DWD thinks they can control the narrative. Not anymore.

The following article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her Substack on January 14, 2026.

By Kelsi Sheren

This article was prompted by a public request from Dying With Dignity Canada (DWDC) asking me to remove a post for the sake of “accuracy,” citing an alleged impersonation.

The request itself is not the issue.

The issue is the assumption that an advocacy organization can quietly characterize me to media as spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation,” assume that narrative won’t reach me, and further assume that I don’t get a right of reply.

Organizations are free to disagree. Debate is necessary in a functioning democracy. Free speech still exists—at least it’s supposed to.

If someone is impersonating DWDC, that’s for them to deal with. That is not my concern here and not my problem.

What is my concern is an organization lobbying government to expand assisted death to the mentally ill and to so-called “mature minors,” while simultaneously framing families as “the greatest risk” to MAiD.

Families are not the risk.

Families are often the last line of resistance when systems fail, care is inaccessible, and death is offered faster than help. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it true—it just makes it convenient. When advocacy groups stop arguing their case openly and start managing critics behind the scenes, this stops being about accuracy.

It becomes about control.

What matters is how quickly the discussion moved away from engaging substantive concerns and toward managing optics — particularly when those concerns involved young people, psychiatric suffering, disability, and irreversible outcomes.

That moment clarified something essential:
The debate around Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada is no longer primarily about ethics or safeguards.

It is about narrative control, and we all know it.

That realization is the catalyst for what follows. Canada now operates the most expansive assisted-death regime in the world. This is not rhetoric. It is a matter of scope, speed, and institutional alignment. You can thank people like DWD who lobby our government for this expansion.

MAiD was introduced as a narrow, compassionate exception — end-of-life relief for people facing imminent death and unbearable physical suffering. Less than a decade later, it has expanded into a bureaucratic system capable of approving death for people who are not dying, including those with chronic illness, disability, and psychiatric suffering.

According to Health Canada:

• 15,427 Canadians died by MAiD in 2023, representing 4.7% of all deaths that year
• 16,499 Canadians died by MAiD in 2024
• 17,000 + Canadians died by MAiD in 2025 (waiting for final data) our rough estimate based on historical increase each year since legalization.
• 76,475 people have died by MAiD since legalization on record.
• 94,000 if we include 2025 data that hasn’t been released yet.

This is not a marginal medical practice. It is now a structural feature of how Canadians die.

Supporters often point to the fact that so-called “Track 2” MAiD — for those whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable — represents a smaller percentage of cases. That framing misses the point.

What matters is not only how many people die, but what is being normalized, and how difficult it has become to scrutinize that normalization.

MAiD did not expand because Canadians suddenly became more terminally ill.
It expanded because the systems meant to treat suffering failed — and MAiD filled the gap.

Policy enabled the shift. Narrative normalized it.

MAiD now operates in a country where:

Psychiatric care often comes with multi-year waitlists

Disability supports are fragmented and difficult to access

Pain management is inconsistent or unavailable

Housing for disabled Canadians is scarce

Crisis lines and mental-health services are overwhelmed

In this environment, assisted death is not a neutral option. It becomes the only reliably accessible intervention. Consent cannot be evaluated in a vacuum. When the alternative to death is neglect, autonomy becomes a fragile and contested concept.

This debate is not theoretical. It has names.

Alan Nichols - died by MAiD in 2019. After his death, his family testified before Parliament questioning whether he met eligibility criteria and whether his capacity and consent were properly assessed. His case raised a disturbing reality: when families believe something has gone wrong, there is no meaningful appeal mechanism. The challenge arrives only after death.

“Sophia,” a Toronto woman with chemical sensitivities, pursued MAiD after being unable to secure housing that would not worsen her condition. Her case became a public flashpoint because it exposed the uncomfortable truth that social failure can make death appear rational.

Her story forced a question that advocacy language often avoids:

Is MAiD still “choice” when life itself has become inaccessible?

Kiano Vafaeian - In December 2025, Kiano Vafaeian, a 26-year-old Canadian, died under MAiD.

Kiano lived with diabetes, vision impairment, and depression. According to his mother, he had previously been prevented from proceeding with MAiD and was actively seeking help. She has stated that in the final approval process, no meaningful effort was made to connect him with alternative treatment, family support, or long-term care. She alleges that his death was approved by a prominent MAiD provider, Dr. Ellen Wiebe, despite the fact that MAiD based solely on mental illness is not legally permitted until March 17, 2027.

His mother wrote that the system made no meaningful effort to connect him with treatment, family support, or other medical options before approving a lethal intervention — a haunting example of how vulnerability can meet death faster than care.

