Eileen Mihich was battling serious mental distress. But Washington’s assisted-suicide regime gave her lethal assisted suicide drugs instead of care and support, even though she did not qualify under the law.
Aging with Dignity has uncovered the story of Eileen Mihich who was a lonely 31 year-old woman who fraudulently received a lethal assisted suicide poison cocktail even though she:
She suffered from serious mental illness
She was not a Washington resident
No doctor verified she was terminally ill
No waiting period was enforced
Eileen's story proves that there is no real oversight of the law. After contacting - A Sacred Passing: Death Doula, Eileen forged documents by claiming that she was a doctor and by claiming that she had stage 4 cancer.
The story of Eileen Mihich shows us how little oversight exists in the assisted suicide law. It also asks the big question, how did Eileen receive the lethal poison that killed her?
In 2025, assisted suicide was legalized in Delaware, Illinois and New York. This means that there are now 13 US states plus Washington DC that permit assisted suicide. The 13 states include California, Illinois and New York, three of the six most populated states in America.
This is tragic and will result in many early deaths and will lead to the further medical abandonment of people in need.
Previous to this year, the last state that legalized assisted suicide was New Mexico in 2021.
Are you concerned? I am concerned.
I watched the recent online US assisted suicide lobby political meeting. During the meeting the assisted suicide lobby outlined that, in 2026, there will be at least 18 states with bills to legalize assisted suicide.
We are very concerning with some of the listed states which included: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada and Virginia. There are other states that the assisted suicide lobby are focusing on that are less likely to legalize assisted suicide in 2026 including (but not limited to) Arizona and Florida.
Our allies have been very successful in the past few years but the issue seems to be changing How are we to respond?
Let's look at the most recent successful campaign.
The Slovenian people voted on an assisted suicide referendum on Sunday, November 23, 2025 and voted to overturn the assisted suicide bill that was passed in the Slovenian legislature in July 2025. More than 53.5% of the voters rejected the assisted suicide law.
This was a great victory, that was accomplished by a small group of committed citizens who stuck to their talking points. They achieved the victory for people who are sick, people with disabilities and pensioners against all odds, as they were up against the government and a well funded death lobby.
Slovenia is not the United States, but the principles in the successful campaign will transport to North America.
They weren't afraid to call it what it is. They used the term poisoning. Assisted suicide is to provide a lethal concoction to poison a person to death.
The never used the language of the other side. The other side continuously lied about what the assisted suicide law said or what assisted suicide is. The campaign focused on telling the truth and challenging the lies.
They called assisted suicide, health care reform. Most jurisdictions require health care reform to enable a more equitable provision of care. Assisted suicide poisons a person to death. Dead people don't need health care.
The called assisted suicide pension reform. Slovenia, like most jurisdictions, invest a significant portion of their budget into the pension system. Assisted suicide poisons a person to death. Dead people don't collect pensions.
Proper medical care. The other side focused on suffering. The campaign opposing assisted suicide talked about proper care, and explained that assisted suicide forces people, who cannot attain proper medical care, to be poisoned to death.
The Slovenian campaign was more aggressive than most campaigns, but they won even though they were massively out-spent.
The take-away from the Slovenian referendum is that people innately oppose killing people, but you must be willing to state what assisted suicide is. The Slovenians built their campaign on a few key talking points and stuck to them. Hiding behind nice language or presenting the issue in a way that seems more socially acceptable avoids the reality that assisted suicide is about killing people by poison.
I am not afraid to say that I oppose killing people.
The assisted suicide lobby are already lobbing for expansions of the law.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
I have bad but possibly not unexpected news.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul wrote an article that was published in the Albany Times Union explaining why she will sign the assisted suicide bill. When Bill A136/S138 is signed it will make New York the 13th US state to legalize assisted suicide. Legalizing assisted suicide gives medical professionals the right to be involved with poisoning their patients to death.
The Democratic governorwrote Wednesday in the Albany Times Union that she’s approving the legislation after state lawmakers agreed to enact additional safeguards. They include residency restrictions, a five-day waiting period, and a requirement that patients record their oral request to end their lives.
Vielkind reported for the Gothamist on December 3 that Hochul was negotiating amendments to the bill with the sponsors of the assisted suicide bill.
After Hochul signs the bill, the sponsors will have to introduce a bill in the new year to amend the legislation based on the agreement with Governor Hochul.
Mandi Zucker, the executive director of End of Life Choices New York stated in a letter to their supporters that:
We will also continue to advocate for changes to the law once enacted that will make the option of medical aid in dying more accessible to everyone.
I spent a day in the distasteful task of pouring through new medical homicide legislation from the State of Illinois, to see what the citizens of that State may now expect, and to find lessons for others.
Illinois has done nothing new with eligibility and process. The common limits of terminal condition, self-ingestion, and state-residency have all been maintained.
However, any relief felt on that account would be misplaced. For this new law is no less sinister for its familiarity.
