Ontario Bill 4: Presumed consent for organ donation.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Please sign and share our petition opposing Ontario Bill 4: Peter Kormos Memorial Act. (Petition Link).

Ontario NDP MLA France Gélinas introduced Bill 4 on April 16, 2025. Bill 4 has not yet been debated in the Ontario legislature. Bill 4 states:

The Gift of Life Act currently requires that consent be obtained before tissue can be removed from a human body and used for therapeutic purposes, medical education or scientific research. Under the proposed amendments, consent is no longer required except from parents or guardians on behalf of children under 16 years of age. A person may object to the removal and use of the tissue prior to the person’s death or a substitute may object on the person’s behalf after the death has occurred.

Bill 4 would change The Gift of Life Act (Ontario), which requires consent to obtain organs and tissues and replaces it with presumed consent. The Ontario government would consider you to be an organ donor unless you have stated otherwise.

Bill 4 also changes the Connecting Care Act 2019 for the planning, co-ordinating, undertaking, supporting and promoting of activities relating to the removal, donation and use of human tissue, including the co-ordinating and supporting of designated facilities in connection with the removal and use of human tissue for transplant.

Please sign and share the following petition (Petition Link).

To the Hon Sylvia Jones, Ontario Minister of Health

As a citizen of Ontario I oppose Bill 4, Peter Kormos Memorial Act (Saving Organs to Save Lives). This bill that would institute a system of presumed consent for organ donation in Ontario.

A study by the US Department of Health and Human Services examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that 103 of the cases may have violated the dead donor rule.

The government does not own my organs. I consider organ donation as a voluntary gift of life that is made after I have died. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports the Dead Donor rule, meaning, the person must be dead before organs can be removed from a person. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is calls for a re-affirmation of the dead donor rule.

On July 23 we published an article about The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) media release concerning the American organ transplant system. The HHS examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that in 103 cases their were concerns that either ethics or the dead donor rule was violated.

In 2023, an effort to legitimize harvesting organs from living people was prevented when The Uniform Law Commission stopped an effort to revise the UDDA. The revision to the UDDA would have redefined death to permit organ removal when a person, is not yet dead but has an irreversible condition.