Alberta Bill 18 passed and will soon be law. More provinces need to follow Alberta's lead.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Alex Schadenberg

I have great news.

Alberta Bill 18 - The safeguards for last resort termination of life act passed on April 18, 2026 and it will soon be signed into law. You can tell by it's title that the bill will not stop Albertans from being killed by euthanasia but it does improve safeguards and it will prevent some deaths.

Bill 18 was introduced as Canada's federal government is once again debating euthanasia for mental illness alone. Below is the press conference with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith when Bill 18 was introduced.

What does Bill 18 do? Bill 18:

• requires the person to have a 12 month terminal prognosis, thus preventing Track 2 euthanasia approvals. Track 2 refers to euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill.
• prevents the expansion of euthanasia to people with mental illness alone, 
• prevents the expansion of euthanasia to "mature minors", people who cannot consent and prevent euthanasia by advanced request,
• prevents out of province referrals,
• requires the assessor to contact other practitioners who have cared for the patient, before approval.
• requires (MAiD) euthanasia practitioners to receive specific training,
• prevents health care practitioners from introducing euthanasia, without a request,
• requires Regulatory Colleges to sanction practitioners who violate the act.
• provides conscience rights by enabling practitioners to refuse to participate or provide assessments for (MAiD) euthanasia,
• enables institutions to refuse to participate or provide assessments for euthanasia.
• require practitioners who refuse to participate or provide assessments to provide information to patients wanting to access euthanasia.

The best improvement from Bill 18 is that it prohibits euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill by requiring the person to have a 12 month prognosis. Bill 18 also prevents health care professionals from introducing the question of euthanasia and it allows medical institutions to refuse to provide euthanasia, which protects palliative care and religiously affiliated institutions from being forced to provide euthanasia.

Now that Bill 18 will soon the law of Alberta, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition hopes that more provinces will introduce similar legislation.

Suicide, Assisted suicide or euthanasia

Alex Schadenbeg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I am speaking for 5 minutes to the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (euthanasia) on the evening (May 5, 2026). 

My presentation will focus on the outcomes of Canada's euthanasia law based on the language of the law.

This article is not based on my presentation but concerns Canada's euthanasia law and determining when counselling or aiding suicide, which remain illegal in Canada, become informing a patient that euthanasia or assisted suicide are a legal option?

The Criminal Code of Canada states:

Suicide: Counselling or aiding suicide

• 241 (1) Everyone is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years who, whether suicide ensues or not,

  (a) counsels a person to die by suicide or abets a person in dying by suicide; or

  (b) aids a person to die by suicide.

The Criminal Code provides an exception for medical assistance in dying which states:

• (2) No medical practitioner or nurse practitioner commits an offence under paragraph (1)(b) if they provide a person with medical assistance in dying in accordance with section 241.2.

• Exemption for person aiding practitioner

  (3) No person is a party to an offence under paragraph (1)(b) if they do anything for the purpose of aiding a medical practitioner or nurse practitioner to provide a person with medical assistance in dying in accordance with section 241.2.

The Criminal Code exception for medical assistance in dying is not limited. Section 241 (5.1) states:

Clarification

(5.1) For greater certainty, no social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, medical practitioner, nurse practitioner or other health care professional commits an offence if they provide information to a person on the lawful provision of medical assistance in dying.

Canada's Criminal Code essentially states that it is an offence to counsel, abet or aid a person to die by suicide, unless the counselling, abetting or aiding is done based on providing information for euthanasia or assisted suicide (MAiD).

Why is this important?

Fr Larry Holland

There are many stories of people who have felt coerced to request euthanasia.

For instance, a Catholic priest in Vancouver was asked (coerced) on two occasions if he wanted euthanasia. The first request was made by a doctor, the second was by a nurse. How often did the priest have to say NO?

I received a call from a family in British Columbia who were upset after their elderly father was asked five times if he wanted euthanasia. His wife asked:  

How do we get them to stop asking us if he wants MAiD?

Heather Hancock

Heather Hancock, who lives with Spastic Cerebral Palsy was pressured three times to request euthanasia. The third time happened while she was in a hospital in Medicine Hat Alberta. Hancock described the situation:

One nurse came to my bedside in the early morning hours before breakfast and asked me "to do the right thing and consider MAiD." Her next words still ring through my head... "if I were you, I would take it in a heartbeat. You're not living, you're existing!"

I replied, "I am not you, and you have no right to push me to accept MAiD. I will never accept it! My life has value and no human being has a right to say otherwise."

Then there was the case of the veterans affairs worker who suggested (MAiD) euthanasia to a veteran who was dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a traumatic brain injury. 

We don't know if the veterans affairs worker was a social worker or psychologist, nonetheless, there was no attempted prosecution, even though the veteran was not seeking MAiD and not happy to be offered MAiD.

