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

Gabriel Peters: MAiD builds discrimination, not a remedy to it.

The following was published by Gabriel Peters on her substack on April 23, 2026.

 

By Gabriel Peters

Re: Eligibility of Persons Whose Sole Underlying Medical Condition is a Mental Illness

The following is a longer version of my testimony to Special Joint Committee on MAiD. Due to time restrictions I had to edit severely. However the session is an hour long and I had hoped some of the Committee members would use their time to ask me questions. Only one did.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide some brief comments. One of the hats I wear is that I sit as a care partner on the Providence Health Care Psychiatry Lived Experience Research Advisory Committee and I am always struck by the urgency accorded expansion of MAID for mental illness versus that of providing funding for comprehensive mental health care, supports, livable income and housing for those with mental illness.

Injustice can often be measured in time.

Today, I am speaking as co-founder of the Disability Filibuster.

As policy makers I am certain you are aware that neither people nor policies are islands unto themselves. And yet MAID is discussed as if it exists inside a vacuum, free of influence from, or consequence to, society.

In what little time I have I will address a couple of persistent myths that constantly derail and impede rather than build understanding.

Myth One: The reason people oppose expanding MAiD criteria to include mental illness as a sole underlying condition is because they believe mental illness is less real than physical illness and they treat it as less significant and less worthy of support.

False: The division between physical and mental illness is one asserted and maintained by the medical model and the Canadian state. Due to the exclusion of essential elements of mental health care from Canada’s publicly funded and arguably misnamed universal health care system, Canada has a two-tier mental health care system. The average provincial and territorial mental health care funding lags behind that of many peer countries. Proportionally, Canada’s public spending on mental illness is lower than its occurrence among all illnesses. People with mental illness face particular threats to their civil rights. A BC study found that for nearly a third of people with mental illness, their first contact with mental health care involved the police. A situation that the Canadian Mental Health Association attributes to the lack of community services, the limited scope of crisis services, a reduction in hospital beds so that even short stays are only available to those in the most acute crisis. A CMHA fact sheet states: “Police officers are, by default, becoming the first point of access to mental health services for persons with mental illness, earning them the nickname ‘psychiatrists in blue.’” They go on to explain that one of the consequences of this is that “​​public also receives reinforcement for the false perception that mental illness is a crime rather than an illness, and that persons with mental illness are a public danger – a common and erroneous belief which hurts both persons with mental illness and the public.”

Stigma requires power. Without power, stigma is just someone’s bad opinion.

I hope this isn’t too idiomatic a reference, but in terms of the claims asserted by the myth, the call is coming from inside your house, not ours.

As disabled people we understand disability as one large tent. Power divides and builds hierarchies. Justice unites through shared struggle and common goals.

There are differences and these do matter. Where physical disability can be met with a benevolent though also hostile othering that infantalizes, assumes helplessness, denies access and views our bodies with disgust, people with mental illness confront staggeringly pervasive, dehumanizing and isolating stigma and dangerous stereotypes while being simultaneously blamed for their illness and having its existence doubted.

The experience of oppression is not the same but the cause of it is.

And please remember that the majority of disabled people have more than one disability and a combination of both physical and mental illness is not uncommon. So when someone projects this myth onto one of us they are often accusing and pretending to defend the exact same person.

Myth Two: Failing to expand MAID is discrimination.

False: This and other assertions made by proponents of MAiD’s expansion reflect a profound lack of understanding of disability rights, history and what the causes, consequences and solutions to the discrimination and injustice disabled people experience actually are.

This myth exists as part of the hyper-individualization of human rights by neoliberalism. Instead of human rights as integral component for building a better society, your body becomes a container of assets that you manage. Universal human vulnerability is denied and instead treated as a deviance from ‘normal’ so that whatever social institutions and policies do exist, do not reflect the necessary conditions for broad resilience. Disability and illness are interpreted through the lens of self-ownership, (an extension of private property rights) and personal responsibility. That the neoliberal state is generously offering to aid you into the grave – for free – is not a pivot, it’s an unmasking of any pretence left covering Canada’s allegiance to the dictum of Margaret Thatcher: “there is no such thing as a society.”

In a zero-sum society where the state’s responsibility for social welfare of its citizens is eroded, it was almost inevitable that human rights would become a competitive race to the bottom. A throne of nails and a poison drip awaits the victor.

