“Emotional Support Animals, Assisted Suicide And Suicide Prevention”

Content Warning: Discussion of A Disabled Person’s Death By "Suicide" 

 

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader
Disability activist and member of the EPC-USA Board

As I’ve said, I think it’s important for euthanasia opponents to understand how disability policy impacts disabled people’s lives, how euthanasia can relate to those policies, and do what they can to advocate for better disability supports. So I am going to comment on the USA Office of Housing and Urban Development’s decision to not enforce/eliminate the Fair Housing Act’s protections for Emotional Support Animals.

My cat, Lucy, is my Emotional Support Animal. She is one of the best things in my life. Every night when I go to sleep, she curls up on the pillow next to mine. I place my hand against her smooth, soft fur and listen to the gentle rumbling of her purr. Often the anxiety and insomnia I struggle with eases and I am able to drift off to sleep. Every morning Lucy wakes me up by tapping me with her paw and nuzzling my face, as she makes little grunts and trills.

Lucy

Lucy also greatly contributes to my understanding of myself as a fully functional adult: Yes, my mental illness and neurological disabilities sometimes cause independent living struggles, but my cat is still alive and doing well, so I must be doing some things right.

So, Lucy is essentially a furry antidepressant that compliments the effects of pharmaceutical intervention. Residual symptoms of depression would be much less controlled if I did not have Lucy.

Unfortunately for people like me, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has decided not to enforce the Fair Housing Act’s provision for emotional support animals.

In addition to no longer investigating ESA Fair Housing Act complaints, HUD has indicated that it intends to update the FHA’s 1989 assistance animal regulations to exclude ESAs.

HUD now only wants to enforce the part of the FHA requiring landlords to accommodate service animals who perform specific tasks.

Service animals and ESAs are not the same thing. Service animals are trained to do complex tasks to accommodate specific symptoms of a person’s impairment that inhibit independent living. ESAs do not perform specific tasks but have long been recognized as important tools for people with emotional disabilities.

HUD’s actions increase my risk of having to choose between housing and my precious Lucy.

For instance, my low income makes it difficult to afford the pet fees that are waived for ESAs. My landlord could decide that since HUD no longer recognizes ESAs, I could not have Lucy in my apartment. Limiting protections for ESAs means that if I wanted to move to a new apartment for an education or job opportunity, landlords could deny me housing because of Lucy.

According to HUD’s memo, it might still be possible for tenants to seek redress under Section 504 and the ADA. But, one of the flaws in those laws is that neither contains explicit protections for ESAs. The ADA restricts its definition of assistance animals to service animals. This is the template HUD will now base its policies on.

I think some readers may perceive a proliferation of spurious disability complaints, especially around ESAs. But I can tell you from experience that the process of resolving any legitimate disability discrimination complaint tends to be drawn out and burdensome for the filer. HUD’s new blanket policy striking the Fair Housing Act’s provisions for ESAs makes any remaining ESA protections even more difficult to invoke. HUD has removed an important tool for ensuring that vulnerable people who need ESAs can have them.

Perhaps the best way to explain how this policy change relates to euthanasia prevention is to tell the story of “Jane.” Jane was a disabled Canadian woman with autism and depression that I met on #DisabilityTwitter. Jane’s severe depression, autistic dysregulation and various traumas caused chronic housing instability. When I met Jane, she did have an apartment, but the environment wasn’t suitable for someone with her disabilities. Jane was isolated from her family and experiencing poverty. One of the only sources of joy in Jane’s life was her cat.

At first, Jane was angry that Canada had legalized “Track 2 MAiD” instead of funding disability supports; participating in viral hashtags like #AidNotMAiD. But Jane’s mental health and housing situation gradually became more precarious. As Jane’s anguish intensified, she evolved into one of the only disabled Canadians I met on X who thought “Track 2 MAiD” was a good idea.

Lack of accommodations for depression and autism gradually eroded Jane’s sanity, until her tweets became a combination of volatile despair and heartbreaking pleas for help. Jane tweeted about having loud autistic meltdowns.