In three of the four cases, the coercion was done by a medical professional, so even though these people felt coerced towards euthanasia, the law provided the medical professional with legal protection.

Garnett Genuis (MP) introduced a Private Members Bill C-260 to prevent coercion by non-medical staff. Whether this bill passes or not, Canada's Criminal Code clearly needs to be amended.

My concern is that Canada's euthanasia law is intentionally vague, it lacks definition and oversight. Further to that, the law gives medical professionals, who are willing to be involved with killing people, complete and total legal protection.

What about Kenneth Law?

Kenneth Law is a Canadian who sold a suicide poison kit online to as many as 1200 people world-wide. Law has plead guilty to multiple counts of aiding suicide. 

Based on a plea agreement, the Crown Prosecutor dropped the 14 counts of murder, that if convicted, would have resulted in 25 years in prison, for an agreement where Law plead guilty to aiding the suicide of his victims, a charge that would likely result in a 14 year sentence and after time served may result in 8 years remaining in his sentence.

Law is supposedly different because his poison kits were not oriented to Canada's MAiD law. Clearly we can see that Canada's Criminal Code needs to be clarified.

Even though I have concerns with the language of Canada's euthanasia law, my first concern is that we are killing people.

Canada's euthanasia (MAiD) law has been in place now for 10 years. There has now been more than 100,000 euthanasia deaths in Canada since legalization. 

The law is intentionally vague, it lacks any effective oversight and it is out-of-control.

Parliament needs to stop expanding Canada's euthanasia law and do a complete review of the law. Parliament needs to examine the language of the law and how the meaning of the language has evolved. Parliament needs to examine the practise of euthanasia and how the law has expanded far beyond its original stated intentions.

This article only deals with one of many concerns with Canada's Criminal Code. Canada's parliament needs to bring some sanity to the insanity.

Dementia Patients and Death by Intentional Undernourishment

This article was published by National Review online on April 30, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Last year, I wrote here warning about a bioethics paper that advocated restricting the amount of orally received food and water given to dementia patients, an intentional undernourishment approach that the authors labelled “minimal comfort feeding.”

Well, the idea of death by intentional undernourishment has now hit the big time in the popular media with a long New York Times piece telling the story of a dementia patient who died under that regimen. I expect it to spark a national conversation. (I make a brief appearance in the piece. The reporter, Kate Raphael, could not have been more cordial and presented my views accurately. Also, she offers plenty of objections from medical professionals, so this response should not be deemed a criticism of her work.)

The title of the piece asks: “She Didn’t Want to Live with Advanced Dementia. So Why Was She Being Kept Alive?” It quotes the daughter of the dementia sufferer:

“We were never interested in prolonging her life just for the sake of prolonging her life,” Ms. Hendrickson remembered telling the doctor. “We wanted her to just be happy and comfortable.”

The doctor, who was not employed by the memory care unit, had a suggestion. She had recently read a paper that put forward a new approach, called “minimal comfort feeding,” in which providers stop scheduled feedings and instead offer dementia patients just enough food and liquid to ensure comfort, and only when the patient shows signs of hunger or thirst. The idea was that someone with advanced dementia with no interest in food, or limited interest, might be allowed to die once they begin to refuse enough hydration and calories to sustain them.

We must be very clear here. The issue is not about patients who refuse hydration and calories or who have no interest in food, but of not providing as much sustenance as they may want: intentionally undernourishment. Indeed, the original bioethics paper offers this definition:

Minimal Comfort Feeding: Only as much food and liquid as necessary to avoid discomfort . . .

MCF is the provision of only enough oral nutrition and hydration to ensure comfort (Table 1). With MCF, eating and drinking is not scheduled; rather, caretakers offer food and liquids only in response to signs of hunger and thirst. Patients are neither wakened for regular mealtimes nor encouraged to eat or drink. Instead, they are offered frequent, fastidious mouth care, continued social contact, therapeutic touch, sensory distraction, and medications to relieve distress associated with apparent thirst or hunger before being provided with minimal amounts of liquid or food.

In other words, if the patient shows signs of hunger, kill the urge by medication (sedation?). If the patient still wants to eat, sufficient food and drink to sustain them will be withheld.

The ultimate point isn’t comfort but hastening death. Where a dementia patient might live years if properly nourished with scheduled meals, under MCF, the “time to death” is “weeks to months.” The original paper even suggests that surrogates be allowed to decide to slow-motion starve patients in the absence of a signed directive so requesting:

Therefore, oral nutrition and hydration sufficient to sustain life may be declined by the individual for themselves in the future via advance directive or, in the absence of an advance directive, via a surrogate exercising substituted judgement.

