Kiano (26) - Determined to be Killed.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Sign the EPC Petition Demanding a review of Dr Ellen Wiebe's euthanasia practice (Petition Link).

Rupa Subramanya wrote an insightful article about the death of Kiano Vafaeian that was published by The Free Press on January 26, 2026. 

Kiano was the 26 year-old Ontario man was killed by euthanasia by Dr Ellen Wiebe on December 30, 2025. Subramanya also wrote about Kiano in 2022 when he was first approved to be killed at the MAiDHouse euthanasia clinic in Toronto, but the killing was called off when his mother launched a campaign to save the life of her son, who was then 23.

Subramanya stayed in contact with Kiano making his death both tragic and personal. Subramanya wrote:

Marsilla had just learned that her 26-year-old son, Kiano Vafaeian, was approved for “medical assistance in dying” (MAID), Canada’s government-run assisted-suicide regime. He was blind, struggling with complications from type 1 diabetes, and living in public housing in Toronto. He also suffered from depression.

Vafaeian was not terminally ill—and did not need to be to end his own life. In Canada, MAID patients must show only that they have a condition that is “intolerable” and cannot “be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable.” These people often feel beset by enduring illness, unresolved social hardship, and other afflictions, all of which blur the line between medical suffering and the hardships of daily life itself.

Just to be clear, Kiano was partially blind and was being financially helped by his mother. Subramanya continues:

I met Vafaeian three years ago, after his mother accidentally found an email that laid out the scheduled date, time, and location of his assisted suicide—just two weeks before it was set to take place at a Toronto facility called MAiDHouse. Shocked, she called the doctor and pretended to be a woman seeking MAID. She recorded the conversation and sent me the tape. The doctor postponed Vafaeian’s scheduled killing, then said he wasn’t going through with it, without explanation.

Vafaeian was furious at his mother, telling me that she had violated his right as an adult to choose death. We stayed in touch for about two years, and he often talked about getting back at her. He also talked about coming to visit me in Ottawa, and I promised to track him down in Toronto someday. He was bright, curious, and funny, with a beautiful smile that immediately put you at ease. He also never gave up on wanting to die.

Subramanya explains how Canada legalized killing by euthanasia and she explains the incredible growth of euthanasia in Canada. She then interviews Dr. Sonu Gaind, a University of Toronto psychiatry professor. Subramanya writes:

When I told Gaind about Vafaeian and what he had been through, Gaind responded: “I’m not denying his suffering, but it doesn’t paint a picture of someone who is constantly suffering. That contradiction should trouble people.”

He said that Canada’s assisted-suicide system “has been set up so that if the person says their suffering is intolerable, assessors will say, ‘Who am I to question that?’ ”

Kiano recently re-applied for euthanasia, but this time his application was through Dr Ellen Wiebe in Vancouver British Columbia. British Columbia has the second highest provincial euthanasia rate at 6.7% of all deaths.

Subramanya continues by interviewing Kiano's mother:

Marsilla, his mother, told me that she thought her son was doing well. Their strained relationship seemed to be on the mend, and she set him up in September with a fully furnished condominium near her office in Toronto, including a live-in caregiver. Marsilla also drafted a written agreement promising him $4,000 a month in financial support. They went out for dinner to celebrate the plan. He signed the agreement, she said, and talked about moving in before winter.

Vafaeian texted her afterward to say that he was “looking forward to a new chapter.” He asked for help paying down his debts, and told his mother that he was saving her money so they could travel together. He flew to New York City to buy a pair of newly released Meta Ray-Ban glasses, praised by some people as a breakthrough for those who are blind. Marsilla was uneasy about him traveling alone, but he texted her photos and videos of the glasses. Then he admitted that he was afraid to use them, worried they wouldn’t work, and thought he had wasted her money.

Marsilla believed that her son was doing much better and then everything changed. Subramanya writes:

In October, she bought Vafaeian a gym membership and 30 personal training sessions, all of which he used. “He was so happy that he was working out and getting healthy,” she told me. Then, abruptly, he walked away from all of it: the condo, the caregiver, the money. “Something snapped in his head,” Marsilla told me.

On December 15, Vafaeian checked into a luxury resort in Mexico. On Instagram, he posted photos of himself posing with staff at the resort’s El Detalle restaurant—smiling, relaxed, and seemingly at ease. A concierge who remembered Vafaeian said that he seemed happy. He asked his mother to join him, but she said no. After two nights, he checked out and flew to Vancouver.