Indeed, it is a great error to think only of the scope of choice allowed to those who seek death. We must also (and even more urgently) consider what has been taken from those who wish to live. To be perfectly clear: the only way for patients to enjoy real medical care, is for institutions to exclude medical homicide. But institutions in Illinois will no longer be able to do that. We can forget public institutions, of course. For these will all become MAID-compliant. But worse still, not even private institutions are now effectively able to protect their patients. For it is not enough to forbid the actual practice of medical homicide. It is also necessary to recruit and maintain teams of truly life-affirming professionals. And that is where the problem lies. Illinois law, is typical in this regard. It allows institutions to prevent their employees from practicing medical homicide, but only on their own premises, and only while working within the terms of their employment. Nor can these be prevented from contracting with patients, privately, to act outside of those bounds. Furthermore, nothing whatever can prevent death-biased professionals from raising the subject of medical homicide, under pretext of presenting all treatment options, according to accepted standards of care respecting informed consent. In other words, an institution may prohibit the actual practice of medical homicide on-site. But it cannot stop its employees from marketing that service to patients, nor even from contracting with them to provide that service off-campus. Also, in a specially perverse twist: Illinois statutes harshly condemn "coercion and undue influence", but does so equally, in regard to both steering people towards medical homicide, and attempting to steer them away. Finally, this effective ban on traditional medicine is made functionally universal, by a definition of regulated "health care entities" which includes every conceivable form of hospital, clinic, long-term care, palliative care, hospice, home-care or nursing service. Taken all together, we see that no patient, might ever reliably find any place, in the State of Illinois, where they might not be harassed --in their most vulnerable moments-- by doctors (and nurses) who are fully committed (and sordidly attracted) to the satisfaction of killing people. But even if such a patient were to find the care of a real Hippocratic doctor, that doctor's hands would still be tied from fear of being disciplined (or sued) for "undue" influence in attempting to help patients to continue living. This then is the lesson for other States considering similar legislation:
Libertarians beware! Death-medicine and Life-medicine are mutually exclusive. Medical homicide is not about providing a choice of death for some. It is about taking real medical care away, from all.
Previous articles by Gordon Friesen (Articles Link).
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition upcoming film - Life Worth Living - will be released in January 2026. Watch the powerful trailer for the 60 minute film.
This powerful film features:
Alicia Duncan, whose mother died by euthanasia with conditions based on mental health,
Kelsi Sheren, a Canadian military veteran who came back from combat with PTSD and other disabilities. Kelsi is a social media influencer and a life coach.
Roger Foley, a Canadian man living with a significant disability who has been pressured by hospital staff to request euthanasia.
Dr David D'Souza, an Ontario pain specialist.
Dr Catherine Ferrier, a Quebec Gerontologist and a leader of Physicians' Alliance against Euthanasia,
Dr Will Johnston, a Vancouver family physician and leader of Euthanasia Resistance BC
Kathy Matusiak Costa, Executive Director of Compassionate Community Care,
Alex Schadenberg, (myself), author, keynote speaker, International leader opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition needs your help.
Make a donation to enable Life Worth Living to be widely viewed. (Donation Link).
Arrange to have Life Worth Living shown in your community. Contact us at: info@epcc.ca
You may want a speaker at the event to lead a discussion.
Once killing the sufferer becomes a societally acceptable means for ending suffering, there becomes no end to the “suffering” that justifies human termination. We can see this phenomenon most vividly in Canada, because it is happening there more quickly than in most cultures.
For example, a recent poll found that 27 percent of Canadians polled strongly or moderately agree that euthanasia is acceptable for suffering caused by “poverty” and 28 percent strongly or moderately agree that killing by doctors is acceptable for suffering caused by homelessness.
Euthanasia mutates a society’s soul. I can’t imagine that being true ten years ago before euthanasia became legal.
This kind of abandoned thinking finds enthusiastic, albeit not unanimous, expression among secular bioethicists. In fact, two Canadian bioethicists just published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics — a prestigious British Medical Journal publication — arguing that “unjust social conditions” justify lethal jabs (euphemistically called MAiD, for “medical assistance in dying”). The argument claims that killing is a form of “harm reduction.”
The authors even admit such cases have already occurred legally in Canada. From “Choosing Death in Unjust Conditions: Hope, Autonomy, and Harm Reduction” (my emphasis):
In 2022, an individual in Canada, who had been diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), received MAiD. However, by their own description, their decision to choose MAiD was driven primarily by the fact that they were unable to access affordable housing compatible with MCS. While it was true that they suffered from an illness, disease or disability that caused ‘enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them and cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable’ as specified under the eligibility criteria of Bill C-14 [that recently expanded eligibility beyond death being “reasonably foreseeable], the primary source of their suffering was an inability to find appropriate housing, not the condition itself. Another person, also with MCS, writes: ‘I’ve applied for MAiD essentially because of abject poverty’.
Good grief. The patient in question is dead — not because of their medical but housing conditions. And doctors used the physical issues as pretext for justifying the killing as within the law!
The authors approve of allowing euthanasia for reasons of social injustice as a means of “harm reduction.” And in the context of medical issues, the authors claim that this includes killing patients who would not want to die if they could access proper treatment:
In the case of the availability of MAiD in Canada to people who not only might but have explicitly said they would choose differently if they had access to the options they preferred, we argue that the least harmful way forward is to allow MAiD to be available.
This, even though Canada’s socialized health-care system is in crisis:
Access to healthcare across nearly all dimensions continues to deteriorate in the wake of the pandemic even outside of long-term and palliative care, from basic care, to surgical backlogs, to a general consensus that the system is in a state of collapse. In this context, refusing options to people who autonomously pursue MAiD amounts to perpetuating their suffering, hoping that this will ultimately lead to a better, more ‘just’ world. This is a world that currently does not exist and is unlikely to emerge in the near future. Even if it did, it is unfortunately even more unlikely that the people whose current suffering has led them to request MAiD will realise its benefits.
So, socialized medicine fails, and a splendid answer to the problem for patients in need is euthanasia. Do you see now why I call euthanasia/assisted suicide “abandonment?”
