in a world of specialization and eroding health care systems, there are places of innovation where this is happening. Centres for post-viral acute illnesses, like the Cohen Centre for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illness in New York, and the UHN Post-Covid condition rehabilitation program in Toronto, offer a diverse group of co-ordinated health care professionals. These institutions are rare beacons of light in a dark and outdated approach to health care.”

One doctor Garfinkel consulted with, Dr. Ed Weiss, cited a philosophical divide within the medical profession itself. “On the one hand, you have the ‘maximalists’ who believe in ‘autonomy über alles.’ … while other doctors think autonomy shouldn’t be the primary concern in health care – the difference between “providing care” and “caring for patients.” Someone who provides care helps to facilitate autonomy at all costs. Someone who cares for patients tries to look at the bigger picture of a patient’s suffering and see illness in its entirety. While Dr. Weiss acknowledges the latter might be judged by some as paternalistic, he believes it is a doctor’s duty to look out for the patient and navigate their illness in all its complexities and manifestations, including aspects the patient doesn’t always see.”

Garfinkel reflects, “That said, you can have the most empathic health care team and still struggle with loneliness and shame. The question is how do we, as a society, create spaces for belonging, both public and private, so those with chronic illness can live in more meaningful ways?”

If you are able and have access, read the whole article to be introduced to the concept of “crip time” as a “political claim:  a challenge to the fiction that human worth is calibrated by speed, productivity, and the seamless continuity of function.” Dr. Catherine Frazee drew Garfinkel’s attention to the way that Track 2 MAID “emerges from and reflects a culture that has very little tolerance for the long, unresolved, non-linear experience of living with disability or chronic illness. The temporal structure of MAID – swift, decisive, final – mirrors the culture’s impatience with us, dressed up as compassion.”

Garfinkel notes that this concept transcends the sense of personal failure than many chronically ill and disabled people live with. “The problem is structural: why has our society organized itself around neglect of the chronically ill rather than their dignified accommodation?”

We at LWD are pleased that these two very thoughtful articles (Garfinkel and Urback — see below) are getting some air time in the mainstream press.

June 12, 2026 (Globe and Mail) A decade after MAID became legal, life has become cheap in Canada. (Robyn Urback)
Medically assisted dying has helped tens of thousands of Canadians die beautiful deaths, but this country is becoming a place where people are offered death instead of care

The Globe’s frustrating paywall keeps non-subscribing readers from gaining access to the thoughts of a very interesting and important writer. Urback manages to shine a bright philosophical light on Canada’s assisted death system, illuminating many of its shortfalls and little hypocrises — we want this for ourselves, and we don’t want to be reminded of the reasons we might want to pause and consider it’s impacts on people who don’t want to die now but are given very few choices, sometimes none at all.
Urback refers to the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who wrote that “the state is the actuality of the ethical idea;” that morality is not simply an abstract, subjective concept, but one that manifests in the tangible apparatus of the state. True freedom, according to Hegel, was living within this ethical order. “ And we Canadians want to think of ourselves as ethical people, don’t we?
And yet, what happens, Urback asks, when the state begins to slip into a perversion of the moral order it is there to uphold?
Although she acknowledges the “beautiful deaths” that MAID has permitted many people to experience, “there have been other types of deaths, too. Less beautiful ones. … These are the deaths that tore apart families, raised questions about coercion and capacity to consent, and challenged the entire notion of the ethical state. … In a rather dystopian way, these tragic deaths have become the price of the beautiful ones.” How high a price are Canadians willing to pay to protect their “freedom” to die the way they want?

“Collectively, we’ve come to accept what’s happening, casually sipping our coffees while the man on the other side of the café window literally signs away his life. Because … notions of compassion, freedom, autonomy make us feel better about what is, really, a malignant indifference toward our fellow man. That malignant indifference is taking the lives of the most vulnerable, and it’s slowly eating away at this country’s soul.”

“Why haven’t stories of tragic deaths, of deaths pursued because of socioeconomic suffering, loneliness or despair, provoked a major push for reform?” Urback poses the question, and answers it by citing Canada’s libertarian bent when it comes to bodily autonomy; its cultural sensitivity to being accused of discrimination; and it’s reluctance to admit that it may have “… erroneously helped some of its own citizens to kill themselves.”