Rather than show compassion, neighbors fought to have Jane evicted from her apartment.

Many of Jane’s panicked tweets about impending homelessness were about her fear that she wouldn’t be allowed to take her cat to a homeless shelter, and she would have to surrender her cat to an animal shelter, “And then I’ll never see her beautiful face again!”

So, once she had enough evidence that homelessness was inevitable, Jane killed herself “the old fashioned way.”

HUD’s new policy increases the risk of these kinds of scenarios. HUD’s decision to restrict disabled people’s access to beloved emotional support animals will cause the USA’s most marginalized disabled people to suffer more. And that suffering will be just as real as the suffering of disabled Canadians having “MAiD” suggested to them in emergency rooms. Policies like HUD’s recent decision will contribute to the high rate of suicide in the disabled community. And those “regular” suicides will be just as tragic and preventable as the coerced “MAiD” suicides in Canada.

It is important that euthanasia opponents not support policies like this. If you want to save disabled people’s lives, protect our access to the things we need and love.

Author Note 1: For another essay about what Lucy means to me, see my blog post, Society Should Treat Disabled People Like My Cousin Treats Me and “It.”

Author Note 2: Apparently HUD website's entire page about assistance animals, archived by the Wayback Machine as recently as May 23, 2026, has been removed.
 

Author Note 3: Here is HUD’s memo about the rule change.

Author Note 4: Here is the Disability Rights Education And Defense Fund’s briefing on the rule change.

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition files to intervene in Euthanasia for Mental Illness court case.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has filed in court, an application to intervene in the Brosseau case launched by Dying with Dignity, Canada's leading pro-euthanasia lobby group. The Brosseau case is asking an Ontario court to legislate from the bench by approving medical homicide for Claire Brosseau who is living with mental illness alone.

Court interventions are very expensive. We need your support.

Last week I wrote that EPC legal counsel, Hugh Scher, submitted a court intervention application outlining our litigation experience that included interventions at every level in Carter, the case that legalized medical homicide in Canada. Today, EPC filed a formal application to intervene in the Brosseau case.

Due to the nature of the legal proceedings, I will not, at this time, share our legal documents, but our intervention provide important information for the court. For instance, we stated that:

EPC frequently receives stories about people with mental illness only who at one time sought access to suicide and/or to MAiD, but who later expressed gratitude about their inability to end their own lives either by suicide or by MAiD and about how their continuing lives have been fulfilling despite past and ongoing difficulties. This is particularly so for those who were able to access mental health resources and supports that addressed their mental health disabilities and that increased their social integration and inclusion. These people acknowledge that if they had access to MAiD for mental illness only they would have acted on it during times of profound depression, hopelessness and desperation.

In our application, EPC provided significant information about how Canada's law is currently operating. EPC is not only concerned with medical homicide being extended to people who's sole criteria is a mental illness, but we also want Canada's law to be fully reviewed.

Whether or not our intervention application is accepted, court interventions are important and very expensive. 

 

We need your financial support. 

Donate to the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition court intervention (online donation) (paypal donation) donate by e-transfer to info@epcc.ca or call our office at: 1-877-439-3348.

Canadian man pleads guilty to aiding suicide by poison in 14 deaths.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Some of Kenneth Law's victims.

Kenneth Law, a Canadian who sold suicide poison kits online to as many as 1200 people world-wide, pled guilty to 14 charges of aiding and abetting suicide in a New Market court (today), May 29, 2026..

Jon Woodward and Codi Wilson reported for CTV News that:

Law was arrested in 2023 in connection with 14 deaths in Ontario after he was accused of aiding and abetting those suicides by supplying the victims with ... which is typically used to preserve meat but is deadly when consumed in high concentrations.

At the time of his arrest, police said Law sent more than 1,200 packages to 41 countries, selling the deadly chemical and other items that can be used for self-harm through multiple websites.

The youngest victim in Ontario was just 16 years old.

Based on a plea agreement, the Crown Prosecutor dropped the 14 counts of murder for an agreement where Law pled guilty to aiding the suicide of his victims, a charge that would likely result in a 14 year sentence.