The authors conclude:
We disagree with any claim that the unjust lack of choices available to people is alone sufficient to undermine their autonomy. Those who launch legal proceedings or request and receive MAiD are unlikely examples of people whose reduced opportunities have led them to lose all hope and motivation for pursuing personally meaningful courses of action. Moreover, neither a reduction of opportunities in itself, nor the existence of oppressive ableist norms, is sufficient to directly undermine autonomy…Restricting an autonomous choice to pursue MAiD due to the injustice of current non-ideal circumstances causes more harm than allowing the choice to pursue MAiD, even though that choice is deeply tragic.
Bioethics is growing increasingly monstrous. And that matters because these are the so-called “experts” who exert tremendous influence on our laws and regulations, in court rulings, over the attitudes of journalists, among the purveyors of popular culture, and, ultimately, upon public attitudes.
Moreover, Canada is our closest cultural cousin. If such a crass death-embracing attitude developed there so quickly with the legalization of euthanasia, it will happen here too — and, indeed, almost all state laws allowing doctor-prescribed death already expanded their guidelines. Which is why, if we want to follow the truly compassionate course, it is a matter of great urgency that we reject all further legalization of assisted suicide in the United States.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Alex Schadenberg
The Belga News Agency reported today that The Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics released an advisory report that supports euthanasia for people with advanced dementia.
Approval for euthanasia, which is killing a person by lethal poison, has moved from the terminally ill, to the chronically ill, to people with mental illness, to children and newborns and now to the incompetent.
Clearly The Belgian Advisory Committee have bought into a eugenic
ideology based on the belief that some human lives are not worth living, and can be killed.
The Belga News Agency reported that:
At present, someone with advanced
dementia cannot legally obtain euthanasia in Belgium. The current law
requires that a person be mentally competent when requesting euthanasia,
or that a prior living will or advance directive has been drawn up that
applies when the patient is in a state of irreversible loss of
consciousness – a coma.
This means
that people with dementia can currently only request euthanasia if they
are still sufficiently mentally competent. In 2024, 56 people with
dementia in our country received euthanasia.
The Belga News Agency reported that Patrick Cras, vice-chairman of the Committee stated:
“It is not a black-and-white assessment, but doctors do feel that
procedures for people with dementia have been carried out ‘too early’
because it will no longer be legally possible to do so later,”
The Committee therefore recommends extending the euthanasia law to
include people who “are conscious, but whose mental competence and
ability to express their wishes have been irreversibly impaired by
illness or accident.”
By extending euthanasia to people with advanced dementia, the concept of being competent and consenting is completely ignored. These decisions are based on a decision that some human lives are not worth living.
The new eugenics is similar to the old eugenics, except that the new eugenics cloaks itself in the language of autonomy and choice, even when autonomy and choice are impossible.
Van Alstine does not want to die by euthanasia, but she is unable to get the necessary surgery for her condition in Canada.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Jolene Van Alstine lives in Regina SK
Joe Warmington reported for the Toronto Sun on December 10, 2025 that Jolene Van Alstine, who lives in Regina Canada, was approved for euthanasia rather than surgery medical treatment for her condition, has been offered by Glenn Beck, an American political commentator, to cover the cost of her medical treatment in America.
Kelsi Sheren, recently reported in her article: Surgery Denied - Death Approved, that: Van Alstine, who suffers from a rare but treatable parathyroid disease, has applied
for MAiD not because she is dying, but because she can’t access the
surgery that would let her live.
Warmington reported that:
The Regina mom of a 25-year-old son tells the Toronto Sun she prefers Glenn Beck’s idea of getting her the much-needed surgery
stateside over dying. Time will tell if Van Alstine will be able to get
the medical help she so desperately needs thanks to the American
conservative media pundit who went to social-media platform X to offer
to pay for her travel to the United States if an American surgeon can
step up.
She has been offered some hope at living but knows there
are no guarantees. It was an up-and-down day for her on Wednesday.
Jolene was dealt a blow when a specialist in Atlanta said he didn’t
think he could do the surgery she needed.
That was the bad news. Then there was some good news.
“He did make a referral to someone in Florida,” Van Alstine said. “They
think they can do it. They have had difficult cases there before.”
Van Alstine told Warmington that:
no matter what happens with an offer to get her life-saving
surgery in the U.S., she will always be grateful to Beck for caring
about her.
“I greatly appreciate it. It’s an amazing offer and I can’t believe someone would do that,” the 45-year-old told the Toronto Sun from her hospital bed Wednesday night in Regina.
Warmington further reported that Van Alstine and her partner Miles Sundeen don't have passports and are trying to have their passports fast-tracked. Beck suggested that he may be able get approval for Van Alstine to enter the US through his contacts in the US government.
Van Alstine does not want to die by euthanasia (MAiD), she wants to receive effective surgery for her medical condition. Van Alstine is not the first Canadian to face this scenario.
Jennifer Brady
An article by Angela McIvor that was published by CBC News on September 18, 2024 reported that Jennifer Brady, who lives in Nova Scotia, was approved
for MAiD (euthanasia) after being unable to obtain treatment for
Lymphedema.
The good news is that an update to the story that was published by CBC News on September 18, 2025 explained that Brady won a 6-year court battle
with the Nova Scotia government and has received treatment in New
Jersey.
McIvor had to fight to be approved for treatment, but had no problem being approved for euthanasia.
Allison Ducluzeau
In December 2023 I published an article about Allison Ducluzeau
who lives in Victoria BC. Decluzeau was diagnosed with abdominal cancer
and offered MAiD (euthanasia) rather than treatment. she was
successfully treated at the Institute for Cancer Care at Mercy Medical
Centre in Baltimore.
