Scheduled to Die. Signed and Sealed.

The following article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on May 28, 2025.

Kelsi Sheren

By Kelsi Sheren

Canada: Home of the most efficient killers.

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program was “supposed” to be about compassion, offering dignity and choice to people at the end of their lives. Lies, it’s always been nothing but lies from the very start. It’s always been about killing. Somewhere along the way our society has taken a dark turn back to the time when eugenics was normalized. I thought this idea of killing our people for being disabled, injured or suffering was over. Turns out I wasn’t just wrong, I missed the mark completely. Eugenics has never ever stopped, it’s just been done quietly in the dark and done to people who will never be able to speak because…. Well, MAID = DEATH and you can’t complain when you're dead now can you?

Instead of a compassionate last resort, MAiD has become a symptom of our societal failure, an escape hatch offered to vulnerable individuals we’d rather ignore than support and our government wants to do anything it can to stop supporting you.

Take Kiano Vafaeian’s case. At just 23 years old, Kiano wasn’t terminally ill. He was diabetic, partially blind, and severely depressed. These conditions are profoundly challenging, yes, but are they reasons for a state-sanctioned murder? His mother, Margaret Marsilla, found out about his planned euthanasia by accident, stumbling across the approval in his emails. She wasn’t informed by medical professionals or social services. No alarm bells rang. No safeguards in place. The system simply moved forward, silent and indifferent, ready to quietly eliminate what it saw as a "problem" rather than confront the underlying issues.

Remember they DO NOT HAVE TO CONTACT FAMILY, and as Ellen Wiebe the head executioner of Canada said: 

“People ask me why and I think, well, doctors like grateful patients, and nobody is more grateful than my patients now and their families,” 

Carr interviewing Wiebe

She tells Liz Carr, though that’s not always necessarily so. 

“We know that angry family members are our greatest risk” (National Post article link).

Margaret had to fight desperately to save her son's life, resorting to impersonating a patient to uncover the chilling ease of accessing assisted death. How has it come to this? A mother must battle her own government to keep her child alive? What does this say about the priorities of a system that would rather expedite death than offer comprehensive support and care? I’ll tell you exactly what it says.

WE DON’T CARE. We do not care if your son is struggling, he is a burden to our society so he must go and we will do it behind your back. Their favourite part, is there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it. You can try, but good luck.

This story isn’t isolated, not even a little unfortunately. It speaks to a profound rot within our society, a rot where the vulnerable are viewed as disposable, burdensome inconveniences rather than human beings deserving dignity and support. When a young man’s pain is so readily met with death instead of help, we have failed. We have failed Kiano, we have failed Margaret, and we have failed ourselves. We have lost sight of our shared responsibility to each other, allowing bureaucratic convenience to triumph over human empathy. I’d agree it’s no longer about convenience either, with over 1800 killers in Canada, roughly 300 do all the killing. That means in 2023 with the death tally over 13,000 people who were murdered, they were taken out by roughly 300 people.

Now if you were in the military, like I was and you had killed that many people on your own. Not only would we be questioning your mental health but questioning a lot more than that. But because these are “doctors” we say its compassion.

I call bullshit. These “doctors” are enjoying this, far far too much.

We pride ourselves as Canadians on being compassionate and inclusive, yet we’re abandoning those who need us most while we crumble under policies that have broken our country in half. Instead of investing in mental health services, social support, and disability care, our leaders choose a cheaper, colder route. MAiD = murder, once carefully bounded, now creeps into a territory where depression, poverty, and disability alone WILL justify ending a life. This isn't compassion. It's negligence dressed up as mercy.

Our society has become desensitized to suffering, choosing convenience and cost-saving over genuine care and compassion. How many others like Kiano have faced similar battles without a Margaret fighting tirelessly in their corner? How many have silently slipped through the cracks, never receiving the attention, care, or advocacy they deserved?

We need to look deeply at ourselves and our values. Are we comfortable living in a society where death is offered as an alternative to adequate support? Are we okay telling someone that their existence is too costly, too inconvenient? Are we prepared to admit our government’s failure in creating a society where people feel their lives are not worth living simply because they have been left behind by the systems meant to protect them?

So I ask you, will you stand up now

Or

Will you wait until your family finds a hidden email or letter, or when they call to say your loved one, child or friend was just murdered before you call you MP’s and say this stops NOW.

We have the power to stop this, will you help?

Kelsi Sheren, relentless in the pursuit of life and never MAID.

https://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2022/09/victory-23-year-old-scheduled-for.html

https://nationalpost.com/feature/canada-maid-assisted-suicide-doctor

MAiDHouse -- a Canadian charity -- kills 125 people in 2022

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The 2022 MAiDHouse Annual Report  reveals that MAiDHouse facilitated 125 euthanasia deaths in 2022, up significantly from 2021.