The issues presented by this question are easily conflated and confused, but distinctions are important in ethical deliberation. The following actions and omissions are not what we are talking about by supporting full nutritional support for dementia patients who willingly eat or ask for food:

• Forced feeding: This should never be done to a dying patient. When patients are dying — whether of cancer, dementia, or another malady — refusing sustenance is often a natural part of the dying process.
• Feeding tubes: This is a medical treatment that involves surgery and a medically constituted formula. As a medical treatment, it can be refused in an advance directive. In contrast, spoon feeding when a patient willingly eats is a form of humane care of the same category as keeping patients warm, clean, and turning to avoid bed sores. Traditionally, humane care cannot be withheld.
• Forced medical treatment: This entails keeping patients alive for as long as possible regardless of their desires. Dementia patients may already have DNRs placed on their charts, refuse antibiotics, kidney dialysis, chemotherapy, respirators, and other life-sustaining medical interventions.

There are other issues to consider. What would the impact on caregivers be if they could be legally required to refuse nourishment that a patient wants? I think it would drive many caring nurses and aides out of the industry.

What about the chances for abuse by greedy relatives who would benefit from an earlier death or by assisted-care facilities receiving government payments? And think about the temptations to discard the vulnerable in a society — while calling it empathy — that seeks to save medical resources. And how would defining dementia patients as killable affect their perceived inherent equality? The list could go on and on.

These are not abstract questions. I have up-close and personal experience with the dilemmas associated with terminal dementia, as my mother died from the affliction. Mom was receiving hospice support at my home. At one point, she refused all food and I thought it was the end — until Helen, her saintly Visiting Angel, brought her some canned peaches. My mother took one look, quickly scarfed them down and asked for more! She soon began eating other meals too, particularly enjoying bowls of cereal. “This is delicious!” she repeatedly exclaimed. In other words, the joy of eating what she wanted, and as much as she wanted, brought her greater comfort than would have medicating her to deprive her of proper sustenance.

“Minimal comfort feeding” is just a euphemism for slow-motion euthanasia. If allowed, it would eventually lead to cases where advanced-stage dementia patients are getting lethally jabbed — all in the name of even greater “compassion” and “comfort,” of course. Do we really want to go down that path?

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

Note: We regularly receive calls from family members who have a loved one who is living in a hospital or care home with dementia and are often being pushed to withhold or withdraw food and fluids. Withholding or withdrawing food is discouraged but less concerning than withholding or withdrawing fluids. Death by dehydration happens within 10 - 14 days while death by starvation takes a long time. We encourage people to maintain small amounts of nutrition and hydration, enough to maintain the human body, but not so much as to cause problems.

We believe that one should never cause death, but enabling natural death is encouraged. There can be a difficult question when someone is approaching the terminal phase but not yet dying. When someone is not dying, the reason for withholding or withdrawing food and fluids is to cause death by dehydration. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition considers intentional death by dehydration to be ethically the same as euthanasia, but is a slower process with the same outcome.

Assisted suicide is not the compassionate answer.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Stephen Ward

Dr. Stephen Ward who is an internist and a practicing primary care physician for 16 years in Cheshire CT responded to the CT Mirror who published an editorial supporting assisted suicide on April 15. Ward responded with - Assisted suicide is not the compassionate answer.

As a physician myself, assisted suicide contradicts the physician’s most basic calling, to provide cure and hope for the patient. The prescription is no longer aimed to prolong life and delay death. Instead, death is the treatment.

Dr Ward comments on the editorial article emphasis on autonomy and writes:

What is portrayed as “choice” will be in reality closer to coercion. When life sustaining care is expensive and inaccessible, “choice” becomes limited. Assisted suicide becomes a cheaper alternative to years of expensive medical care and disability accommodations.

Dr Ward comments on healthcare cost containment and states:

The state would rather pay for your early exit than life-sustaining care. What an egregious message to send to our loved ones, neighbors, and friends.

Dr Ward then responds to the assurance that "safeguards" will protect you by stating:

However, in the tragic case of Eileen Mihich, every safeguard failed in Washington state, a state where assisted suicide has been legal for 17 years! Eileen suffered from serious mental illness, she was not a Washington resident, no doctor verified she was terminally ill, and no waiting period was enforced. Eileen was able to access assisted suicide drugs while side-stepping every safeguard. This can happen again to someone else’s daughter, sister, or friend.

Dr Ward then comments on attitudes that promote assisted suicide.

Unfortunately, misguided notions of “quality of life” means freedom from suffering in the name of a false compassion. This is a violation of patient autonomy. Yet assisted suicide celebrates despair as freedom to choose. The terminally ill and chronically infirm are among the most vulnerable in society and deserve legal protection. It is not the role of government to determine who does or does not have more human value than others.