Woodward and Wilson reported that: prosecutors said the victims in England and Wales will be included as “part of Mr. Law’s sentencing in Canada.”

 Joseph Brean reported for the National Post that:

Court has heard details of the 14 Ontario deaths that are the subject of his pleas, and details of his business by which he would ship products to customers, mostly a culinary curing salt that is toxic in sufficient quantities, but also asphyxiation masks. He would also offer consultation phone calls, and sent documentation saying his businesses “will be held harmless for the end use of its products.”

Court is now hearing details of 79 similar deaths in the U.K., details of which were shared by British authorities and will be considered in sentencing later this year in September. Assisting suicide has a maximum jail term of 14 years.

His online material said he would not sell to minors, but court has heard two Canadian children, and another in Britain, successfully placed orders.

He shipped 1,209 packages to 41 countries.

An agreed statement of facts indicates that from 2020 to his 2023 arrest, he received nearly $300,000 from this business, roughly equally between Shopify and PayPal. 

On May 3, 2023; I reported that Law, had been arrested and charged with two counts of assisted suicide and was believed to have assisted the suicide of at least 7 people in the US and the UK.

On May 9, 2023 CTV News journalist, Jon Woodward reported that Law was facing two counts of aiding and abetting the deaths of two people in Peel Region, allegedly through the online sales of a legal substance that is lethal in high concentrations. Law sold the substance world-wide for the purposes of aiding suicide.

Neha Raju & Tom Parfett

Woodward reported that 23-year-old Neha Raju and 22-year-old Tom Parfett died in the U.K., 20-year-old Noelle Ramirez died in Colorado, and 17-year-old Anthony Jones died in Michigan and the police were investigating 1200 people who were sent the lethal poison online.

Euronews reported on August 25, 2023 that Law was being investigated by UK authorities in the suicide deaths of 88 people and it was suspected that Law had shipped the suicide poison to at least 232 people in the UK.

Imogen Nunn

On August 27, 2023 Jon Woodward reported on CP24 on the Law investigation that the death of Imogen Nunn, in the UK, was also connected to Law. Nunn died suddenly in January, 2023 and the family didn't know how she died until the toxicology report confirmed that she died from poisoning.

On December 12, 2023 CBC News Toronto reported that Law was charged with 14 counts of second-degree murder. The CBC news report stated:

Law was charged with 14 counts of second-degree murder, in addition to the 14 counts of counselling or aiding suicide that he was already facing. CBC News Toronto stated that York Regional Police Insp. Simon James, who heads up a multi-service task force investigating Law confirmed the charges at a news conference today. The new charges are related to the same alleged victims in multiple Ontario municipalities, from Toronto to Thunder Bay.

On October 7, 2024, Jon Woodward reported for CTV news that Law was challenging the second-degree murder charges to the Supreme Court of Canada. Woodward reported:

“Assisting suicide is not murder,” Law’s lawyers, Matthew Gourlay, Stephanie DiGuiseppe, and Taylor Wormington wrote in a brief filed Friday.

"Mr. Law is not alleged to have been present at any of the deaths. He is not alleged to have deceived the victims into unwittingly ending their own lives. It would impermissibly warp the language of the Code to assert that someone who mails a toxic substance that another person later voluntarily consumes in another location with suicidal intent has “actually committed” their murder," they write.Woodward's report indicates that at least 130 people died after consuming the poison.

Charges against Law included a 16-year-old death in Ontario. CBC News reported on May 8 that 17-year-old Anthony Jones from Michigan allegedly died in connection to Law's suicide kit.

90 disability and mental health groups call on parliament to halt euthanasia for mental illness.

May 25, 2026

Ottawa, ON — A group of more than 90 disability and mental health organizations from all provinces and territories are calling on Parliament to permanently halt the planned expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) scheduled to take effect on March 17, 2027.

(Note: The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition signed the Inclusion Canada letter)

The 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.

The organizations are calling for the government to repeal the section of Canada’s MAiD law that establishes a timeline for legalization, commonly referred to as the “sunset clause.” Acting on this recommendation would result in a permanent exclusion of mental illness as a sole underlying condition for MAiD.