MAiDHouse, is a euthanasia clinic in Toronto that offers euthanasia for people do not wish to die by euthanasia in a hospital.

In September 2022, Margaret Marsilla ran a petition campaign to prevent the euthanasia death of her 23-year-old son Kiano who was scheduled to die at the MAiDHouse on September 28, 2022. 

In her media release, Margaret Marsilla wrote:

Dr. Joshua Tepper and Dr. Laurie Morrison (“Dr. Death”) have approved the application for medical assistance in dying (MAiD) for my son, set to take place on September 28, 2022, at MAiDHouse. Both the doctors and MAiDHouse, run by Tekla Hendrickson, continue to turn their nose up to the requirements of legislation, which was to have built-in safe guards to protect vulnerable individuals.

The MAiDHouse Annual Report exposes their plan to expand euthanasia by opening more death clinics. 

In contrast, the Delta Hospice Society that provided excellent end-of-life care, was defunded and had its 10 bed hospice building expropriated by the British Columbia government because of their commitment to provide a no kill hospice.

MAiDHouse exclusively provides euthanasia.

MAiDHouse and CAMAP (Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers) exist to provide and promote euthanasia. Both have been designated as charities by the Canadian government.

Young Canadian with diabetes seeking assisted suicide in Switzerland

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Canadian government recently extended the implementation of euthanasia for mental illness until March 17, 2024, but the story of Kiano Vafiaen, the 23-year-old, who is not terminally ill but lives with type 1 diabetes continues. 

Kiano was originally scheduled to die by euthanasia on September 22, 2022. Then his mother started a campaign to stop her son from being killed, so the MAiD House rescheduled his death for September 28 and then cancelled it.

Margaret started a campaign and a petition to prevent Kiano from being killed.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition helped to prevent the killing of Kiano last year. After speaking with his mother I published an article titled: Mother wants to stop her 23-year-old son from being killed by euthanasia. (Link). EPC was given permission to republish Margaret's petition on CitizenGo. Almost 10,000 people signed the CitizenGo petition to prevent Kiano's death.

On March 17, Kiano was featured on an episode of the Rupa Subramanya Show. Rupa explains that 

Kiano was going to proceed with assisted suicide and was very close to completing the life-ending procedure before his family stepped in and his story ended up on the national news. 

The resulting backlash prompted the doctor who was going to perform the procedure to back out completely.

Rupa then explains that Kiano has now applied for assisted suicide in Switzerland.

Link to the episode of the Rupa Subramanya Show (Youtube Link).

Kiano remains alive but his suicidal ideation continues.

Canada's Euthanasia Program.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A few weeks ago, Rupa Subramanya called the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and asked many questions about what is happening with (MAiD) euthanasia in Canada. We had a challenging conversation but I found Rupa to be wanting to report the truth about Canada's (MAiD) law.

Today I received a link to Rupa's article - Scheduled to Die: The Rise of Canada's Assisted Suicide Program that was published on October 11 by Common Sense news. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition helped Margaret with her petition and her letters that she sent to groups and individuals. We are happy that Kiano remains alive.

Rupa sets up her article by telling the story of Kiano Vafaeian, a 23-year-old with Type 1 diabetes who was approved for MAiD by Dr Joshua Tepper and his mother Margaret Marsilla, who did everything that she could to prevent her son's death. Rupa writes:

Image from Margaret's petition

On September 7, Margaret Marsilla called Joshua Tepper, the doctor who planned to kill her son.

Marsilla is 46, and she lives outside Toronto with her husband and daughter, a nursing student. She had known that her 23-year-old son, Kiano Vafaeian, was depressed—he was diabetic and had lost his vision in one eye, and he didn’t have a job or girlfriend or much of a future—and Marsilla asked her daughter to log onto Kiano’s account. (Kiano had given his sister access so she could help him with his email.) He never shared anything with his mother—what he was thinking, where he was going—and Marsilla was scared.

That was when Marsilla learned that Kiano had applied and, in late July, been approved for “medical assistance in dying,” aka MAiD, aka assisted suicide.

His death was scheduled for September 22.

In a September 7 email from Tepper, the doctor, to Kiano and Tekla Hendrickson, the executive director of MAiDHouse, the Toronto facility where Kiano’s death would take place, Tepper mapped out the schedule:

“Hii,” he emailed. (Apparently, Tepper did not use spell check.) “I am confirming the following timing: Please arrive at 8:30 am. I will ask for the nurse at 8:45 am and I will start the procedure at around 9:00 am. Procedure will be completed a few minutes after it starts.”

The procedure entailed administering two drugs. First, a coma-inducing agent. Then, a neuromuscular blocker that would stop Kiano’s breathing. He would be dead in five to ten minutes.