Dr Ward completes his article by stating:

Yes, Connecticut is a state that leads in quality patient-first centered care. Let’s keep it that way. Connecticut should focus on expanding access to hospice and palliative care, not intentionally ending another human’s life.

Connecticut has faced assisted suicide bills nearly every year for almost 15 years.

Connecticut legislators need to listen to Dr Stephen Ward and continue to protect their citizens from assisted suicide.

Defeat of ‘dangerous’ UK assisted suicide bill is just a pause in our fight, say disabled opponents

This article was published by Disability News Service on April 30, 2026.

By John Pring

Disabled campaigners have warned that pressure to push through legislation to allow assisted suicide is sure to continue, even though the “dangerous” and deeply-flawed terminally ill adults (end of life) bill has run out of parliamentary time.

Those supporting the bill in the House of Lords repeatedly lashed out at disabled campaigners and allies who they blamed for blocking the bill, when it was debated for the final time in the House of Lords on Friday.

Because the current parliamentary session ended yesterday (Wednesday), the bill can now not become law, although it is highly likely to be brought back before parliament in the next session, which begins next month.

Disabled peers and others who suggested multiple amendments aimed at fixing the legislation’s many flaws have faced months of attacks in the Lords and the media accusing them of trying to block the legislation by “filibustering”.

Those attacks continued in a bad-tempered final debate on Friday, with the bill’s sponsor in the Lords, Labour’s Lord Falconer, and pro-legalisation colleagues, repeatedly attacking a “small minority” of peers who they accused of blocking the bill.

Lord Falconer said he was “despondent” that the bill had failed due to “procedural wrangling”, and said the Lords had “let down” terminally-ill people, while he later described the day’s debate as “horrible” and suggested opponents were responsible for that.

The disabled crossbench peer Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson, one of the peers who has been targeted by Lord Falconer for her attempts to address flaws in the bill, told fellow peers that many of the amendments she had put forward had been suggested by disability organisations, including disabled people’s organisations, and “disabled individuals who are very worried about the reality of the bill”.

She said: “This bill has failed because there are too many gaps in it.”

And she said the fact that Lord Falconer had himself tabled 76 amendments “shows that there is not the confidence that this bill is safe”.

She said: “We have heard much debate today about the damage to [the House of Lords], but I have had thousands of emails to thank us for what we are doing here to unpack the danger that is in the bill.

“I am very clear on my role. It has not been pleasant to sit here and be targeted by so many people who say that we are doing a bad job, but our job is to protect everyone in British society, and this bill does not do that.”

Baroness [Jane] Campbell, another disabled crossbench peer who has been accused of blocking the legislation, said the number of peers who had taken part in debates on the bill “reflects deep and genuine concerns shared by NHS doctors, human rights bodies and disability organisations about the risks this legislation may pose to the most vulnerable”.

She said: “I have long supported autonomy for disabled people, but autonomy without protection is not freedom – it is risk.

“When the outcome is irreversible, that risk must be treated with the utmost seriousness.”

She said that organisations with concerns about the bill’s safety included the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, disability organisations, and the human rights organisation Liberty.

Baroness Campbell added: “Disabled people who have contacted me are very clear: this bill frightens them, and they want me to explain to your lordships why it is dangerous for them.

“They fear unequal access to care shaping their choices, subtle coercion that cannot be easily detected, error in prognosis, persistent assumptions about the value of their lives and a system already under strain being asked to deliver decisions of the utmost gravity.”

And she said it was clear that more work was needed before the bill could be considered safe.

She said: “If the bill is to proceed, it must clearly demonstrate that it can protect those in highly vulnerable situations while respecting the wishes of those it is intended to serve.

“At present, it does not meet that test.”

Not Dead Yet UK, the campaigning organisation that fights attempts to legalise assisted suicide, and which was founded by Baroness Campbell, welcomed the “pause” in the continuing push for legalisation, but warned that the bill would return to parliament.

Phil Friend, convenor of Not Dead Yet UK, said he and fellow campaigners were grateful to the peers who had scrutinised the bill so thoroughly and “found some very serious problems”.

He said: “Many of them were publicly labelled as enemies of democracy – denounced in rallies, criticised in open letters, their constitutional role dismissed as deliberate obstruction.

“Baroness Jane Campbell, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Baroness Ilora Finlay and others did their jobs.

“They took disabled people’s concerns seriously. They deserve our thanks, not our condemnation.

“And we, as disabled people, find it abhorrent that individuals were personally attacked simply for listening to us.”

Friend said the pressure to change the law “will not stop”.

He said: “We knew this was always going to be a long campaign. That hasn’t changed.

“We go into the next battle with stronger networks, a developing strategy, and a growing community of disabled people and allies who understand what is at stake.”