Mental health-related disability is among the fastest growing disabilities in Canada. One in three Canadians will meet the criteria for a mental disorder during their lifetime, and suicidality is associated with many of these diagnoses.

Inclusion Canada is one of the national organizations that have mobilized in this collective effort. CEO Krista Carr says the federal government should improve the lives of citizens – not end them. It can do so through better income supports, safe and accessible inclusive housing, accessible mental health care, employment and other community-based services to allow people to live with dignity.

“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 Carr.

Growing Concerns About Track 2 MAiD

The organizations point to growing evidence that marginalized Canadians are disproportionately represented among those currently accessing the second pathway of MAiD.

Known as Track 2 MAiD, this pathway is available to people with disabilities whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable. Most recent federal data reveal six out of 10 people who died as a result of Track 2 MAiD were women. Many were also reported as living in low-income neighbourhoods, residing in long-term care, experiencing isolation or loneliness, perceiving themselves to be a burden, facing housing instability, or requiring psychosocial supports.

People with Mental Illness can already qualify for MAiD

Under the current law, people living with mental illness may already qualify for MAiD if they have a co-occurring illness, disease, or disability and meet existing eligibility requirements. Expanding the law further to include mental illness as the sole underlying condition would make assisted suicide available to people who are not near end of life and need not have a co-occurring physical condition.

The organizations warn this would represent “a significant and misguided expansion” of Canada’s assisted suicide regime. Experts have cautioned that, in practice, the definition of “mental illness” could encompass a broad range of mental disorders.

“While some argue that MAiD is distinct from suicide, Health Canada defines suicide as ‘the intentional act of ending one’s life,’” the organizations state in their letter. “MAiD for mental illness clearly falls under this umbrella.”

“Families across Canada are deeply worried about what this expansion would mean for people already struggling to access adequate mental health care, housing, income supports and community services,” said Moira Wilson, President of Inclusion Canada. “At a time when so many people are asking for help to live with dignity, Canada should not be expanding access to assisted death for those experiencing mental illness.”

Facts

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).

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.

About Inclusion Canada

Inclusion Canada is the national federation of 13 provincial/territorial member organizations and over 300 local associations working to advance the full inclusion and human rights of people with intellectual disabilities and their families. Inclusion Canada drives social change by strengthening families, defending rights, and transforming communities into places where everyone belongs. 

Media Contact

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

 

Canada surpassed 100,000 euthanasia deaths since legalization.

Canada needs to completely review it's euthanasia killing law.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In April 2026, Canada surpassed 100,000 reported euthanasia deaths since legalization in June 2016. Canada doesn't need to further expand euthanasia to people who are mentally ill but rather Canada needs to completely review its euthanasia killing program.

Petition: Canada's euthanasia law needs a complete review (Link).

I have published more than one thousands articles on Canada's euthanasia law, a law that lacks effective oversight, a law that employs vague terminology, and a law that provides complete legal protection for doctors and nurse practitioners who are willing to kill people, even in cases that are completely egregious.

On May 5, I presented to the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, which is the parliamentary committee examining the extension of euthanasia to mental illness alone in Canada.

Think about that - Euthanasia for the sole underlying condition of a mental illness.

My presentation to the Committee focused on the need to provide a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law, which Bill C-14, the original bill that legalized euthanasia in Canada, required. I stated:

Rather than extending assisted dying to persons whose sole underlying condition is a mental disorder, Parliament needs to examine how Canada’s assisted dying law is functioning. How has the law been implemented? Is it achieving its intended outcomes? Are there abuses of the law based on its original intention? Does the law require amendment? These questions have never been addressed.

I then spoke about several egregious Canadian euthanasia stories and explained:

More broadly, Canada’s assisted dying law is vague. While Health Canada provides guidance, the legal framework allows for wide interpretation and it lacks effective oversight.

Because of time constraints, I will highlight one key issue.