Margaret, Kiano's mother wanted to stop her son from being killed. Rupa reports:

The day after she discovered the email, Marsilla called Tepper. She pretended to be a MAiD applicant. She called herself Joann and said she “wanted to go through the whole process in general, from A to Zed, before the Christmas holidays—if you know what I mean.” Tepper indicated he understood.

Tepper, sounding matter of fact, ran through the list of requirements: “You have to be over 18. You have to have an OHIP card.” (He was referring to her Ontario Health Insurance Plan.) “You have to have suffering that cannot be remediated or treated in some way that’s acceptable to you.”

Marsilla, who recorded the conversation and shared the five-and-a-half-minute recording with Common Sense, told Tepper that she was diabetic and blind—more or less, her son’s condition. Tepper said he’d “had patients a lot similar to you.”

Then, the doctor said, “If you wanted, I could do a formal assessment with you.” Marsilla asked if she should come in. Tepper replied: “We do them remotely, often by video of some type: WhatsApp, Zoom, FaceTime, something like that.”

A few minutes later, Marsilla hung up. She had just over two weeks to stop her son from dying.

Rupa continues her article by telling the history of MAiD in Canada and then interviewing several people who are seeking death by euthanasia and several people who oppose killing by MAiD. Rupa then returns to the story of Marsilla and Kiano. Rupa reports:

Dr. Kristen Creek, in Winnipeg, messaged her (Marsilla). As it turned out, Creek was a family physician, and she provided MAiD. She was surprised to hear that a young man with diabetes had been approved for it. She urged Marsilla to call Tepper back and be up front about who she was.

Marsilla did just that. Soon after, Marsilla, Kiano, Kiano’s aunt, and Tepper spoke on the phone. That call led nowhere, Marsilla said. By now, a right-wing, Canadian Catholic news site had picked up on Marsilla’s post, which mentioned Tepper by name, and the doctor was getting pummeled by outraged readers.

On September 16, Tepper texted Marsilla to say that he’d postponed Kiano’s death until September 28. Five days later, the doctor texted her again to say that, actually, he wasn’t going through with it. He apparently wanted nothing more to do with Kiano Vafaeian. 

Rupa explains that she tried to interview Kiano and then finally arranged to do a facetime interview. Rupa writes:

Kiano told me he was “baffled” by everything that had happened the past three weeks: his mother’s social-media campaign, Tepper’s decision not to help him die. “I didn’t know what to say,” Kiano said. “It’s how she knows how to love me.”

Still, he was furious with her. He didn’t know what came next, whether he’d find another doctor. The MAiD people didn’t want to touch his case.

Dr Ramona Coelho

The other key interviews include Rupa's interview with Dr Ramona Coelho who emphasized her concerns for people seeking death based on a lack of resources. Rupa wrote:

“I do worry MAiD is an easy solution to bed shortages and the terrible lack of resources patients are facing,”

 “the perverse disincentive that exists for administrators and governments with providing MAiD rather than care and resources to live can present a real danger to the lives of vulnerable or marginalized persons.”

Coelho’s comments jibed with a 2021 letter, from three UN officials to the Canadian government, about MAiD having “a potentially discriminatory impact on persons with disabilities and older persons who are not at the end of their life or nearing death from natural causes.” The letter added that “there is a real risk” that those “who may be further marginalized by their racialized, indigenous, gender identity or other status, will be more vulnerable to being induced to access MAiD.”

Dr Sonu Gaind

Dr. Sonu Gaind, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, told Rupa that the expansion of MAiD was “built on a house of cards.” Rupa reported:

“While pretending to provide MAiD for an irremediable condition, we actually end up taking the lives of non-dying people—who could get better—for all sorts of other psychosocial suffering,” Gaind told me. “That’s not compassion.”

He added: “When we have people who are genuinely suffering, and we don’t provide them options for dignified living, but we provide them with what we label as a painless death, it provides these people with the enticement of a means to escape their suffering, when we could have helped them escape otherwise—by overcoming their problems and moving on and living.”

Nor, Gaind said, is expanding MAiD about personal autonomy—at least, not for everyone. In a recent article, he wrote: “It is a myth that expanded MAiD is just about autonomy. Expansion may increase privileged autonomy for some to die with dignity, but it does so by sacrificing other marginalized Canadians to premature deaths for escaping painful lives that we failed to allow them to live with dignity.”

From its inception, Canada's MAiD law was designed to expand. The law employed undefined terminology and it was clearly written to protect the doctors and nurses who were willing to kill their patients. Bill C-7, in March 2021, clearly expanded euthanasia to include people with disabilities. Bill C-7 created a dichotomy whereby a person who is having difficulty receiving the necessary treatment or care is not having the same difficulty obtaining MAiD (euthanasia).