Picture: Members of NDY UK and parliamentary allies in March last year, including Baroness Grey-Thompson (front row, second from right)

Canadian psychiatrists: No to Euthanasia for Mental Illness.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Nancy Macdonald and Kathryn Blaze Baum (the authors) report in the Globe and Mail on April 30, 2026 stating that:

The heads of psychiatry at 13 Canadian medical schools are calling on the federal government to halt the expansion of assisted dying to people whose sole condition is mental illness.

In March 2021 (Bill C-7) Canada's parliament extended (MAiD) euthanasia to people who are not terminally ill and parliament extended euthanasia to people with mental illness alone. At that time parliament delayed the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness alone until March 2023. Euthanasia for mental illnes alone was later delayed again and is now scheduled to begin on March 17, 2027.

Canada's parliament appointed the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) to make discuss the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness in March 2027.

The authors of the article report that a letter sent to the AMAD committee from the heads of psychiatry states that:

there is no accurate way to determine when a mental disorder is incurable, no way to distinguish between suicidality and a MAID request, and no way to adequately protect vulnerable patients.

The authors of the article further reported that the letter states:

“People can and do recover from prolonged suffering related to mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and substance use when provided with appropriate, evidence-based treatments and supports,”...

Based on the current guidance, they add, patients in underserved areas may “receive MAID rather than evidence-based care.”

“We strongly recommend an indefinite pause on expanding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) to include mental disorders as the sole underlying medical condition.”

The 13 signatories are not asking that euthanasia for mental illness be delayed, but rather they are asking for the provisions to be stopped. The authors of the article report:

One of the letter’s signatories, Jitender Sareen, the head of the University of Manitoba’s psychiatry department, said his colleagues are asking the government to stop the expansion.

“The main point is that we don’t think that in two years or five years we’ll be able to resolve this,” he said.

Dr. Sareen, who has 25 years of experience as a psychiatrist, including treating marginalized patient populations, noted that he signed a similar statement by department chairs in 2022, calling for a delay in expanding MAID to cover mental illness. “Many of our concerns have not been addressed.”

Chief among them, he said, is that there is no broadly accepted definition of irremediability — meaning the patient’s suffering can not be improved — in mental disorders and that there is no accepted mechanism for distinguishing suicidal ideation from MAID requests.

Dr. Sareen, who is also the co-chair of the Manitoba Provincial Psychiatry Council, said that psychiatrists in that province have asked its legislature to exclude mental illness as a sole basis for accessing MAID.

Karin Neufeld, the chair of McMaster University’s psychiatry department and signatory to the written brief to the parliamentary committee, said many of her peers are convinced there is no way to fix “the two fundamental problems” related to irremediability and distinguishing between suicidal ideation and a MAID request.

Alex Schadenberg will be presenting to Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) on Tuesday, May 5.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition hopes that Joint Committee on euthanasia will stop the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness alone and also order a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law.

“Club Sandwich Mayonnaise” a play about Quèbec euthanasia.

All the World's a Stage! 

By Gordon Friesen
President: Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

We have some very good news to report, from the cultural front, in the Province of Quebec.

This good news concerns the recent production of a stage play which might not actually condemn --but does seriously criticize-- the practice of medical homicide in that Province.

The arrival of “Club Sandwich Mayonnaise”, by Manuelle Legare, is encouraging for a number of reasons.

First of all, this is not a marginal production.

Mme. Legare is the daughter of local performance icon Pierre Legare, and was thus born into the Quebec cultural aristocracy, a status which she has successfully built upon through her own efforts in television and documentary cinema.

Furthermore, the participating dramatic production company, Porte Parole, was the first group to pioneer what has become the dominant Quebec stage formula, of 'dramatic documentary', and remains a leading reference in this style.

For these reasons, the Quebec opinion establishment have had no choice but to take this phenomenon seriously. And they have done so in spades. For after each (sold out) performance from April 8 to 18, leading authorities were on hand to participate in audience question and answer sessions, beginning, on opening night, with none less than Véronique Hivon, herself, the veritable Queen of euthanasia in Quebec, political Godmother, and author, of the original “Law Concerning End of Life Care”.

In terms of Quebec politics and society, this is a big deal.

Quebec does not have the same sort of litigious, political division seen elsewhere. All Quebec politicians, journalists, and influencers share certain crucial positions which they consider as universal social "consensus", and which it is assumed that no "serious" thinker might oppose. These currently include: an eternal resentment for Quebec's previous conquered status within the British Empire, certain extreme views on religion (or fossil energy) and most recently: an unfailing support of medical homicide.

Indeed, author Manuelle Legare states that the dramatic stage has become the only remaining public space in which any questioning of the medical homicide consensus might still be permitted.

