MAiD (euthanasia). How does death actually occur?

So when they die, they're actually drowning in their own blood.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Bridge City News did an interview with Dr Joel Zivot, who is a Candian anesthesiologist and adjunct professor at Emory University in the United States. Zivot spoke to the Bridge City News about how euthanasia drugs cause death. I have edited the comments by Zivot for length. Zivot stated:

I'm an anesthesiologist and I also do intensive care medicine. I'm from Canada originally and I've been in the US for a number of years, and I'm always interested with what's happening in Canada. I have practised in Canada and I trained in Canada.

Zivot comments on the Supreme Court of Canada Carter decision that led to the legalization of euthanasia, which is known as MAiD in Canada. Zivot continued:

I was concerned that such an action would imperil medical professionalism in Canada because it seemed to be advocating a wholesale ethical change as to what physicians are supposed to be doing. Medicine is interested in saving life, not taking it.

...In my intensive care capacity I encounter a lot of patients who die and that's normal and natural but the idea that medicine could be transformed into a practice that I could actually kill someone and call it treatment. Now treatment can be killing. That, of course, to me is an anathema to the ethical practice of medicine.

In the US I am also involved with the area of the death penalty. The reason I got involved in the death penalty is the use of science and medicine as a method of punishing people. The most common method of execution in the US is lethal injection which takes certain types of chemicals that in my hands are medicine and in the state's hands are poison and repurposes them to kill prisoners.

Zivot comments on his beliefs related to the death penalty and then says:

It's not the job of the doctor to kill prisoners and it is not the job of the tools of medicine. So my protest is that if the state wants to executive people, it has to use a technique that isn't an impersonation of medicine.

Zivot then comments on Canada's euthanasia program:

Assistance in Dying in Canada is strikingly similar to the way that prisoners are executed in the United States. When I realized that was going on that caught my attention.

I have reviewed hundreds of autopsies of prisoners executed using lethal injection and found a strikingly common finding of bloody froth in their lungs. So when they die, they're actually drowning in their own blood.

You may have no sympathy for convicted murderers but the US Constitution makes it very clear that when a prisoner is punished that the punishment can't be cruel. I believe that the punishment of lethal injection creates a cruel death.

I brought those same concerns to Canada. My concern in the Canadian assisted dying system is that there's been a persistent dishonesty in exactly what is happening when people are being killed by MAiD.

Dr Zivot was asked about the drugs that are being used for euthanasia. Zivot responds:

No drug company is manufacturing a drug where the labelled indication is to kill. It's not made for that. ...In both the death penalty and assisted dying, it's recognized that these drugs can be repurposed and be converted into poison.

Zivot comments on medical politics in Canada. He then speaks about dying with dignity:

There's been little focus on is the killing part of being dead. To get from alive to dead, you have to be killed, you have to die, and that's not instantaneous. So there's a thing that has to be done to you that causes your death. And that can take some time. 

So words like dignity of course, what does it mean to be dignified, to die with dignity? ...

So to suggest somehow that the only dignity available to people who are suffering is to kill them feels to me to be a very sinister use of the word dignity.

You're basically saying that if you want to be alive and in pain that there is something wrong with you. So if your not dying with dignity then you're living with undignity.

That's branding, that's a false and pernicious claim about people who want to be alive.

Zivot was asked about euthanasia being extended to people with mental illness alone in March 2027. Zivot responds:

That's obviously very disconcerting. Let's hope that between now and then that clearer heads prevail.

I take care of a lot of people who are mentally ill. I have patients who've tried to kill themselves. 

When I encounter them, my assumption is that they want to live. Sure enough, in many cases once they have recovered from their attempted suicide, they live. Sometimes there's gratitude.

I think that you want your doctor to assume that you want to live. Mental illness leads to a series of bad decisions. I don't know how. if we say that a person has mental illness and loses capacity, that the capacity to request death, that capacity is preserved.

So why is a person who is mentally ill able to make that decision? 