Allison
Ducluzeau was offered euthanasia but not medical treatment. The
Ducluzeau story concerned the fact that she was suing the BC Ministry of
Health for the cost of the successful treatment that she received in
Baltimore.
The wedding picture of Ducluzeau was taken in Hawaii. After Ducluzeau went into remission she decided to get married.
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.
Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
Pritzger signing a bill.
I have terrible dark news.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has signed assisted suicide bill SB 9 into law. The law will go into effect on September 12, 2026.
Thank you to the many people who lobbied and shared their stories with the hope of preventing the legalization of assisted suicide. Your promotion of caring but not killing people will not be forgotten.
Let me be clear, legalizing assisted suicide is about poisoning people to death.
Assisted suicide Bill SB9 passed on April 9, 2025 by a vote of 8 to 3 in the Senate Executive Committee. SB9 stalled but restarted when the sponsor gutted the Sanitary Food Preparation Act (SB 1950) and replaced it with the assisted suicide bill.
It is ironic that a bill that enables physicians to prescribe lethal poison to kill patients was attached to a food preparation safety bill.
Once assisted suicide is legal, the assisted suicide lobby will work to expand the law. The original assisted suicide bill was designed to pass in the legislature. Once passed incremental extensions will follow.
It is possible that Pritzker only delayed signing the bill because he was scheduled to meet the Pope.
We will not stop working to prevent the killing of people at the most vulnerable time of their life.
Medicine at Michigan is a medical news magazine that reports on activities of the University of Michigan Medical School. The magazine recently published a list of 175 “stories” of its “leaders and best” doctors that were affiliated with or graduated from the medical school.
The doctors so honored offered tremendous service to the profession, such as the great pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, and the developer of the first polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk. But one of the listees — the late Jack Kevorkian — was a true villain and has no place being honored in any regard.
Jack Kevorkian
Kevorkian is listed under the section labeled, “Making a difference internationally” and “helping to serve the world.” This is how it begins:
“Dear Dr. Kevorkian, HELP! I am a 41-year-old victim of MS. I can no longer take care of myself. Being of sound mind, I wish to end my life peacefully . . .”
This letter from 1990 is typical of the correspondence received by Jack Kevorkian, who was the best-known advocate for physician-assisted suicide in the United States.
Yes he was. But let’s get real. Kevorkian had an unremarkable medical career as a pathologist. He wouldn’t be remembered at all but for killing or assisting the suicides (mostly, with carbon monoxide) of some 130 people during the 1990s
Below is the speech by Alicia Duncan at the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Press Conference on December 5, 2025 at the Parliamentary Press Gallery. The full video of the event. Alicia begins at 9 minutes 55 seconds.
Good morning. My name is Alicia Duncan, and I am here today as the daughter of Donna Duncan—who died through Canada’s medical assistance in dying regime, becoming the first MAiD death in history to trigger a police investigation.
A single moment changed the course of her life. A concussion in February 2020 marked the beginning of her mental and physical decline. Over the next twenty months, her symptoms worsened. She became anxious, depressed, and paranoid, turning to the medical system for answers. But test after test revealed nothing. Her weight was dropping drastically with no clear explanation—and with it, her hope of recovery.
When she brought her MAiD request to her longtime physician, he refused to assess her, believing she wasn’t engaging with treatment. But under the law, he was required to refer her to someone who would.
We would later learn from her medical records that she was consuming roughly 800 calories a day—so frail that the two clinicians who assessed her, nurse practitioner Shawn Young and Dr. Grace Park under the Fraser Health Authority, interpreted this as a “reasonably foreseeable” death. Her MAiD procedure was scheduled for two days later.
But my sister and I saw what the assessors did not, and in a last-ditch attempt to save her life, we provided evidence to a provincial court judge—who halted her MAiD appointment to allow for a psychiatric assessment.
When our mom learned her death had been postponed, she attempted to end her own life and was placed on a temporary involuntary hold in the very psychiatric unit she once managed. She had spent her career as a psychiatric nurse, caring for people in crisis. But when she needed care, psychiatrists deemed her capable—despite every indicator of the opposite—and released her, knowing she was returning home to pursue MAiD. Four hours later, my sister and I received texts from her common-law partner: she was gone.
There was no chance for a final conversation. We said goodbye to her frozen body in a crematorium, the IV used to inject the MAiD drugs still in her arm—inches above the incision from her suicide attempt days earlier. That image became the source of flashbacks, later diagnosed as post traumatic stress disorder.
In the weeks that followed, we searched for answers. What we found was a system with no mechanism for accountability. Her records were contradictory. Another recent overdose attempt had never been disclosed. Self-diagnosed conditions were written as clinical fact.
When we brought this evidence to the police, they opened an unprecedented investigation in Canada’s MAiD history. But Fraser Health refused to release the MAiD assessment records, even to investigators. The Privacy Commissioner upheld that refusal. The only person legally entitled to request the documents that might reveal whether her assisted suicide was lawful was my mother. And she was dead.
Her death compelled our family into advocacy. It has carried her story to the federal committee reviewing Canada’s assisted-suicide laws in 2022, where policymakers confronted the ethical terrain her case laid bare. And earlier this year, it carried that story into parliamentary rooms across the United Kingdom, where lawmakers are studying Canada as a test case as they consider legalizing assisted suicide there. What our family lived through stands as evidence of a law expanding faster than the safeguards meant to keep people safe.