However, as history shows, apparent (and rigorously enforced) unanimity of opinion often blocks the evolution of real and necessary criticisms, which subsequently explode in peoples faces. And it is this fact which explains the enthusiasm of both pro, and anti, medical homicide factions in embracing Club Sandwich Mayonnaise along with the indirect opportunity of discussion which it provides.

For the first time, after ten years of lockstep support, it would appear that there is at least some political willingness to entertain the thought that mistakes might have been made, or failing that, to concede that some small improvements might be desirable to limit unforeseen harms.

Returning to the author's description of her own intentions: Mme Legare lends official credence to the consensus belief in medical homicide as "social progress", but then speaks of "blind spots in the mirror", which in her case meant the profound psychological distress of hearing her father joke, one day, that he could order up his death as easily as "a club sandwich with mayonnaise", and then actually seeing his corpse laid on a slab, 48 hours later.

This, in short, is the sort of personal experience --implying enormous social rupture-- that no political "consensus" may prevent its partisans from questioning. And it is also a glimpse into the bottomless social abyss that so many of us have been warning against from the beginning.

To be realistic, of course, there is no scenario, whatever, in which one might imagine Quebec decision-makers ever showing sufficient humility to actually admit that they were simply wrong about the practice of medical homicide. And it may well be that pro-euthanasia forces will succeed in co-opting this first criticism as a positive opportunity of "healthy" adjustment. However, a definite breach in messaging unanimity has indeed been made.

As our ally Catherine Ferrier, President of the Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia has described it:

"... all came out in the play. Rushed assessments, lack of access to other options, psychosocial suffering, priority of MAID over palliative care, etc. It mentioned the opposition of disability groups and the UN recommendation against MAID for people not at the end of life."

In short, the public airing of such concerns, in the undisputed ‘Belly of the Beast’ of Canadian euthanasia, can only be a good thing. And although the wheels turn slowly, and although no open admission of error will ever be made: Quebec politicians have also shown themselves to be extremely adroit in making 180 degree policy changes while firmly pretending to stay the course.

Let us all hope that we will eventually see that skill masterfully displayed, with regards to medical homicide.

Canada and Euthanasia for Eating Disorders.

Alex Schadenberg

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I have been busy with speaking engagements, so I didn't report on all of the important issues. While going through my emails I found an article by Frank Bergman that was published by Slaynews on April 15, 2026. 

Bergman's article concerns a psychiatrist who presented to the Special Joint Parliamentary MAiD Committee that is examining the issue of euthanasia for mental illness alone. Euthanasia for the sole criteria of mental illness is currently scheduled to begin in Canada on March 17, 2027.

Dr Mona Gupta and MP Andrew Lawton

Psychiatrist Mona Gupta stated during the committee hearing that euthanasia would be permitted for people with eating disorders. Bergman reports:

The disturbing exchange took place during a Special Joint Parliamentary Committee hearing on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

During the hearing, a psychiatrist suggested that even non-terminal mental health conditions could qualify someone for taxpayer-funded, state-assisted death.

During questioning, Conservative MP Andrew Lawton pressed Dr. Mona Gupta on whether individuals with depression or eating disorders should be eligible for euthanasia.

“It depends on the circumstances of the person,” said Gupta, a psychiatrist and professor at the University of Montreal.

Lawton followed up directly: “So it could?”

“Potentially,” Gupta admitted.

So let's be clear. People living with eating disorders are experiencing difficult conditions, but these are treatable conditions.

On August 1, 2024, Eat, Breathe, Thrive published a Joint Statement Against Assisted Suicide for Eating Disorders that was signed by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

In June 2024 the Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) approved a statement clarifying that Anorexia Nervosa is not a terminal condition.

In October 2023, a group of psychiatrists published a research article explaining why Anorexia does not justify Aid in Dying.

Euthanasia provides death and eliminates hope. People need hope to recover. Euthanasia is abandonment not compassion.

Canada requires doctors to not list euthanasia as the cause of death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On April 23, I republished an article by Wesley Smith concerning a US Senate committee hearing whereby Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) asked HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about assisted suicide. Kennedy said assisted suicide is abhorrent. (starting at minute 3:30).

Smith's article corrected Kennedy who mistakenly stated that euthanasia was the No. 1 cause of death in Canada. Smith wrote that:

It is the fifth, with some 16,000 people being killed by doctors — and rising — each year.

Marissa Birnie was published by The Canadian Press on April 28, 2026 stating that Robert F. Kennedy Jr's statement was false, but the article inadvertently points out how Canada's euthanasia (MAiD) law lacks effective oversight by requiring that euthanasia not be listed as a cause of death. Birnie reports:

MAID does not appear on the list because it is not listed as a cause of death.