Zivot then comments his experience with patients with mental illness and how they are cared for to help them live. Zivot states:

If there is some particular theoretical person who has thought about it, who's done every possible thing, who is not under resourced, who is not lonely, ... and you think that person should be allowed to die? I still don't think it's my job to do it. 

The problem is that once you make that available, you create opportunities and incentives for people to die and that's the worst possible thing.

Zivot was then asked, if lethal injection results in death by drowning, why aren't there more doctors screaming from the rooftops? Zivot responds:

I presented my concerns to the Senate of Canada and I was roundly criticized for it. When I was testifying, a person who was there waiting their turn to speak was an advocate of MAiD, when talking about MAiD he began to cry and said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

When it came to my turn, I said to the chairperson, if you would like me to cry, I can do that too, if that would be effective.

I am not suggesting that this person was not sincere, but the sense that the only beauty lies in killing is a terrible, terrible idea. 

Zivot was then asked for his final comments. He said:

MAiD is basically saying that if you don't have MAiD then you're facing a terrible painful death. That is untrue.

Palliative care is a branch of medicine that is probably underfunded. Even without palliative care, I'm a physician in intensive care and I deal with people who are dying and I'm pretty comfortable in providing people with sedation or pain control to allow a natural death.

I don't need to kill them. They will die and they don't have to die in pain. 

What people really need is companionship.

Zivot spoke about a study on labour epidurals. The study found that when a woman has companionship and support that the pain she experienced was less. Zivot continued:

We should be there in support of people while they live. If death is going to occur, then we should provide something to ease the pain of natural dying but we don't need to kill them to do that. It's just not true. 

I think that MAiD has created this illusion that there's only two choices. It's either a miserable painful death or MAiD.

That has to stop and be challenged.

Zivot ended the interview by commenting on the effect of Canada's Charter on the euthanasia issue.

Previous articles concerning Dr Joel Zivot (Link to articles).

Dutch Psychiatrist warns Canada: Don't extend euthanasia to mental illness

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Jim van Os

I had the opportunity to speak to the Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (euthanasia) on May 5, 2026 (Link to my testimony). 

Before my presentation, the committee featured three Psychiatrists from the Netherlands explaining their experience with euthanasia for mental illness. Dr Jim van Os, a Professor of Psychiatry at Utrecht University warned Canada not to extend euthanasia to mental illness.

Professor van Os told the Parliamentary committee:

 

The Dutch experience, in my opinion, offers a warning for Canada. For 20 years our euthanasia law left psychiatric cases largely untouched. However, over the past decade, a small group of activist physicians and organizations built a practice through sustained media campaigns.

In 2024, the Dutch Euthanasia Expertise Center (euthanasia clinic) received around 5000 requests, roughly 1000 on psychiatric grounds. Among people under 30, requests rose from about 30 per year to nearly 900 in six years. Completed euthanasia rose fivefold.

This pattern has been widely interpreted as a so-called suicide contagion effect amplified by the institutions that should safeguard against it.

This committee perhaps should keep in mind under the Dutch law physicians must agree that there are no reasonable options. Euthanasia is in principle the very last resort. Canadian law does not work this way. 

In Canada patient choice trumps the physician's professional judgment. So a doctor cannot insist that other options be tried first. That single difference will in our assessment drive Canadian numbers beyond ours. 

In 2024 the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities warned that the Dutch practice was unsafe. Persons with psychosocial disabilities have a fundamental human right of protection against premature death. 

Euthanasia for mental suffering cannot be cleanly separated from physician performed suicide. It is in many cases suicide carried out by a psychiatrist. 

Our research and clinical work reveal a minefield on every side.

Autonomy. Most who request euthanasia for mental suffering are traumatized, marginalized, often living in poverty without prospects.

Mental illness, by definition, compromises autonomy. Calling such a request a free expression of choice ignores the substance of the suffering.

Discrimination. The arguments that refusing euthanasia for mental suffering is discriminatory equates psychiatric suffering with terminal cancer. It is a false equivalence.