Sections 241 (3) and 241 (3.1) of Canada's Criminal Code states that medical practitioners or nurse practitioners are required only to be “of the opinion” that the eligibility criteria are met. That, in practice, makes accountability extremely difficult, even impossible to prosecute a medical or nurse practitioner in Canada, even when the MAiD death is clearly wrong or deeply disturbing.

Yes. Canada's euthanasia law allows doctors and nurse practitioners to poison someone to death, and they are only required to be "of the opinion" that the person they killed fits the criteria of the law. Total protection for the killers.

Recently we learned of two disturbing euthanasia approvals and deaths by Dr James MacLean. As bad as it is that MacLean approved a euthanasia death while sipping Tim Horton's coffee (probably not good news for Tim Horton's) MacLean also developed an inappropriate relationship with his prey by continuously texting him and then driving him to his place of death.

Further to that MacLean poisoned to death another man in a disturbing manner, (not to say that euthanasia in general is not disturbing). According to the report:

The second complaint involved a cancer patient at end of life. The man had signed a “waiver of final consent” that allows people whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable to receive MAID, even if they lose capacity to give consent the moment before death.

Before the chosen date, the man lost capacity and was unresponsive. MacLean was called to the home.

He’d ordered a MAID medication kit, but it wasn’t ready when he arrived at the pharmacy. He went to the home with a kit he already had.

He brought a killing kit with him that he already had. Was it left-over from a previous killing???

The report continued:

According to the college, MacLean administered a sedative follow by propofol, a drug used during surgery that, in high doses, puts people in a coma.

The final drug customarily used paralyzes the muscles. Deprived of oxygen, organs shut down, one by one, until the heart finally stops.

But MacLean was unable to find the neuromuscular-blocking drug in his kit.

Shortly after administering the propofol, and unable to hear a heartbeat, MacLean pronounced the patient dead, according to the college. After he left the house, “the patient resumed spontaneous breathing.”

So MacLean poisoned an incompetent man. He declared the man dead, when he wasn't dead. He left the scene of the killing. He was told that the victim wasn't dead so MacLean returned, saw signs of cardiac and respiratory activity, administered more medication (poison) along with the paralyzing agent, “and again pronounced the patient’s death.”

You can't make this stuff up.

Dr Ramona Coelho, a family physician in London Ontario and a past member of the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee (MDRC) was shocked that Dr MacLean only received a slap on the wrist for his killings. 

Dr Ramona Coelho

Coelho offered a way forward in an article that was published in the Hill Times. Coelho writes:

As Canada seemingly moves to halt medical assistance in dying for mental illness as a sole underlying condition, parliamentarians are beginning to recognize what clinicians and experts have warned for years: the system is not safe enough, and there is insufficient evidence to continue with Canada’s expansive MAID practice.

Halting MAID for mental illness is not enough.

Coelho provides some examples of egregious euthanasia killings. She writes:

In MDRC cases, eligibility determinations were shaped by treatment refusal, system gaps, and inadequate supports. In one case, an obese woman with depression and long-standing disengagement from care was deemed eligible for MAID after refusing interventions documented to potentially improve or reverse her conditions.

Another case involved a man in his late 40s who experienced significant suffering and unexplained functional decline following COVID vaccination. He had a history of depression and trauma, and experienced suicidal ideation requiring involuntary hospitalization. Psychiatric assessments raised concerns about mood disorder, trauma-related illness, and somatic symptom disorder. Despite this, he was deemed eligible for MAID, with assessors attributing his condition to a post-vaccine syndrome. Significantly, no pathological findings were identified on post-mortem examination.

Parliamentary hearings exposed a deeper problem: Canada already lacks adequate MAID safeguards and oversight.

In April 2026, Canada surpassed 100,000 euthanasia deaths since legalization. The bill that originally legalized euthanasia required that a review of the law be done, starting in June 2020. Instead, Canada expanded the law by passing Bill C-7 in March 2021. 

Bill C-7 expanded Canada's law by removing the requirement that a person have a terminal condition (natural death be reasonably foreseeable), it removed the 10-day waiting period for killing, it permitted the killer to waive final consent, if the person was incompetent, and it allowed euthanasia for mental illness alone, that is currently scheduled to begin on March 17, 2027.