“Instead, this country has become a place where death has become the solution to suffering. … Canada is failing in its core obligation as the actuality of the ethical idea; as the purveyor of a good life. And we’re all just sipping our coffees, watching it happen. This is what it looks like when a country starts to die.”

June 4, 2026 (Canadian Affairs, Meagan Gilmore). MAID educator refuses to provide its curriculum to parliamentary committee
MAID educator says it is impossible to provide its curriculum to committee that will prepare a crucial report on MAID for mental illness

“The committee, which cannot compel the production of documents, will have to write its report without knowing exactly how health-care professionals are trained to assess the impact of mental disorders on MAID requests.”

Gilmore notes that new data from the Angus Reid Institute suggests many Canadians do not know Canada is planning to allow MAID for the sole purpose of mental illness in March.  And while many people theoretically support maid for mental illness, 74 per cent of Canadians think governments should be required to demonstrate a person has adequate housing, disability supports and income supports before they are offered MAID. 

May 31, 2026 (Angus Reid Institute). Support for 2016 MAID law remains high, but softens for expansions, including mental illness as sole condition
Support for the original 2016 MAID criteria — covering adults with severe and irremediable suffering whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable — remains nearly four-in-five (77% strongly support or support; 15% oppose). The 2021 expansion, which extended eligibility to those whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable (“Track 2”), draws softer support at 53%, with uncertainty rising to 23%. The prospect of mental illness as a sole underlying condition generates the most hesitation — 43% support, 39% oppose, and 19% remain unsure.

May 25, 2026 (Inclusion Canada Press Release). Canada’s Assisted Suicide Law has Gone Too Far
90 Disability and Mental Health Organizations Oppose Expansion of MAiD for Mental Illness 

Ninety disability and mental health groups have sent an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, Justice Minister and Attorney General Sean Fraser, and Health Minister Marjorie Michel. The letter was copied to the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) comprised of MPs and Senators. The committee is currently studying whether to expand MAiD for people whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental illness. It is poised to file a report before the parliamentary summer break.  
“People with disabilities and mental illness who face poverty, housing insecurity, social isolation, and barriers to timely health care need help and hope — not MAiD,” said Krista Carr, CEO of Inclusion Canada. 
Facts 
– Inclusion Canada and three other national disability organizations along with two individual plaintiffs, launched a charter challenge in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice asking that Track 2 MAiD be struck down.  
– From 2021 to 2024, 2,050 Canadians have died from through Track 2 MAiD, where their death was not reasonably foreseeable. 
– In its 2025 Concluding Observations on Canada, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities called on Canada to repeal Track 2 MAiD, halt the planned expansion to mental illness and bring its MAiD regime into compliance with Canada’s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).  

Media Contact: Andrew Holland, Director of Communications and Marketing aholland@inclusioncanada.ca  (506) 259-1635 

May 25, 2026 (Globe and Mail) Family alarmed that doctor can still offer MAID despite complaints (Nancy Macdonald and Kathryn Blaze Baum)
The family was not opposed to their brother’s decision to die by physician-assisted suicide. They were present to support Bradley Stewart, known as “Stewie” at the end of his battle with cancer. But the doctor, having administered an incomplete course of medication, pronounced him dead and left the scene, leaving friends and family to notice that he was still breathing. Called to return, Dr. James MacLean of London, ON, arrived with a big smile, tapped him on the forehead and said, “This is on both of us – me for my misstep, and you for being so strong.” He repeated the procedure, this time with the full course of medication, and pronounced him dead again, one hour after the first pronouncement. The circumstances of his death, his sister said, felt “like an affront to the person he was.”
This doctor has been in practice since graduating in 1980 — that’s 46 years ago. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which conducted a review of his practice, found “serious concerns,” revealing the likelihood that “his conduct “exposes or is likely to expose patients to harm or injury in five out of twenty [patient] charts reviewed,”” Time to retire. But he continues to practice, including MAID cases, “under supervision”.