Four years later, we still do not know whether the law was followed. Not because the truth is complicated, but because the system is designed to prevent families—and even police—from finding out.
Her case showed there is no requirement for a practitioner to verify a diagnosis for a MAiD assessment. No burden of proof. No consequence when errors end a life. No access to records. No appeal. There is no meaningful oversight.
And now, in fifteen months, Canada is scheduled to expand assisted suicide to those whose sole underlying condition is a mental illness. Yet leading experts warn: mental illness cannot be declared irremediable. There is no test, no scan, no metric that can say a person’s recovery is impossible.
Autonomy—the word we hear so often—does not survive in a system where the alternatives are untreated suffering, homelessness, poverty, extensive waitlists for specialists, emergency room closures, or disability payments that do not cover rent. Autonomy collapses when people are forced to choose between pain and death because care simply does not exist.
But consider this: if restricting MAiD is viewed as a violation of human rights, then denying Canadians timely access to care must also be understood as a violation of their human rights.
My mother’s life—and her death—reveals something we can no longer ignore: a country that cannot reliably provide care cannot responsibly provide death as its substitute.
In the coming months, MPs will vote on Bill C-218. If passed, its impact will be profound: it will permanently halt the upcoming MAiD expansion, sending a message that people living with mental illness deserve a meaningful standard of care.
To Canadians listening: your voice matters. Call your MP. Visit their office. Tell them what this issue means to you. Because if someone you love is ever in a moment of crisis and approved for MAiD—with no legal recourse to protect them—this moment may come back to you with a question you cannot undo: what if I had spoken up?
And to Members of Parliament: you are not casting a vote on ideology. You are casting a vote on whether mental illness is met with treatment and dignity—or with a state-sanctioned death…and whether stories like my mother’s become rarer, or more common.
History will not remember the talking points or the politics of this moment. It will remember the lives saved or lost because of the choice you made. If Canada is going to defend the right to die with dignity, then we must first defend the right to live with dignity.
Canada’s assisted-death regime has reached a point most people assumed was dystopian fiction and it’s doing so with bureaucratic calm. A woman in Saskatchewan, Jolene Van Alstine, suffering from a rare but treatable parathyroid disease, has applied for MAiD not because she is dying, but because she can’t access the surgery that would let her live.
Read that again. Not terminal. Not untreatable. Just abandoned by a system that has the audacity to call itself “universal.”
Her assisted death is scheduled for January 7, 2026.
And the country shrugs. Van Alstine described spending years curled on a couch, nauseated, in agony, isolated, and pushed past endurance. The disease is brutal, but treatable a surgery here, a specialist there. The kind of medical intervention that in a functional system wouldn’t even make the news.
But in Saskatchewan? There are no endocrinologists accepting new patients. Without one, she can’t get referred. Without a referral, she can’t get surgery. Without surgery, she loses her life either slowly through suffering, or quickly through state-sanctioned death.
If you’ve ever lived through pain that warps time… If you’ve ever had your mind hijacked by trauma… If you’ve ever stared down suffering with no end in sight…
You know how thin the line can get between endurance and surrender.
And that’s why this story hits differently: it reveals how fragile people become when the system meant to protect them becomes an accomplice in their despair.
Canada frames MAiD as empowerment. As compassion. As choice.
But choice is only real when the alternatives are viable. If your options are slow agony or assisted death, that’s not autonomy it’s coercion with a friendly tone.
Disability advocates, chronic-pain patients, the elderly, and low-income Canadians have been sounding the alarm for years: MAiD is expanding faster than support systems can catch up. Every expansion widens the chasm between the rhetoric of compassion and the lived experience of those who actually need help.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission itself warned that MAiD is being accessed because people cannot get the services required to live with dignity. And dignity matters. Anyone who has lived on the edge knows this: humans don’t just need survival, we need a reason to keep surviving.
When the healthcare system withholds that, death can look like mercy. This is the part polite society doesn’t want to confront.
Canada’s healthcare system is collapsing. Not strained. Not overburdened. Collapsing.
We have a growing list of citizens choosing death because medicine has become a lottery →
a quadriplegic woman who applied for MAiD because she couldn’t secure basic home-care support,
veterans offered MAiD instead of trauma treatment,
homeless Canadians considering MAiD because they can’t survive winter
And now a woman denied a simple, lifesaving surgery.
At some point, we have to call this what it is: a nation outsourcing its failures to death. I’ve sat with veterans who couldn’t find themselves inside their own minds after war. I’ve watched people suffer silently because bureaucracy didn’t move fast enough to keep up with their pain.
I’ve coached clients who were one dropped ball, one missed appointment, one shut door away from losing the will to fight.
The lesson is the same every time. People don’t break because they’re weak. People break because they’re left alone with their suffering.
Van Alstine wasn’t offered community. She wasn’t offered care. She was offered an exit.
And she took it.
Not because she wanted to die but because Canada didn’t give her any path to live.
We need to stop pretending this is compassionate. Compassion is presence. Compassion is support. Compassion is a surgeon who actually exists, a referral that actually happens, a system that catches someone before they fall into the dark.
If MAiD is going to exist, it must be the last, quiet, grave option not the discounted aisle Canada sends you to when the cost of real care is too high.
A society reveals its soul by how it treats the people who can’t fight for themselves. Right now, Canada is revealing something hollow.
People will debate the ethics of assisted dying forever. Fine. Debate it. But this is the wrong battleground. The real question is this →
What does it say about a country when death is easier to access than medical care?
Until Canada answers that honestly, we’re going to see more names on the calendar scheduled deaths, stamped and approved — for people who didn’t want to die. They just wanted someone to give them a chance to live.