The fears of the disability community were correct. Extending euthanasia to people who are not dying but are living with chronic or disabling conditions would lead to euthanasia based on social conditions because many people with disabilities are living in poverty and/or unable to access the treatment or care that they require.

23-year-old scheduled for euthanasia on September 28 remains alive.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The 23-year-old (Kiano) who was scheduled to die by euthanasia on September 28 is alive.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition was instrumental in this first victory to prevent the killing of Kiano.

After speaking with Margaret Marsilla, the mother of Kiano (who was originally scheduled to die by euthanasia on September 22 and then rescheduled for September 28) I published an article titled: Mother wants to stop her 23-year-old son from being killed by euthanasia. (Link).

Margaret had started a Change.org petition. I asked her if we could republish her petition on CitizenGo, a petition platform that we have successfully launched other petition campaigns. Almost 10,000 people signed the CitizenGo petition.

Sign and share the petition to the Ontario Minister of Health (Petition Link)

Margaret told the media that the petition campaign was instrumental in activating people to stop the doctor and MAiD House from killing Kiano.

We originally did not publish Kiano's name because he asked his mother to keep his name private, but since then Kiano has used his name when being interviewed by the media.

But the battle is not over. Margaret wants to prevent her son from being killed by euthanasia but she also wants to set a precedent that wrong approvals for euthanasia can be challenged. 

Since the government is treating euthanasia as medical treatment, then, in Ontario, challenges to euthanasia applications should be able to be reviewed before the Consent and Capacity Board, like other medical treatment disputes.

Linda Slobodian wrote on September 28 in an article for the Western Standard news Margaret as saying:

“We’re going to be fighting the Ontario health system to not allow any other doctors to perform euthanasia on my son.”

“We have to bring this to the Capacity Board, so he’ll be forced to do some testing with regards to his psychological capacity.”

Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board, a quasi-judicial administrative tribunal, operates independently from the health ministry under the Health Care Consent Act’s authority. Marsilla’s also considering legal action against MAiD House and the doctor.

“This is going to be a big battle. I’m not going to give up my fight.”

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition told Margaret that we would help her in this process.

You may also want to read the interview with Kiano written by Dorothy Cummings McLean and published by LifeSiteNews on September 29.

Kiano is alive, at least for now. This is great news. Our work with his Margaret has been successful and has made a difference. 

But the battle continues.

To all media: Preventing Doctor Death and MAiD House from Killing My Son

TO: ALL MEDIA

Re: Preventing Doctor Death and MAiD House from Killing My Son and other youth.

*Sign and share the petition to the Ontario Minister of Health (Petition Link)

I am writing to bring your attention to my protest against a euthanasia procedure (killing) that is scheduled to take place between my 23-year old son, and a doctor who has been unwilling to do his due diligence before approving the application for MAiD.

Dr. Joshua Tepper and Dr. Laurie Morrison (“Dr. Death”) have approved the application for medical assistance in dying (MAiD) for my son, set to take place on September 28, 2022, at MAiD House. Both the doctors and MAiD House, run by Tekla Hendrickson, continue to turn their nose up to the requirements of legislation, which was to have built-in safe guards to protect vulnerable individuals.

To make matters worse, the doctors associated with his approval are part of a Catholic institution that does not agree with the procedure of medical assistance in dying. I am surprised that there would be physicians associated with this sort of procedure that work with St. Michael’s Hospital. I understand the need to seek this sort of assistance in dire situations where a patient has undergone significant evaluation to determine eligibility, and where their natural death is reasonably foreseeable, given frailties, advanced age, and a state of decline in their health. However, my family and I are struggling to understand how and why this would apply to a youthful person that is otherwise generally healthy, and where his death is not reasonably foreseeable.

As such, I feel the need to bring this to the nation’s attention as we do not want to see this procedure happen to our son, nor do we want it to set a precedent for others in the future. We protest the abhorrent medical practice of MAiD for youth dealing with a mental health crisis or other non-terminal illnesses or disabilities.

I am hoping to invoke your interest to broadcast this story, but also to bring awareness to our society, and legislators of what’s currently happening within our healthcare system. Society should be made aware of the shocking revelation that young adults are given an option to end their lives rather than receive help that they need to deal with their mental or physical health. To worsen matters, as of March, 2023, Bill C-7 allows people suffering solely from mental illnesses the right to seek medical assistance in dying. I cannot imagine that the legislators, contemplated the extent of this overreaching piece of legislation that legalized suicide and killing!

I am asking if you could please assist us in bringing attention to our dear son’s situation.

Thank you,
Margaret Marsilla
EMAIL: margmarsilla@gmail.com

Previous article: 

Mother wants to stop her 23-year-old son from being killed by euthanasia (Link).