Sylvia Jones: Roger Foley needs to receive self-managed funding.

Roger Foley needs to be able to leave the hospital and go home.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director,
Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has followed the plight of Roger Foley for a long time. In June, 2025; EPC promoted the online petition - Roger Foley needs to be fed (Petition Link).

Roger Foley, who lives with spino-cerebellar ataxia type 14, has been living at the London Health Sciences Centre for almost 10 years. Previously, Roger lived in his home and received attendant services from an agency that was contracted to provide care. Roger ended up in the hospital based on the substandard care that he received from the agency.

Roger applied for inclusion in the Self-Managed Attendant Services program that would give Roger direct funding to enabled him to hire his own care-givers. This is a program that exists in Ontario. Roger was turned down by the Ministry of Health for this program.

Hon Sylvia Jones, has been Ontario's Minister of Health and Deputy Premier since June 2022. In June, 2008; Sylvia Jones, as a member of the Conservative opposition, expressed strong support for self-managed home care funding.

Contact Hon Sylvia Jones at: sylvia.jones@pc.ola.org and state:

Roger Foley has been living at the London Health Sciences Centre for almost 10 years. Roger wants to leave the hospital and receive care in his home.

Now is the time to implement change and approve him for Self-Managed funding for Attendant Services.

Self-Managed direct funding will provide him the right resources for less money and enable him to leave the hospital and move home. Hospitals are the most expensive setting for health care service delivery and, quite frankly, not the best type of care for stable individuals with a disability.

Allowing him to go home with self-managed funding for attendant services will enable him to fully participate in the community.

 
Here is the video of her June 2008 speech in the Ontario Legislature:

Here is what Sylvia Jones says in the (legislature) video:

Ms. Sylvia Jones: It's a pleasure to rise today to support the member for Wellington Halton Hills on this important resolution to add attendant services to the provincial wait time strategy.

For many years, experts in health care have told members of all three parties that our health system is too focused on hospital beds. Hospitals provide wonderful acute care for the citizens of this province, but it is the most expensive setting for health care service delivery and, quite frankly, not the best type of care for stable individuals with a disability.

As the Ontario Community Support Association highlighted in their August 13 press conference, people on the attendant services wait list put pressure on the health care system because they remain inappropriately stuck waiting in long-term-care homes, acute care beds, chronic care hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, all at a much higher cost to taxpayers. It's important that members in this House recognize that a failure to support today's resolution to make attendant services a priority by adding it to the provincial wait time strategy will result in higher costs to the taxpayer.

At the same news conference in August, the Ontario Community Support Association told us that the wait list for attendant services is four to 10 years. For four to 10 years, individuals with disabilities and their families are not getting the services they need. They remain in hospital or long-term-care beds, or their families, many with aging parents, struggle to continue to provide for their daily care needs. So even though we know that it is more cost-effective and more appropriate to have individuals cared for at home and even though we know attendant services allow people with physical disabilities to actively participate in their communities, go to school, get a job and contribute in other ways, we continue to focus our health care dollars in other areas.

This issue is most important across the province, but it also touches specific families in Dufferin Caledon. This summer, I met with a constituent from Honeywood who receives the Ministry of Health's direct funding for attendant services. I suppose you could call her one of the lucky ones. The program is administered by the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto. She tells me it took four years for her application to be approved, and this year, when she applied for a slight modification of her level of care because her health had changed, she was told that the Centre for Independent Living in Toronto was not even considering 2008 applications; they were still reviewing 2007 applications. Why is that? The Centre for Independent Living has a huge waiting list, and this Liberal government has not increased their funding since they were elected in 2003. So CILT is trying to serve as many Ontarians as it can with too few resources. In fact, my constituent believes that something needs to happen long-term care or worse for an individual with direct funding before the next person on the waiting list can receive funding for attendant services. My constituent wanted me to know that she feels this is a wonderful program that allows her to routinely participate in the community and live in her home. For example, I know that she is an active member of the Dufferin county accessibility advisory committee, and the Honeywood community. She came to see me because she wanted to brief me on this issue, and she believes that other people with a physical disability need to have the same opportunity that she has.

In addition to direct funding not being a priority for the Ministry of Health, my constituents are also having issues with funding from community care access centres. The boundary change introduced by the Liberal government has resulted in my constituents being asked to do with less service. Their disability has not changed, but the level of service being provided has.

An Orangeville resident who is a quadriplegic as a result of a car accident had been receiving home care since 1995. Under the former Waterloo-Wellington-Dufferin CCAC, he received morning and night visits, seven days a week, to assist with personal care. Under Central West CCAC, he was discharged from nursing and occupational therapy. Respite care was eliminated. His case is under review to determine what other services can be cut. The minister responded to us in correspondence by suggesting that he use the CCAC complaint process and to call the long-term-care action line.

Another constituent who happens to suffer from ALS has been told he was receiving too much care from the Waterloo-Wellington-Dufferin CCAC. He's been told his CCAC hours are being cut and a referral has been made to the March of Dimes to make up the care hour difference. That's right. The CCAC is referring people to a non-profit agency and expects them to provide front-line care, rather than our universal health care system. The March of Dimes also has a waiting list. So now the Central West CCAC has agreed to provide attendant care hours, but only until the March of Dimes can implement its services. He also needs respite care hours, but of course there's no support for his wife.