Canada has failed every single citizen, and not a single person seems to care.
Speech by Tamara Jansen MP (Cloverdale - Langley City) in the House of Commons on December 5, 2025 in support of Bill C-218, the bill that she sponsored, to amend the law to prevent MAiD for Mental Illness alone in Canada.
Moved that Bill C-218, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr.
Speaker, I want the members to imagine someone's son. He is in his forties
and life has worn him down. He lives with a painful illness that leaves
him sick, exhausted and often unable to leave the house. On top of that,
he struggles with addictions, depression and anxiety, which have taken
more from him than anyone can see from the outside. Some days, he can
barely hold it together. He relies on his family for a place to live,
food and help getting through the week. They are doing their best, and
he is doing his best, but the weight of it is crushing.
One day, he finally meets a psychiatrist. He goes, hoping that this might finally be the start of real help. His addictions still have not been treated, and his mental health care has not truly begun. He is vulnerable, scared and hanging on by a thread.
At that appointment, instead of being offered a plan to get him stable, MAID is raised as an option. The assessment moves ahead, and before he ever receives proper support for his mental health or addictions, he is approved. His MAID provider is the one who drives him to the place where his life is ended. This is someone's son who needed help, not a final exit.
Believe it or not, this actually happened here in Canada, and this is where we are headed if we do not act. Unless this Parliament chooses a different path, Canada will allow MAID for people whose only condition is mental illness. That means men and women struggling with depression, trauma or overwhelming psychological pain could be steered toward death by a system that too often cannot offer timely treatment, consistent follow-up or even basic support. This is why I brought forward Bill C-218, the right to recover act. It is simple. It asks Parliament to stop, consider what we have learned and act responsibly before people are irretrievably harmed.
I often think of my grandparents, who immigrated here after World War II with very little. They chose Canada because it was a place where people had endless opportunities to better themselves, where neighbours watched out for each other and communities worked in unison to make a better life for all. They built a Canada where the vulnerable were cared for and the less privileged in society were valued and treated with equal care. Those fundamental values attracted millions of immigrants over the years.
Today, many Canadians fear we are losing those values. Canadians themselves remain some of the most compassionate people anyone will ever meet, but our system is overwhelmed, stretched thin and unable to meet the needs of people who are suffering.
When people fall through the cracks, the easy temptation is to accept that failure is inevitable. When that happens, people facing mental illness can end up alone, waiting months, or sometimes years, for specialized treatment, and when help does not come, they lose hope. That moment of hopelessness should never be treated as an opportunity for the state to end their lives through MAID.
When the House last debated MAID, mental illness was not a part of the core discussion. It was added in a last-minute Senate amendment to Bill C-7. The implications were not fully considered or understood by the House.
Since then, we have learned a lot more. Psychiatrists across Canada, including the chairs of psychiatry at all 17 medical schools, have told us plainly that there is no reliable way to predict when a mental illness is irremediable, which is a requirement in the MAID law. People get worse, but they also get better, and most do. There is no test, scan or clinical tool that can reliably tell us that someone will never recover. All people deserve the opportunity to get better. No one should be encouraged to give up on themselves.
As legislators, we need to listen to what so many medical professionals are telling us, which is how hard it is to distinguish between suicidal ideation and MAID. The feelings behind them, such as hopelessness, loneliness, fear and the belief that one is a burden, are the same. For decades, clinicians have understood that, when someone feels hopeless or sees themselves in a very negative way, it can look like they are thinking clearly, that they are rational, even when their judgment is clouded by despair.
In 2021, most of us did not have the evidence we now have about how MAID assessment functions in the real world or the specific dangers of expanding MAID to mental illness. We now know there is no reliable way to determine when a mental illness is truly irremediable. Suicide prevention experts, including the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, warn that how we talk about these issues shapes the choices people make. Suggesting that death is a solution to suffering undermines hope. It puts people at real risk.
The expansion of MAID to mental illness forces Canada into a huge contradiction. On one hand, we invest in suicide prevention. We train professionals to intervene, listen and pull back people from the edge. On the other hand, with the expansion of MAID, we would invite those same vulnerable people to consider state-facilitated death.
We must ask, who receives suicide prevention and who is guided toward MAID? If a person suffering from depression calls a crisis line tonight, do we encourage them to hold on or do we quietly redirect them to an assessor? What principle decides the answer? What medical test? What ethical standard? There is none. That is because the very feelings that drive someone to seek MAID, hopelessness, despair or the belief that they are a burden, are the same signals that every suicide prevention worker is trained to treat as a cry for help.
We would never tell a struggling teenager that their wish to die is rational. We would not tell a grieving spouse that their darkest moment is a reasonable exit point. We would reach out. We would support them. We would insist that their lives still matter. Why should that change simply because despair is given a different label? When someone feels worthless, our duty is not to agree with them. It is to stand with them until the light returns. Canada must decide: Are suicidal citizens people in need of protection or candidates for state-sanctioned death? We cannot pretend that they are both. Besides all this is the fact that we already know the current safeguards are failing.
Let us be absolutely clear about what an expansion of MAID to mental illness would mean. If Canada cannot protect vulnerable people under the current rules, then expanding eligibility to those whose very illness clouds judgment, hope and decision-making will lead directly to preventable deaths. We are already witnessing cases where safeguards fail, where capacity is misjudged and where people are assessed in moments of confusion, exhaustion or pressure. If the system cannot uphold basic protections now, it will not and cannot protect those suffering from severe psychological distress. An expansion would be reckless.