Statistics Canada codes and classifies causes of death in line with a system created by the World Health Organization, which records deaths according to their underlying cause.

The World Health Organization death reporting system is based on the fact that very few countries have legalized euthanasia.

Birnie points out that cancer is the most common reason for someone to be killed by euthanasia in Canada.

When patients die through MAID, the cause of death is coded to match the health condition that led them to seek MAID, Statistics Canada notes. Cancer was the most frequently reported underlying medical condition among Canadians who received MAID, accounting for 63.6 per cent of cases among patients whose death was reasonably foreseeable.

Birnie writes that Health Canada does not consider euthanasia to be a cause of death.

“The number of MAID provisions should not be compared to cause of death statistics in Canada in order to determine the prevalence (the proportion of all decedents) nor to rank MAID as a cause of death,”

But euthanasia (MAiD) is the cause of death. A person may have asked to be poisoned to death based on a medical condition but they are not required to attempt effective treatments before being killed by euthanasia in Canada. 

Canada also approves (Track 2) euthanasia for people who are not terminally ill but rather have a "grievous and irremediable medical condition" which means they have a disability. 

For Track 2 euthanasia deaths, the cause of death is always MAiD or death by lethal poison.

Further to that there are studies showing how people who are killed by euthanasia may have a treatable condition but forego effective treatment and are killed by euthanasia.

In the Netherlands euthanasia is considered a "last resort", even though doctors will ignore that requirement. In Canada terminal condition is not dependent on whether or not the condition can be effectively treated because there is no requirement to even attempt effective treatments.

Another factor is that (MAiD) euthanasia is not listed on the death certificate. Research in the Netherlands indicates that approximately 20% of the euthanasia deaths are not reported. When a person is killed by euthanasia, the doctor will sometimes fail to send in the required report to the Netherlands oversight commission. Some doctors do not report their euthanasia deaths as they consider it to be a private act.

The same could be happening in Canada except that the Canadian government has not commissioned a neutral research study to determine how Canadians are dying.

Therefore, if a Canadian doctor does not submit the required report to the Provincial oversight body and since the death certificate does not indicate that MAiD was the cause of death, therefore it is nearly impossible to know how many euthanasia deaths go unreported in Canada.

The death certificate needs to be accurate to assure at least a reasonable level of oversight exists when a person is poisoned to death by euthanasia.

Previous articles on this topic: (Read the articles).

Under reporting of euthanasia: (Read the articles).

A psychiatrist told parliament committee that depression qualifies for MAiD

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on April 27, 2026.

April, in front of Canada’s Special Joint Parliamentary Committee on MAiD, a psychiatrist said the quiet part out loud.

Dr. Mona Gupta former chair of the federal Expert Panel on MAiD and Mental Illness testified before the committee between March 25 and April 2026. When Conservative MP Andrew Lawton asked directly whether depression or eating disorders could qualify someone for assisted death, she replied: “It depends on the circumstances of the person.” That’s it, that’s the answer.

Dr Mona Gupta

Not a no, not a “those conditions fall outside the eligibility framework.” Just it depends. Let me tell you what that answer means in practice, i means the most common mental health diagnoses in this country the ones your kids have, your coworkers have, the ones millions of Canadians are managing right now are being actively contemplated as qualifying conditions for state-assisted death and the federal government’s own hand-picked expert couldn’t rule it out.

This wasn’t a fringe voice. This was the person Ottawa chose to lead the expert panel reviewing whether Canada is ready to expand MAiD to mental illness and her testimony was effectively yes, maybe.

The law currently excludes MAiD where mental illness is the sole underlying condition. But only until March 17, 2027. That date has already been pushed back twice…... Not because the government changed its mind but because it needed more time to get ready.

A committee of 10 MPs and five Senators is currently studying the question. The expansion has been delayed twice in the last three years..they’re not studying whether to do it, they’re studying how.

Here’s what the psychiatric community has actually said the people who treat these patients, not the people who administer death. The Canadian Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the Society of Canadian Psychiatry have all said irremediability cannot be reliably predicted in psychiatric conditions. Eating disorders show long-term remission rates of 50 to 70 percent with appropriate care. Fifty to seventy percent with care.

We’re not offering that care. Wait times for psychiatric services in this country are unconscionable. Beds don’t exist. Therapists are inaccessible. The system is broken and underfunded and everyone knows it, but we’re preparing to offer assisted death to the people falling through its cracks.

Official 2024 figures show 16,499 MAiD provisions across Canada 5.1 percent of all deaths. Track 2 cases for people whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable numbered 732, a 17 percent increase from the previous year. 17 percent increase, in one year, for people who weren’t dying and now the next frontier is people who are depressed, and let’s be very uncomfortably honest here. Have you seen the state of Canada?! Of course young people are depressed!