Cancer with a two-month prognosis is linear and progressive. Mental suffering is not. Recovery happens often unexpectedly through relationships, purpose, meaningful work, bonding with another person or even an animal.

The patient recovery movement insists that recovery is possible for everyone. Plasticity is the rule.

Criteria. Clinicians do not agree on irremediability, on futility, on competence. The result is something like a lottery.

Whether you receive suicide prevention or a lethal injection depends on which clinician you meet.

Substance. Recent Dutch analysis show that many who receive euthanasia for mental illness are women with unaddressed trauma. Their unconscious self-destructive dynamics get enacted in the procedure. The psychiatrist becomes recruited into a deadly outcome.

Toffrey Wayne and colleagues describe how, in the Netherlands, people with autism spectrum traits increasingly receive euthanasia for what is at root social suffering framed in medical language. The intervention should be social and existential, not lethal.

Psychiatry claims it can prevent suicide n one patient and help finalize suicide in another with the same suffering. That is incoherent. It is not autonomy, it is not anti-discrimination, it is a contradiction at the heart or our profession. 

My message to Canada.

Do not expand euthanasia to those with mental illness. The evidence is not there. The UN, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and our lived experience point the same way. 

The social trials that we run in the Netherlands show another path. Care that builds relational continuity, hope and connectedness. That is the system worth building, not procedural pathways to death.

Euthanasia for mental illness. Court cases and Committee hearings.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Globe and Mail May 6, 2026 editorial is titled: An alarm bell is ringing on medically assisted death for mental illness and features the letter from psychiatrists representing 13 Canadian medical schools. The editorial states:

Alarm bells don't get much louder than the written brief from the heads of psychiatry at 13 Canadian medical schools urging Ottawa to stop the expansion of medically assisted death to those whose only condition is mental illness.

The editorial quotes from the psychiatrists letter:

"As a society, we must provide hope and support to individuals during periods of despair and psychological suffering. In our clinical and academic experience, 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," they wrote, adding they "strongly believe" that expanding MAiD would result in preventable deaths and would undermine suicide prevention efforts.

The Globe and Mail also stated in an article published on May 5, 2026 that the federal government is prepared to prevent the extension of euthanasia to mental illness alone, if the committee that is examining the question makes that recommendation.

The Globe and Mail was originally a promoter of euthanasia but over the past few years they have stated that Canada's euthanasia law has gone too far.

At the same time Dying With Dignity, Canada's leading euthanasia lobby group, filed an emergency relief on May 4, 2026 in an Ontario court to force the court to agree to the killing of Claire Elyse Brosseau who is living with mental illness as her sole underlying condition. Brosseau is a former actress.

According to the Dying with Dignity press release, Brosseau, Dying With Dignity and Dr Patricia Smith have filed the case.

Dying With Dignity would not be spending the massive amount of money on a court challenge if they believed that the federal government will extend euthanasia to mental illness alone in March 2027.

I had the opportunity to present to the parliamentary committee on euthanasia on May 5, 2026. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition hopes that the committee will recommend scrapping euthanasia for mental illness and then agree to provide a complete review of Canada's euthanasia law.

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.

Show the powerful film in your community: Life Worth Living

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Purchase or rent the Life Worth Living film at: www.Lifeworthlivingfilm.com

Show the powerful Life Worth Living film in your community.

Below is the trailer for the Life Worth Living film:

Reviews we received of the film:

I just watched Life Worth Living and I have to say I'm so incredibly impressed. I can't contain my enthusiasm for this film. It's one of the best film projects on the subject of medical killing ever. I'd expect awards to be forthcoming for best documentary film. Lester.

Another review:

I have purchased the film "Life Worth Living" a couple of weeks ago and have watched it. I feel that it's a film that everyone should watch because it shows what is happening in the system of "health" care in Canada and it opens our eyes to the reality of how far our government and the medical system has gone in the direction of killing people instead of healing people.