May 6/7, 2026 (Globe and Mail) Carney says he won’t take a position on MAID expansion until committee report released
“I’m waiting to see the report of the interparliamentary committee,” Mr. Carney said. “I haven’t received any briefings specifically on it.” The committee heard from its witnesses and is now drafting its report and recommendations, which are expected in June.
“Though the committee has until Oct. 2 to table its recommendations, it is working to get the report completed before Parliament breaks for the summer. That would give the government enough time to draft a bill and get it before the House of Commons in the fall. Both Liberal and Conservative MPs on the committee said Wednesday that they do think there will be a degree of consensus on the delay, though some senators may disagree.  Any bill introduced by the government will have to pass through the Senate.

April 30, 2026 (Globe and Mail). Psychiatry chairs at medical schools oppose expanding MAID for mental illness (Nancy MacDonald and Kathryn Blaze Baum)
Behind a paywall, a strongly worded article reports on a letter from the 13 Chairs of Psychiatry Schools across Canada, imploring the government not to expand MAID for mental illness. “The chairs argue that there is no accurate way to determine when a mental disorder is incurable, no way to distinguish between suicidality and a MAID request, and no way to adequately protect vulnerable patients.” The article goes on to say that many “psychiatrists are convinced there is no way to fix “the two fundamental problems” related to irremediability and distinguishing between suicidal ideation and a MAID request.”
The pro-MAID voice in the article belongs to J. Downie, who is not a psychiatrist but a lawyer. She falsely advances the argument that a “constitutional right” to MAID has been established. However, while the federal government has allowed the practice of ending lives by willing doctors, i.e. removed the practice from the criminal code, it has not established a constitutional right to be assisted in death by patients seeking that course of action — the provinces are the regulators of medical practice. Alberta and Quebec have both moved to ban assisted death for people whose sole condition is a mental illness.

April 21, 2026 (Canadian Affairs) The Only Thing Left, by Meagan Gillmore

Gillmore recounts the story of a disappointingly difficult death by MAID. Painful and bungled, Victor Enns chose to die to relieve pain he knew was relievable, but for which he was denied opiates because the doc felt they would kill him. His body was put in a painful position, the IV insertion was not correct and had to be re-inserted. Yes, the suffering stopped when the drugs did their job, but it was not the peaceful and painless end he’d wanted.

April 15, 2026 (Disability Without Poverty) – Monthly Newsletter by Dr. Michelle Hewitt
This month’s newsletter is headlined by a very personal story of Track 2 MAID and the case of the author’s husband who “came to the end of his rope in his fight to get the support he needed” — i.e. the kind of case that the pro-MAID folks tell us doesn’t exist. The newsletter encourages readers to tell their stories to the AMAD committee which is meeting right now to rubber-stamp MAID for people with mental illness alone. You won’t be able to tell it in person, but flood their inbox with what you know to be true!

April 14, 2026 (Globe and Mail) Ontario overhauls MAID oversight committee, critics say it’s to remove dissenters (by Nancy Macdonald)
In an April 2 document obtained by the G&M, a call for new oversight committee members went out. The notice states that “Membership in the new committee will be limited to those “interested in supporting MAiD practice.” And so what are they overseeing, exactly? Well, not much apparently. The committee will shrink from 16 members to 6 or 8; they will meet 5 times a year instead of 10.
Dr. Trudo Lemmens, health law professor and former member of the committee, warned the changes risk creating a “regulatory Potemkin Village” – a system that appears rigorous while obscuring troubling cases – in a domain where outcomes are “final and irreversible.”
Professor Isabel Grant, law prof in BC, says that reduced oversight as proposed “… may make some people feel better about MAID in Ontario, because the problems will be hidden from public scrutiny, but that is not oversight. This is a real loss for Ontario, and for Canada more widely.”