I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it, this isn’t about autonomy. Autonomy requires real options. You can’t call it a free choice when someone is suffering, broke, on a waiting list, and the system hands them a pamphlet for death. That’s not autonomy. That’s a system that decided their life wasn’t worth the cost of fixing.

The parliamentary committee has been asked to complete additional review steps before the 2027 expansion proceeds, reflecting concern about safeguards and implementation readiness.

“Implementation readiness.” That’s the language. Not “is this the right thing to do.” Just are we ready to do it.

They’re not asking the right question and nobody in that committee room is being asked to answer for the people who will die because of their non-answer.

I’m asking. Because someone has to and there is a reason why people like me are not asked to testify on this committee and it’s because myself and others have healed from the same issues their trying to kill you for.

Dr John Maher: Death is being falsely presented as the only option.

The official text of the presentation by Dr John Maher on MAID for mental illness at AMAD Hearings, April 21, 2026.

Dr John Maher

Merci beaucoup pour l’invitation.

I am Chief of Psychiatry at an Ontario hospital, a medical ethicist, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, and president of both the Ontario and global associations of tertiary care ACT teams who take care of the very sickest mentally ill patients.

For the last 23 years I have treated patients that other psychiatrists told me could not get better…and yet they get better. Suffering can always be reduced. With dozens of validated psychotherapy modalities, hundreds of medication combinations, and myriad psychosocial interventions there is absolutely no such thing as “everything has been tried” despite what some patients say, and despite what some psychiatrists who lack skill, knowledge, or perseverance say. Death is being falsely presented as the only option.

You seek my evidence because I have particularly relevant experience and knowledge. How do you know who is right when my statements conflict with others? Tragically, ableism and stigmatization are never defeated because of clear logical points made about social fairness. Ideology pays lip service to reason while amplifying misinformation.

I presented on this same issue at a Senate hearing in 2021. My rage has since given way to profound sadness because the same misrepresentations keep being repeated by the same players. The issues have not changed in 5 years. The facts, however, have been made clearer. People are already getting MAID for psychiatric reasons under the guise of flimsy medical excuses, prolific MAID providers are happy to assist with suicides while people are on wait lists for effective treatment, MAID is being offered to veterans and disabled people and people with very treatable illnesses, irremediability is known to be impossible to predict for mental illnesses, and patients will doctor shop until dead.

Orwellian doublethink has been rampant. MAID activists say MAID is not suicide, that “irremediable” means you can’t get better right this minute, that suffering is best relieved by death, and that the health care system cares about you so much it will help you kill yourself. People need lifeguards, not someone to push you under.

Only 1 in 3 adults and only 1 in 5 children in Canada have access to the mental health care they need. The general public is not aware of this appalling and intentional lack of services.

The Mental Health Commission tells us we could save billions by paying for upstream services that we know work. Instead we let people get sick downstream and it costs us billions more than necessary. Billions.

So why don’t we provide care that we know works and is extremely cost effective? And why are any of you supporting suicide instead of the care that prevents suicide?

The answer is stigma, ableism, false economic claims, and a distorted view of autonomy. Please stop pretending autonomy is some detached rational enterprise…very sick people are actually driven by fear, desperation, and hopelessness borne of the illnesses we undertreat and don’t treat. If you have to help someone kill themselves then they are not acting autonomously. I am tired of the farcical news stories citing people who have been trying to kill themselves “for decades” and are demanding that a doctor help them.

There is laughable conceptual distinction put forward by MAID activists that MAID is well thought out and true suicides are impulsive. Decades of suicide research put the lie to this. 80% of suicide attempters thoughtfully plan their suicides. MAID is suicide par excellence…like having a wedding planner to make it all as easy as possible with same day service.

The Harvard School of Public Health showed that 90% of people who attempt suicide do not go on to complete suicide following treatment. With the right treatment suicidal thinking disappears.

The rates of suicide in jurisdictions that have MAID (specifically Oregon, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium and Australia) have risen much faster after it was legalized than before; “suicide contagion” is a well proven reality. Don’t pretend it won’t happen in Canada.

72% of Canadians oppose MAID for mental illness. Over 90% of psychiatrists are opposed. You should listen. But mostly you should stop and try to imagine what it is like to be given up on. If you have never tasted raw, hopeless, despair then stand boldly behind your absurd claim that we should all be entitled to suicide facilitation. If you have known the suffering of those you are inviting to death then you can’t pretend this planned social travesty is anything but accursed ignorance.

Merci.John Maher MD FRCPC
Chief of Psychiatry, Collingwood General and Marine Hospital
Psychiatrist, CMHA South Georgian Bay ACT Team
President, Ontario Association for ACT & FACT
President, Global Assertive Community Treatment Association
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Ethics in Mental Health