I would like to ask permission to show this film for our parish community. Eva

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition granted Eva permission to have the film shown in her community. Please arrange screenings of the film.

Life Worth Living features:

• Alicia Duncan, whose mother died by euthanasia with conditions based on mental health, 
• Kelsi Sheren, a Canadian military veteran who came back from combat with PTSD and other disabilities. Kelsi is a social media influencer and a life coach.
• Roger Foley, a Canadian man living with a significant disability who has been pressured by hospital staff to request euthanasia.
• Dr David D'Souza, an Ontario pain specialist.
• Dr Catherine Ferrier, a Quebec Gerontologist and a leader of Physicians' Alliance against Euthanasia, 
• Dr Will Johnston, a Vancouver family physician and leader of Euthanasia Resistance BC
• Kathy Matusiak Costa, Executive Director of Compassionate Community Care,
• Alex Schadenberg, (myself), author, keynote speaker, International leader opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition needs your help.

1. Purchase the Life Worth Living Film (Life Worth Living film Link)
2. Arrange to have Life Worth Living shown in your community. Contact us at: info@epcc.ca
3. You may want a speaker at the event to lead a discussion. Contact us at: info@epcc.ca

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

Canadians are getting euthanasia for reasons that are illegal.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr John Maher

Sharon Kirkey reported for the National Post on April 22, 2026 that Psychiatrist Dr. John Maher told the Special Joint Parliamentary Committee that is weighing Canada’s plan to extend euthanasia to those with a mental disorder alone that:

People with mental illnesses are already dying assisted deaths in Canada “under the guise of flimsy medical excuses” and others will “doctor shop until death” if euthanasia is allowed for psychiatric suffering alone.

 “I and other colleagues are experiencing this: People are clearly getting MAID for reasons that are frankly illegal,”

Kirkey also reported Maher's comments that Canada's euthanasia law may lead to a suicide contagion effect:

Maher, who specializes in treating severe mental illness, also warned Canada risks a “suicide contagion” effect if medical assistance in dying (MAID) becomes seen as a legitimate option for mental suffering. He pointed to the Werther Effect, a phenomenon that refers to a rise in suicides after publicized reports of celebrity deaths by suicide.

 Rates of suicide in jurisdictions that have legalized doctor-assisted death “have risen much faster after it was legalized than before,” he said.

“Suicide contagion is a well-proven reality. Don’t pretend that it won’t happen in Canada,” he said.

Euthanasia academic activist, Jocelyn Downie told the Special Joint Parliamentary Committee a few weeks ago that preventing euthanasia for people with mental illness will lead to violent other suicides. 

Research by Jim van Os, a Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Public Health at Utrecht University Medical Centre, in The Netherlands was published on April 22, 2026 by Cambridge University Press, examined the relationship between suicide and youth psychiatric euthanasia. Based on research conducted on 353 young people who had requested euthanasia that for every 10 young people who die by euthanasia based on mental illness, only one of the ten would likely have died by suicide if euthanasia was not an option.

Kirkey reported that Maher, who is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health and works with specialized teams that treat the most severe mental illnesses said that:

“people are getting MAID for psychiatric reasons under the guise of flimsy medical excuses, prolific MAID providers are happy to assist with suicide while people are on wait lists for effective treatment (and) MAID is being offered to veterans, disabled people and people with very treatable illnesses,”

Maher said that:

 “People need lifeguards, not someone to push you under,” 

Kirkey also reported Maher as stating:

“Decades of suicide research put the lie to this: 80 per cent of suicide attempters thoughtfully plan their suicides,” he said.

“MAID is suicide par excellence, like having a wedding planner to make it all as easy as possible, even with same-day service.”

Canada has scheduled euthanasia for psychiatric conditions alone to begin on March 17, 2027. The Special Joint Parliamentary Committee is examining whether or not Canada should extend euthanasia to people with mental illness next March.

Meanwhile, Private Members Bill C-218 is being debated in parliament. If passed Bill C-218 will prevent euthanasia for mental illness alone.