The urge to distinguish oneself as ‘free’ while yoked to neoliberal and eugenic logic leads to absurdly invoking the Charter to demand something simply because someone else has it - even if what that person has is killing them and those around them. MAID is particularly exploitative as it uses the same hierarchy of deservingness as the charity model to suggest you can reverse your way out of pity and ableist oppression, assert your freedom and prove your equality by asking the state to kill you. Surely this committee and the Canadian state is capable of a more sophisticated understanding of discrimination and human rights.

In a forthcoming chapter entitled, The Case Against Legalizing Assisted Death for Psychiatric Disorders,” Trudo Lemmens and Scott Kim demonstrate why parity arguments logically lead to absolute autonomy (death on demand for anyone).

“..the parity argument is difficult to restrain. For instance, it is not clear whether one can

draw a principled line around ‘medical and psychiatric suffering’ so that all other suffering is excluded, if all that matters is some formal criterion of equal treatment. What is unique about medically based suffering (both somatic and mental) that suggests a clear, principled line around it (Braun, 2023; Davis & Mathison, 2020; Kim, 2023)? That is, one could apply the parity principle to whether persons suffering from non-medical causes are being discriminated against. There is a perennial debate in the Netherlands about extending legal EAS [euthanasia, assisted suicide] to, for example, elderly persons who do not have irremediable medical suffering, but who are ‘tired of life’ and would like EAS. What principle would exclude suffering from abject poverty? The logical destination of the parity argument seems to be a pure autonomy-based EAS system.”[i]

This aligns with disability analysis that for years has asked “Why Us?” The actual discrimination exists at the level of deciding that our suffering - and only our suffering - makes us killable. Humans suffer in a myriad of ways and among the worst is feeling helpless while someone you care for is suffering. And those feelings also happen when you are the person who others might be feeling powerless to help. It makes me wonder how much unprocessed grief and feelings of powerlessness lead to a misguided desire to add meaning and purpose by participating in the construction of MAiD. Once you unravel and disentangle your thoughts and definitions of words like dignity from ableism, you are left with the realization that ableism is the only thing defining the perimeters of MAiD.

Disability analysis has evolved from its early focus on individual rights, independence and integration into existing systems. Breaking free of the medical and charity model and the explosion of knowledge that followed the freeing of many, (though not all), from institutions, led to the realization that the tools we were using were pre-coded to build ableism not dismantle it. As Jean-Sebastian Beaudry, Canada Research Chair in Health, Inclusion and Policy at McGill Law School explains, “Disability justice…requires the dismantling of the multifaceted ableist ideology that pervades the very tools used to achieve justice, and disguises policy shortcomings as unavoidable economic or biological necessities.” [ii]

MAiD is built discrimination, not a remedy to it. The Canadian state decided no dignity is possible for someone who is disabled and, as consolation prize, branded a lethal injection from a state-sanctioned provider “dignified” declaring, “There’s your human rights!”. Conveniently, this aligns with the commodification of human rights. A new revenue stream was created for some but, overall, killing us is vastly cheaper than building the necessary infrastructure and policy to make a dignified life plausible.

The reasoning behind this myth is akin to suggesting that ugly laws were discriminatory not because they banned visibly disabled people from public space but because they didn’t ban all disabled people from public space.

Those presenting the astroturf-autonomy of “access” to death to an actual-autonomy-deprived population are certainly making a choice to do so. But why?

At least one study found that support for euthanasia on the basis of mental illness was positively correlated with stigma towards people with mental illness. Not only the opposite of what one would expect if the myth were true but suggests that those spreading this myth may be projecting their own beliefs onto us.

The co-opting or, at best, outdated and incorrect understanding of disability rights invoked in the name of support for MAiD is made possible by the absence of disabled knowledge and understanding. The mythmaking - or some would call it misinformation – reflects broader epistemic injustice that has remained largely unchallenged and become more entrenched and fictitious as a result of MAID.

MAiD is discrimination not a solution to it. It must be repealed not expanded.


[i] Scott Kim & Trudo Lemmens, The Case Against Legalizing Assisted Death for Psychiatric Disorders

(Forthcoming in Matthé Scholten, Kelso Cratsley, and Tania Gerkel, eds., Mental Health Ethics:

Current Controversies and Emerging Debates (Oxford University Press))

[ii] Jonas-Sebastien Beaudry Ableism’s new clothes: Achievements and challenges for disability rights in Canada

University of Toronto Law Journal 2024 74:1, 1-40