April 1, 2026 (MLI – MacDonald Laurier Institute) Better Dead than Disabled? Alberta finally draws the line on MAID. (by Gabrielle Peters)
“On March 18, the Alberta government tabled hope. With the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act, the government decommissioned Track 2 MAiD – euthanasia for those who are not deemed to be nearing their reasonably foreseeable natural death … and when the federal government’s inclusion of mental illness as a sole qualifying condition for MAiD is set to begin, it will not happen in Alberta.” Likewise … MAiD for minors and MAiD by advance directive have been rejected in advance.
Peters also celebrates the proposed Alberta law for tackling inter-provincial doctor-shopping, prohibiting healthcare professionals from raising MAiD with a patient who has not requested it, and the establishment of “MAID-free zones”.
Although she still finds the very existence of MAID threatening and worrisome for disabled people, she finds the proposed Alberta legislation strikes most of the right notes.
Now all they have to do is make sure disabled Albertans get the financial and other supports that make it possible to live and thrive in a still-ableist world.

March 24, 2026 (Globe and Mail) Restoring sanity to MAID laws in Canada will protect them (Robyn Urback)
Urback states, “We have watched, slack-jawed, as what was supposed to be a tightly controlled system providing dignity in death for the terminally ill turned into one where veterans are offered death instead of counselling, where a woman suffering with obesity was accepted for MAID, and where a woman with dementia was helped to die after a family member twice referred her for MAID.” She argues that it would be a mistake to use questionable Track 2 cases as an excuse to scrap Track 1 MAID. Urback argues that Alberta has found a good approach, protecting Track 1 MAID for terminally ill patients who want it, but eliminating it for non-dying patients. The UN COMMITTEE (See March 21, 2025) would concur.

March 24, 2026 (Canadian Health Sentinel). What Alberta’s Bill Reveals About the Lack of Safeguards for MAiD (Analysis by Simon Spichak)
This excellent article reviews the state of affairs with respect to MAID in Canada. It concludes, “Bill 18 isn’t a panacea. It won’t improve access to healthcare, lift disabled Albertans out of legislated poverty, or even stop the province from clawing-back the Canada Disability Benefit. But, it provides tangible protections in line with some of the recommendations from the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that have gone ignored, filling the gaps in federal legislation.”

March 20, 2026 (Globe and Mail) Ottawa can decide that MAID is not a crime. Provinces have the right to decide that it is not health care. (Derek Ross and Brian Bird)
The Globe was quick to follow the Alberta announcement with an excellent legal analysis of the proposed legislation:
First, the Supreme Court has never recognized a freestanding Charter right to MAID.
Second … how, as a society, we can say that we are committed to suicide prevention and supporting individuals with mental illness while at the same time offering them state-sponsored death.
Third, … safeguards have proven to be illusory. In Ontario alone, reports identified 428 cases between 2018 and 2023 in which MAID may have been provided illegally. This evidence was not available to the Supreme Court in 2015, and we ignore these reports at our own peril.
We certainly don’t have to be in agreement with everything Alberta’s government does, which we are not! But when they get it right, let’s give them credit!

March 20, 2026 (National Post) Alberta bill restricting assisted suicide reaffirms that care comes first (Ramona Coelho)
Coelho writes: Alberta’s Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act signals a fundamental policy and ethical correction: medical assistance in dying must remain an exceptional, end-of-life intervention and should not become routine or replace the provision of proper medical, disability, and social care. Alberta’s proposed bill seeks to restore this principle within Canada’s assisted dying framework. That is such an important principle! LWD wishes Alberta all the best in their attempt to corral this wild pony. And while they’re engaged in playing the part of the Good Guy, maybe they’ll make sure their social programs actually support people with disabilities adequately, and not scratch and claw back federal funds meant to help out.

March 18, 2026 (CBC News) Alberta bill would limit medically assisted dying to patients facing ‘reasonably foreseeable’ death
Provincial Justice Minister Mickey Amery tabled the bill, Bill 18, in the legislature Wednesday.
Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser, said in a statement that provinces and territories are responsible for delivering health care and have the right to develop frameworks around MAID delivery.
Inclusion Alberta, Inclusion Canada, and the Canadian Mental Health Association have all spoken in favour of the proposed bill.
Should Alberta’s Bill 18 pass as written, it would make Alberta the first Canadian jurisdiction to place these types of limitations on federally permitted assisted deaths.