After passing Bill C-7 Canada established the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying that did not review the law, as required by Bill C-14, but rather it examined further expansions of the law.

Canada's euthanasia law has gone mad. The world sees it, the United National Committee on Disability rights sees it, anybody who examines our law, from outside of the pro-death bubble sees it. 

The Canadian government must stop expanding the euthanasia law and examine the insanity. 

Canada needs a complete review of it's euthanasia law.

Euthanasia and social class

By Odile Marcotte
Retired Professor Department of Computer Science, UQAM and a Euthanasia Prevention Coalition board member.

Odile Marcotte

The June 2026 issue of the L'actualité magazine includes an article on euthanasia entitled "Le dernier choix," i.e., The last choice. This article is a reasonably good one and does not exhibit a bias towards euthanasia, except in the beginning and end of the article, which feature (as usual) a patient suffering from a grievous illness asking for and receiving the "treatment" called euthanasia. The article, however, raises several questions that need to be addressed.

Consider the issue of social class (or socio-economic status), which I will address in this post. Studies have shown repeatedly that among the patients dying through euthanasia or assisted suicide, the proportion of patients with higher education and financial means is greater than in the general population. This is indeed confirmed by Dr. Louis Daigle, who has euthanized more than 650 people over a period of nine years. 

Daigle states that the suffering of seeing oneself waste away is what MAiD allows his patients to avoid. Indeed, after a good life, after earning good money and enjoying many travels, they will not accept what they call "an undignified death." Dr. Daigle goes on to say that those patients request euthanasia because they wish to "hold the reins" until the very end of their life.

Dr. Daigle, who specializes in emergency medicine, seems to have empathy for the people he euthanizes. His fellow doctors at the Collège des médecins du Québec, along with the pro-euthanasia lobby in Québec and Canada, have succeeded in:

• making euthanasia legal,
• making it a procedure paid by medicare and performed in all hospitals,
• redefining palliative medicine as a discipline that includes the possibility of ending the life of a patient, 
• extending euthanasia to patients not at the end of their life and not enjoying the same comfort as the rest of the population, and 
• denying palliative care homes (at least in British Columbia and Québec) the permission to exclude euthanasia from its services.
  

In other words, the comfortable class has achieved its goals and persuaded the rest of the population to support euthanasia as a way of avoiding "suffering" at the end of life, even though this profound change has huge and unforeseen consequences for every individual.

Euthanasia has become a social class issue.

Euthanasia death approved at a coffee shop.

Declaring a person to be dead, when he was not dead.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr James MacLean is one of the few doctors to be sanctioned for unprofessional conduct related to his euthanasia deaths. One of the complaints included a euthanasia assessment that was done at a Tim Horton's coffee shop.

An article by Brian Williams and Sharon Kirkey published by the London Free Press on May 27, 2026 explained that the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal received two complaints about MacLean, but only gave him a minor sanction for his actions related to his euthanasia deaths. The CPSO stated:

“The measures include mandatory clinical supervision for a minimum of six months, frequent supervision meetings, ongoing review of his MAID patient charts, regular written reports to (the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario) from the clinical supervisor, and completion of mandatory professional education relating to MAID, consent, documentation, professional boundaries, and professional behaviour.”

The first complaint that included assessing the person for euthanasia at a Tim Horton's coffee shop. The authors reported:

MacLean conducted his assessment of the patient outside a coffee shop. The college panel found it concerning that MacLean discussed “sensitive MAID-related matters in an informal public setting,” according to the summary of the inquiries and complaints committee’s decision.

“In the committee’s view, this reflected a lack of the level of formality and care expected when assessing requests for MAID.”

The panel was also troubled by the “quantity and nature” of MacLean’s text exchanges with the patient, which included comments about the family’s views.

MacLean’s decision to drive the patient to the MAID provision location “raised concerns about professional boundaries.”

“Taken together, these actions created a risk that (MacLean’s) involvement could be perceived as influencing the patient,” the committee’s summary reads, especially given the patient-doctor power imbalance and the patient’s history of mental health and substance use issues.

