By Kelsi Sheren.
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.”
CBC news article (Link).
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 →
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.
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.
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| Jolene Van Alstine |
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
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.And she took it.
She wasn’t offered care.
She was offered an exit.
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.
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