His death generated public alarm because it involved a young, vulnerable person whose suffering was shaped by both medical and social factors — the very conditions Canada insists are protected by safeguards.

These cases do not “prove” universal abuse. They prove something else:
When safeguards are largely procedural and accountability arrives late — or not at all — families become the final line of oversight.
Dying With Dignity Canada does not operate in isolation. It functions through a layered institutional structure that aligns advocacy, clinical authority, disability framing, fundraising, and communications. Responsibility for the MAiD narrative does not rest with any single clinician or staff member. It is organizational.

DWDC is overseen by a Board of Directors that determines advocacy posture, partnerships, and acceptable risk. This is where decisions are made about how aggressively MAiD expansion is pursued and how criticism is handled.

Boards do not write press releases. They authorize the posture from which those press releases emerge.

DWDC’s executive team and staff operationalize that strategy. Communications, donor engagement, public education, and media responses are handled by professionals whose job is to translate policy goals into moral language: choice, autonomy, dignity.

When DWDC requests content removal or issues public “corrections,” those actions originate here. DWDC maintains a Clinicians’ Advisory Council composed of physicians, many of whom are MAiD assessors and providers.

Among them is Dr. Ellen Wiebe, one of the most prolific and publicly visible MAiD providers in the country

This matters structurally. When high-volume providers also help shape public understanding and advocacy strategy, the line between neutral medical assessment and ideological momentum becomes blurred.

This is not an accusation of intent. It is an observation of institutional coupling.

DWDC also maintains a Disability Advisory Council, described as addressing “myths and misunderstandings” around MAiD and disability.

Structurally, this council functions as a legitimizing buffer. It allows the organization to claim disability inclusion while continuing to advocate for expanded eligibility, including non-terminal and psychiatric contexts.

Criticism can be reframed as misunderstanding rather than confronted directly.

DWDC presents itself as a civil-liberties organization advocating for choice and autonomy. In practice, it now functions as narrative infrastructure for MAiD.

The language is consistent:

• Compassion replaces consequence
• Choice replaces eligibility thresholds
• Autonomy replaces systemic failure

When advocacy becomes tightly coupled to state policy, criticism is no longer treated as disagreement. It is treated as a threat to legitimacy.

That is why responses increasingly take the form of corrections, requests for removal, or claims of misinformation, rather than open engagement with substance.

Institutions confident in their moral position invite scrutiny.
Institutions reliant on optics attempt to manage it.

Legacy media faces structural pressure when covering MAiD:

• Question MAiD and risk accusations of ableism
• Investigate approvals and risk accusations of stigma
• Platform critics and invite reputational backlash

The result is a predictable pattern:

Emotionally compelling terminal cases are highlighted. Psychiatric and non-terminal approvals receive limited sustained scrutiny. Critics are framed as ideological rather than empirical.

This creates a feedback loop:

Advocacy supplies the language →
Media repeats it →
Policymakers cite consensus →
Dissent is labeled misinformation.

At no point is the central question fully confronted:

What does consent mean when the alternative is neglect?

Requests to remove posts, public corrections without engagement, and appeals to “accuracy” that avoid substance are signs of narrative fragility — not strength.

Assisted death is irreversible. That alone demands a higher standard of scrutiny than Canada currently allows.

Canada has not yet decided whether MAiD is a last-resort medical intervention or a policy response to social failure. But the trajectory is obvious to anyone with two eyes.

A society that offers death faster than care is not compassionate.

It is administratively efficient and efficiency, paired with silence, is where real harm begins.

This conversation is not anti-choice. It is anti-denial. Free speech does not require institutional permission — especially when

the stakes are life and death.

KELSI SHEREN

Footnotes

1. Health Canada, Fifth Annual Report on MAiD in Canada, 2023 (15,343 MAiD deaths; MAiD 4.7% of all deaths).
2. Health Canada, Sixth Annual Report on MAiD in Canada, 2024 (16,499 MAiD deaths; 76,475 since 2016).
3. Health Canada 2023 report, Track split (Track 2 = 4.1%).
4. Health Canada 2024 report, Track split (Track 2 = 4.4%).
5. Court dispute reported re: 27-year-old approved for MAiD and capacity concerns.
6. B.C. injunction halting planned MAiD in contested eligibility case.
7. Reporting on “Sophia” case and housing/social failure context.
8. Alan Nichols testimony to Parliament and reporting on the case.
9. Justice Canada: mental illness sole underlying condition ineligible until March 17, 2027.
10. Health Canada news release on the delay and rationale.
11. “This doctor has helped more than 400 patients die. A judge just blocked one of her cases” The National Post
12. DWDC Maid for Mental Illness
13. DWDC For Mature Minors