The evidence is already in front of us. A recent article about Ontario's MAID death review committee's findings lays out, in plain and troubling terms, cases that would worry every Canadian. They describe a man who had cancer. I will call him Bill. Earlier in his illness, he had briefly mentioned MAID, as frightened patients tend to do. By the time he was assessed, he was delirious, confused and heavily sedated. His own medical team made it clear that he no longer had the capacity to make major decisions, yet a MAID assessor shook him awake, took the faint motion of lips as consent, withheld sedation, obtained a rushed virtual second opinion and ended his life that same day. Bill was not stable. Bill was not capable. He did not understand what was happening.
In another case, a woman, whom we will call Margaret, wanted palliative care. She said so the day before her death, but she did not qualify for hospice. Her husband, worn down by caregiver exhaustion, arranged for an urgent MAID assessment instead. The day before she had told him she wanted to die with proper palliative support, but the next day two assessments were rushed through. Her final wishes were overshadowed by the strain of a caregiver who could no longer cope.
Another woman, whom we will call Alice, was living with advanced dementia and unable to communicate her wishes in any meaningful way. Her family brought MAID forward twice with minimal documentation, little clarity and no clear expression of consent, yet she was approved.
All of these examples were drawn from the auditor's report. These are stories about real people, who are family members, friends, neighbours and fellow citizens, the people to whom we owe a duty of care. They demonstrate that vulnerable Canadians are already at risk under the current MAID regime. People who are confused, pressured, exhausted or unable to communicate are slipping through the safeguards that were supposed to protect them. If safeguards fail for patients with physical illness, where assessing capacity is clear and verifiable, what will happen when the only condition is a mental illness which, by definition, clouds judgment and hope? To offer death at that moment will place some of the most vulnerable people in this country directly in harm's way.
Today, a person deemed unable to manage their finances must undergo rigorous capacity assessments, interviews, documentation, expert review, collateral information and verification because we recognize the risk of exploitation, yet for MAID, a situation of life or death, a brief conversation can suffice, with no thorough evaluation, and when the safeguards fail, there seem to be few consequences. We now live in a country where we protect bank accounts better than we protect a human life.
We also know of families across Canada that were deeply shaken by how MAID was carried out for a loved one. They describe decisions that felt rushed and were influenced by poverty, loneliness or a lack of access to proper treatment, not by a calm and informed choice. These experiences are warnings from the very people who lived through the consequences.
Canadians are uneasy. Polls show a clear majority do not support MAID for mental illness alone. Provinces are asking Ottawa to reconsider. They are calling for a stop. Quebec, one of the most permissive MAID jurisdictions in the world, has banned it by law.
International human rights experts have raised the alarm, including the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which has urged Canada to step back. It warns that our trajectory risks discriminating against people with disabilities and mental illness and recommends repealing this expansion entirely. This is what Bill C-218 would do.
We must remember a crucial truth, which is that recovery from mental illness is not rare, but common. Time and again, people who once felt utterly hopeless have rebuilt their lives once they received proper care and stable support. Every one of us knows someone, whether it was a neighbour, a colleague or a family member, who walked through a very dark season and is now grateful to be alive.
These stories matter because they show us what is at stake. Sadly, that is not true in every case, but there is no reliable way to know in advance who will recover and who will not. There is no test, no scan, no certainty. I respectfully suggest that, when someone's judgment is clouded by psychological distress, our duty is to offer treatment, protection and time, not an irreversible decision based on guesswork.
If MAID is expanded, we will be forced into an impossible paradox. A suicidal person calling a crisis line is urged to hold on, yet if they request MAID, that same despair may be treated as justification for death. This is why Bill C-218 is necessary. It would stop the 2027 expansion to mental illness because the evidence cannot support it and the safeguards cannot sustain it. Vulnerable Canadians are already at risk. Expanding eligibility now is reckless. A strong country does not turn its back on those who suffer, but believes in their future and gives them time and care to heal.
I urge every member in the House to support Bill C-218 so Canada would remain a nation that protects the vulnerable, offers treatment before despair and gives every person the chance to recover. Let us take this responsibility seriously. Let us listen to the warnings of those who are assessing the failures in the system. Let us listen to the families who have lived through the consequences of MAID and to those who survived mental illness and rebuilt their lives. Let us remember the kind of country we claim to be, one that protects the vulnerable and gives people the time, care and dignity they need to heal.
You may also want to read Tamara Jansen's speech in the House of Commons on Bill C-218 (Link).
Speech by Andrew Lawton MP (Elgin - St. Thomas - London South) in the House of Commons on December 5, 2025 in support of Bill C-218, the bill that is sponsored by Tamara Jansen MP (Cloverdale - Langley City) amending the law to prevent MAiD for Mental Illness alone in Canada.
Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise and speak to Bill C-218.
In less than a week (December 9, 2010), it will be 15 years since I almost lost my life to suicide. I overdosed. I was in the hospital for seven weeks. For much of it, I was on life support and had to be resuscitated multiple times. Over Christmas, my parents did not know if they would have me as their son, moving forward. It was the culmination of a very dark time in my life that spanned many years, a time in which I felt at multiple times, although not as seriously as I did that horribly dark and sad December day in 2010, that I would be better off dead than alive.
There are many reasons I am so proud to be standing here in this chamber, but one of them is knowing where I have been and where I came from and the fact that there was a time in my life when I never in a million years would have believed that I could ever have the life I have now: a career that I am proud of, an amazing wife whom I love so dearly, these tremendous colleagues and friends I work with every day, and this trust that has been placed in me by the people I represent. None of that would have been possible had I been successful when I attempted to end my life.