February 22, 2026 (Globe and Mail Editorial Board). A Better Balance is needed on Medically Assisted Death
This important article is behind a paywall, but I will try to summarize it for you:

1. “It remains a criminal offence, under Canada’s Criminal Code, to assist in someone’s suicide, even with that person’s explicit consent. And, of course, it remains a criminal offence – homicide, to be precise – to kill someone without their consent.” “There is no right to die in Canada.” MAID exists as a “carve-out” from the criminal law.
2. Preventing suicide is a legitimate goal of legislation.
3. A 10-day reflection period, to allow for the ambivalent to change their minds, should be restored.
4. Provinces should limit MAID to their own residents, in order to control inter-provincial “doctor-shopping”.
5. Second (medical) opinions should be truly independent and unbiased.
6. No MAID for mental illness unless/until clinical evidence clearly supports such a thing, which it does not at this time.
7. Bolster palliative care. “No Canadian should choose death because we refuse to pay for their care.” Excellent principle. Too bad the article fails to grapple with the realities of poverty and deprivation faced by people with disabilities.
8. We need to do a better job of data collection and reporting.
9. Canada needs to enforce the criminal code and prosecute doctors who “clearly and willfully range outside the carve-outs” mentioned in Point 1.
10. “All told, more than 800 Canadians could have opted for a quick death because the health care system would not pay for the care for them to live in comfort. Again, even one instance of such a grotesque conundrum is an unacceptable tragedy.

It is not clear what prompted this evaluation by the editorial board, but let’s hope they keep working on the issues and bring themselves up to speed on the impact of Track 2 MAID.

Feb. 11, 2026 (The Breach). Canada sidesteps UN scrutiny over assisted dying
A year after the UN called for Canada to repeal Track 2 MAID, “Calls by disability advocates and the UN to halt an expansion of medically assisted death have gone largely unacknowledged by the federal government.”
“Internal government emails obtained by The Breach suggest officials anticipated little public scrutiny of the report, even as they acknowledged mounting anger from disability advocates, particularly over the federal government’s decision to eliminate a dedicated minister for disability.”
In March 2025 Canadian officials met in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss Canada’s track record on disability. They were asked by the UN committee to justify how the expansion of MAiD differs from “state-sponsored eugenics.”

January 30, 2026 (Globe and Mail). Ontario woman calls for reform after her son “shopped” for MAID approval in BC
Margaret Marsilla said her 26-year-old son, Kiano Vafaeian, received MAID after being denied it by doctors in his home province in recent years. She alleges that he “shopped around” until he could find the two physicians needed to approve the procedure. [Kiano is memorialized on our Remembering Lives Lived page].
Kiano Vafaeian’s death certificate was signed on Dec. 31 by the notorious Ellen Wiebe, a prolific BC MAID provider who was also at the centre of an Alberta case in 2024.  Dr. Wiebe said in a statement to The Globe and Mail on Wednesday that every one of her patients was [technically] capable of consenting to MAID and that in each Track 2 procedure she ensured her assessment of their eligibility took the requisite 90 days (Apparently the only limit she considers enforceable).
His mother is crying foul, and insists that he was not in pain, was not in decline, and had been declared ineligible for Track 2 MAID in Ontario.
A committee of the United Nations last spring reviewed Canada’s treatment of disabled people and called on Ottawa to end MAID for anyone without a terminal illness.

Ontario family calls for changes after their 26-year-old son received MAID in B.C.

January , 2026 (Euthanasia Prevention Coalition) Canadian woman was approved for euthanasia is now being treated by US doctors.
Jolene Van Alstine of Regina, Saskatchewan was approved for death by MAID instead of receiving treatment for her a rare and extremely painful parathyroid disorder. There was no surgeon in Saskatchewan capable of performing a surgery that she was told might help. In America, a doctor treated her hormonal condition and delayed surgery. The treatments seem to be helping. She never wanted to die by MAID, but simply wanted to stop being so sick.
“Van Alstine, Brady and Ducluzeau were all able to die by euthanasia but were not offered medical treatment for their conditions. Brady and Ducluzeau were successfully treated in the US. These are three out of many stories of Canadians who were denied or not offered effective medical treatment.”
While the EPC is a Catholic and often right-wing organization, it is a valuable resource for information on patients that might not otherwise come to our attention. Thank you, Alex.

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