Three days later, a text message from Vafaeian to his mother delivered stunning news: He was scheduled to die by MAID the next day. He told his sister Victoria that if any family members wanted to be there when it happened, they should catch the last flight from Toronto. “We were obviously freaking out,” his mother told me. She said that she criticized him for “throwing this on us now—right before Christmas,” and then asked: “What’s wrong with you?

Marsilla tried to convince her son to go back to Toronto and to live. Subramanya reports:

Vafaeian said that her son told them he had asked for security to be present if they showed up at the MAID facility in Vancouver to try to stop him. She took it as a sign that he was wavering about ending his life. She thought the same thing when Vafaeian told his mother the next day that his assisted suicide had been postponed by “paperwork.”

Marsilla urged him to come home to Toronto, offered to buy him a plane ticket, and told him that she was praying for him and had Christmas gifts waiting. He refused. “No, I’m staying here. I’m going to get euthanized,” he said, according to Marsilla.

Marsilla learned later that her son was to be killed by Canada's notorious euthanasia doctor, Ellen Wiebe, who has been involved with some of the most controversial euthanasia deaths. Subramanya explains:

Wiebe has described assisted dying as “the best work I’ve ever done” and “incredibly rewarding.” I asked her what she meant when she said in 2018 that she provides “what is right up to the edge of the law, and never beyond, of course,” but “beyond where some providers would work.” She replied: “I have a very strong, passionate desire for human rights. I’m willing to take risks for human rights, as I do for abortion.”

Subramanya continued:

“No,” she replied without hesitation. Then she began talking about blindness, even though I had not mentioned it. “Just because it’s worth living for somebody who is blind doesn’t mean life is worth living for someone else who is blind,” Wiebe told me. How could she be so certain? She said: “We have long, fascinating conversations about what makes their life worth living—and how you make the decision when it’s been enough.”

Wiebe, who has used a wheelchair for 34 years, firmly rejected the argument that disability itself should not qualify someone for assisted death. “People will say quadriplegics can be happy, that their suffering isn’t intolerable,” she told me. “But the person themselves has to decide: Is this intolerable to me?”

Subramanya interviewed several leaders concerning Wiebe's assertions:

David Lepofsky, a blind lawyer and disability-rights advocate in Toronto, said that focusing on suffering rather than pain invites broad, subjective interpretations—and that the MAID process lacks any independent safeguards before death is delivered. “Blindness doesn’t cause pain,” Lepofsky said. “Millions of us live good, independent lives.”

Trudo Lemmens, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Toronto, met Vafaeian in 2022 at an event shortly after my article about him was published. The seminar was attended by physicians, MAID assessors, and policy experts. “The only reason that Kiano was alive when I met him is because his mother had the guts to go public, not because of the medical community that would have ended his life,” Lemmens recalled. “I was standing there, looking around the room, and thinking, This is dystopian.”

Ramona Coelho, a family physician and member of Ontario’s MAID Death Review Committee, said provincial oversight reports increasingly show in general that the person’s suffering appeared to be driven less by medical decline than by loneliness, social distress, and fear of the future. “Young people relapse, and they also recover,” Coelho told me. Allowing government-sanctioned assisted suicide “during periods of acute vulnerability risks mistaking transient suffering for permanent decline.”

Subramanya further interviewed Dr Coehlo.

Canada’s assisted suicide numbers are almost certain to keep rising. In Quebec, where such deaths now represent 7 percent of all deaths, a provincial law passed in 2024 allows people who have been diagnosed with dementia to preauthorize their future deaths once they lose capacity, even though such requests are illegal under federal criminal law. Quebec sidesteps this by declining to prosecute physicians who act under provincial law.

A parliamentary committee has recommended studying whether to extend MAiD eligibility to “mature minors,” Canadians who are younger than 18 but deemed capable of making their own medical decisions. Wiebe told me that she is shocked assisted suicide isn’t already allowed for “mature minors,” adding that any 17-year-old who went to court would almost certainly be approved under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“The only reason it has not happened,” she said, is that “nobody has asked.” Federal legislation has delayed MAID eligibility for adults whose sole underlying condition is mental illness until at least 2027 so that Canada can develop safeguards.

Subramanya then states:

Marsilla will probably never know exactly what happened after her son decided again that he wanted to die.

On December 30, Vafaeian went to a law firm in Vancouver to sign his will. He told the executor that he wanted the “world to know his story” and to advocate that “young people with severe unrelenting pain and blindness should be able to access MAID,” just as terminally ill patients can, the lawyer told me.

More stories about Kiano Vafaeian: (Articles Link).