I think of my own experience and the experience of many others like me when I reflect on the fact that in just 15 months' time, someone who was in the place I was in 15 years ago will be able to have not only the state's permission but the state's help to end their life by suicide. In March 2027, the criteria for medical assistance in dying are expanding, so someone with only a mental illness, with no physical ailment whatsoever, will be eligible for MAID.
This is a profound expansion and a fundamental inversion of the message that we have spent so much money and so much airtime and so much effort and energy telling Canadians for years, through countless campaigns aimed at ending the stigma surrounding suicide; through more programming, funding and resources to support people with mental illness; and through campaigns telling people that they are better off alive, that they do have a future. They are efforts that we all extend in our own lives to those around us to give messages of hope to those who need it. To put a fine point on this, and to make it personal, because it is personal, if the laws that are coming into force in 15 months had been there 15 years ago, I would probably be dead right now. I say that with full gratitude that I am not.
I did not want to extend a cry for help. I actually had access to resources and treatment. I had a support system. I had a family who loved me. I had these privileges that so many others who struggle with mental illness did not have. Even with all of those available to me, I felt like there was no future. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel did not exist. I did not want to get better. It was not that I had not tried; I had not tried enough, clearly. However, I felt like I had done my time. I felt like I had put in enough effort to try to get better and when I did not, I had made my decision that I was going to end it. It was not impulsive; it was quite rational, actually. I decided it weeks out. Believe it or not, as silly as it sounds, I had it on my calendar, and I scheduled the day because I had appointments and meetings before it that I did not want to miss, as though that makes any sense at all, as though it would matter if I missed a meeting, given that I was planning on not sticking around.
This is how, when a person is struggling with mental illness, as I was so very seriously, it plays tricks on them. By design, a mental illness is a distortion of the person's ability to see clearly and think clearly about what they are in the midst of. It clouds their judgment. If I had ever gone to a health care worker and said, “I am planning to end my life,” they would have not just a moral but a legal obligation to stop me. They would have legal authority to detain me, because that is how sacrosanct it is that people have a right to recover, that they have a right to live and that medical practitioners must do no harm and protect them from harming themselves. We have a duty to help people.
I talk about my own story, and I have heard so many others like it. After my colleague from Cloverdale—Langley City introduced her bill, I launched the “I got better” campaign, in which I shared my testimony and invited Canadians to share their own. I would like to share some of those in the House today.
A lawyer from here in Ottawa said that they wondered if they would have used MAID if it had been available when they were in their darkest days, or if they would use it in the dark days yet to come.
A man reached out and said he struggles with personal family issues and mental illness. He has very bad days. He has tried attempting suicide before, and he is worried that he will not be stopped in the future if he has more of those dark days and MAID is available to him.
On a more positive note, a woman who was in an abusive relationship for 22 years and wanted to die said, “If MAID had been around then, I would not be here now, and I am damn happy it was not.” I will ask members to pardon the unparliamentary language. She continued, saying, “I am happy now. I have had a fantastic career caring for seniors. I have grandbabies and kids I love. I have a wonderful husband now who means the world to me.”
Another woman said she wanted to end her life many times, but looking back, she is so happy she has a life now where she is happier than she ever was before.
I will share one more about a woman who described two years of agony, with damage to her liver, hospitalizations, dozens of failed medications and a compilation of diagnoses without any real clarity, but she was given a second chance. She had been labelled as chronically unstable and told she had a poor prognosis, was unable to thrive independently and would likely revolve through the system for the rest of her life. She had attempted suicide several times.
There was one doctor who would not give up on her. As she said, “Recovery takes one person, not one pill. It takes one person who believes in you and forces uncomfortable treatment onto you for the sake of the future life that's awaiting you.” That woman went to university, became a social worker to help others, is happily married and, more importantly, is happy.
None of these stories could ever be guaranteed if we were to do what the government is doing in 15 months, which is to license giving up on people at their most vulnerable moments, at their darkest and lowest points.
Of those who die by suicide, 90% are people who have diagnosable mental illness. Physicians have testified before Parliament and its committees that suicide is often contemplated and planned over a long period of time by people who would very easily, as I am confident I would have, go to a doctor to make a rational, logical case that they have tried all of the treatments and they believe that they are better off dead than alive. There was a consensus among psychiatric experts who have testified and spoken about this elsewhere that there is no clear way to separate suicidal ideation as a symptom from a request for a health care practitioner to help in ending one's life.
Dr. John Maher testified before Parliament that 7% of those who attempt suicide die by suicide. That means that 93% of people who, at one or multiple points, want to end their life eventually get over that. The success rate of MAID is 100%. By design, this is a policy that will give up on people.
There are very few things in this chamber that we can say are genuinely life-and-death issues. This is one of them. A few weeks ago we saw that, in 2024, MAID accounted for 5.1% of the deaths in Canada. That is a 1,520% increase over 2016 when it became legal. We are seeing a massive expansion to people who, in the vast majority of cases, will get better. About 50% to 60% of people with mental illness will actually recover with no treatment, and that number is even higher for people who do have treatment available.
I would not be here today had I been successful. I would not be here today had I not gotten over the darkest, worst feelings of my life, which anyone could encounter. That is something I believe needs to be understood by those who believe this is an abstract question of legal theory and legal rights. These are real people. There are faces to this. If Bill C-218 does not pass, people will die. We have a right and a duty to stand up for those who need it. I will be proudly supporting this bill, and I thank my colleague so much for introducing it.