The second case was a failed euthanasia death whereby MacLean declared he patient dead and left the person's home even though the patient was not dead. The authors reported:

The second complaint involved a cancer patient at end of life. The man had signed a “waiver of final consent” that allows people whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable to receive MAID, even if they lose capacity to give consent the moment before death.

Before the chosen date, the man lost capacity and was unresponsive. MacLean was called to the home.

He’d ordered a MAID medication kit, but it wasn’t ready when he arrived at the pharmacy. He went to the home with a kit he already had.

According to the college, MacLean administered a sedative follow by propofol, a drug used during surgery that, in high doses, puts people in a coma.

The final drug customarily used paralyzes the muscles. Deprived of oxygen, organs shut down, one by one, until the heart finally stops.

But MacLean was unable to find the neuromuscular-blocking drug in his kit.

Shortly after administering the propofol, and unable to hear a heartbeat, MacLean pronounced the patient dead, according to the college. After he left the house, “the patient resumed spontaneous breathing.”

MacLean returned, saw signs of cardiac and respiratory activity, administered more medication along with the paralyzing agent, “and again pronounced the patient’s death.”

According to the college committee, MacLean “advised that he believes the stress of the situation, including the last-minute and urgent request for his attendance and the substantial number of people present with significant tension amongst them, contributed to initial failed provision of MAID.”

The family complained about MacLean’s professionalism and communication.

Dr Ramona Coelho a London family physician and former member of the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario’s MAID death review committee. told the authors:

“What is striking is not only the seriousness of the concerns identified in these cases, but the limited regulatory response,”

“The level of scrutiny and accountability applied to MAID is inconsistent with how other serious medical procedures are regulated,”

Dr Coelho commented on the notion that Canada's euthanasia law operates well.

The federal government “frequently points to the absence of criminal findings or disciplinary action as evidence that the MAID system is functioning safely,” she added.

“Cases such as these, along with those documented (by the coroner’s MAID death review committee) confirm that important gaps in oversight and accountability remain.”

The Chief Coroner of Ontario established the Ontario MAiD Death Review Committee that published multiple reports underlining the concerns with the law. Even though that report found cases of people who had no actual medical condition or who died by euthanasia based on poverty or a lack of proper housing, none of those cases were then brought to the CPSO to determine if any sanctions should be applied to the doctors and nurse practitioners who caused those deaths.

Elizabeth had suicidal ideation. She is very glad to be here today.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition received the following letter from Elizabeth, a woman who lived with suicidal ideation and is very glad to be alive. Elizabeth opposes euthanasia for mental illness.

Back in 2012, I had multiple chronic health conditions and had failed completely again at getting and holding down a job after moving to a larger city with some money from family to try to find work I could actually do. I needed the disability benefit, but didn't have it. I'd already been denied once for it in 2010, and applied again in 2012 and suspected I wouldn't get it. I have generalized anxiety disorder and depression that was severely aggravated by my financial troubles and inability to support myself, and I started having panic attacks and cutting myself, as well as not eating enough and becoming underweight with dizzy spells. I felt like a burden and had suicidal ideation, though I didn't try to kill myself.

A few months later I finally got the letter back about the disability benefit. I was convinced I'd be denied again, and had to read it through twice before I realized it was approved. It totally changed my life, and I am very glad to still be here today, even if I still can't support myself financially by working due to health issues and live with chronic pain and still struggle with depression and anxiety at times. Your worth as a human being and right to live doesn't depend on whether you can earn a living, and there are other ways to contribute to society even if you can't earn a paycheck.

This was before MAID was legal. I already felt like a burden and was struggling with suicidal ideation to the point I was cutting myself without society offering me social sanction for dying, suggesting I should do so, and offering to help me while making it easier and faster than applying for disability. That would have made my mental health struggles so much worse.

Elizabeth

EPC supports Bill C-218 which is a private members bill, that was sponsored by Tamara Jansen (MP) to prevent euthanasia for mental illness alone in Canada. EPC urges Canadians to sign our petition in support of Bill C-218. (Petition Link).