All three of these examples are alarming. I'm sure that members of all three parties have similar experiences from their own ridings. So what are we going to do about it? Now is the time to look at implementing the change that health care experts have been advocating for more than a decade. Now is the time to provide Ontarians with physical disabilities with the services they deserve. These citizens can either be taken care of at home with the right resources for less money or be forced into long-term care, or a hospital setting, which puts added strain on an already beleaguered health system and doesn't allow individuals with disabilities to fully participate in our communities.

I encourage all members to support the resolution of the member from Wellington Halton Hills. Let's make attendant care services a priority by adding it to the provincial wait time strategy.

Hon Sylvia Jones, has been Ontario's Minister of Health and Deputy Premier since June 2022. Why has she abandoned Roger Foley by forcing him to live at the London Health Sciences Centre rather than enabling him to be cared for at home?

Feeding Roger Foley - Clarification of update.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On Saturday August 16, EPC sent out the following message:

EPC has followed the Roger Foley story since it began. In June, EPC launched the petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed. After launching the petition the hospital inserted an IV. Roger needs assistance to enable him to eat.

After visiting Roger on August 6 and learning that he was only receiving water, we relaunched the petition. The hospital responded by feeding Roger. They then withdrew feeding and then reversed the decision and are feeding him again. It is ridiculous that an Ontario hospital has put a disabled man on a roller coaster ride over his basic right to eat.

Important: Sign the Petition. Roger Foley needs to be fed (Petition Link).

Roger Foley responded to the update:

Clarification of My Situation: LHSC is still not feeding me.

• I only have limited access to fluids in order to stay off an IV. The Compleat 1.5 is not food — I am drinking it only to get by until my lighting accommodations are restored.
  

• I remain blocked from eating and from accessing oral medications. Sometimes LHSC even restricts me to water alone.
  

• To drink, I am forced to wear extremely heavy makeshift ski goggles that cause severe pain and further injury to my deformed cervical spine. With these goggles, I can only manage about 10 minutes of fluids three times a day, before my neck gives out. During that short window, I must bloat myself with as much fluid as possible to avoid dehydration. There will come a time when my neck can no longer tolerate the goggles, and then I will be forced back on an IV.

Roger is receiving Compleat 1.5, which is an improvement, but as he states, this is not food and since he is not being fed he is unable to receive oral medications, that are required to be taken with food.

Roger wears ski goggles to enable him to eat without reacting to the light, but as he states, he can only wear the goggles for 10 minutes because of his neck and his cervical spine.

The stand-off between the hospital and Roger concerns the level of lighting. The staff insist that it is not safe to feed Roger without more light but Roger insists that his reaction to the regular lighting is so intense that he requires special lighting. The CNIB confirmed that Roger has severe photo sensitivity.

The key issue is that London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) must accommodate Roger by changing the lighting.

It is ridiculous that an Ontario hospital is not feeding a man with a degenerative neurological condition. Roger is capable of eating but he requires assistance.

Important - Sign the Petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Sign the Petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed. (Petition Link)

I once again visited Roger Foley at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) (Victoria Hospital Campus) to get an update on his care based on the concerning emails that I have been receiving.

Once again, Roger Foley is not being fed.

On June 12, 2025 EPC launched a petition to the Ontario Minister of Health Hon. Sylvia Jones, and LHSC Patient Relations, stating that Roger Foley needs to be fed. At that point Roger had not been fed for five weeks.

LHSC had inserted an IV that provided fluids and some essential nutrients but they were not feeding Roger. After we launched the petition the LHSC agreed to provide a limited feeding for Roger. More recently his IV was removed and the LHSC is only providing water.

Roger lives with Spino cerebellar ataxia type 14, a degenerative neurological condition. Roger is able to be fed normally, with assistance but his condition causes him to have severe photo sensitivity (photophobia) to regular lighting.  

The stand-off between the hospital and Roger concerns the level of lighting. The staff insist that it is not safe to feed Roger without more light but Roger insists that his reaction to the regular lighting is so intense that he requires special lighting. Recently Roger contacted the CNIB who confirmed that he has severe photo sensitivity.

 

It is ridiculous that an Ontario hospital is not feeding a man with a degenerative neurological condition who is capable of eating with assistance. It takes a long time to die by starvation but without nutrition Roger will die.

Roger cannot live on water alone and he couldn't live (long term) with an IV alone.  

 

He is able to eat with assistance. Roger needs to be fed.

Sign and share the Petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed. (Petition Link)

If you live in London Ontario and are willing to visit Roger, contact me at: alex@epcc.ca

Previous articles:

• Alex Schadenberg and Roger Foley on the cruelty of Canada's euthanasia regime (Link).
• June 12, 2025 - Roger Foley needs to be fed (Link).
• Visiting Roger Foley. Join the Roger Foley team (Link).

Visiting with Roger Foley. Join the Roger Foley team.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I was visiting Roger Foley with a caring woman who is interested in helping Roger.

In the past, Roger's "care-givers" have offered Roger euthanasia. Roger wants to live.

Roger has been living for more than nine years at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC). He lives with Spino cerebellar ataxia type 14, a degenerative neurological condition that has also caused Roger to have severe photo sensitivity (photophobia) to regular lighting, forcing him to keep his hospital room lights off. Several years ago, the hospital agreed to special lighting. In early May (2025) the hospital decided that it was not light enough to feed Roger unless the regular lighting is on. 

Sign and share the Petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed (Petition Link).

Roger has severe reactions to high-intensity white/blue wavelength lighting. In response Roger has agreed to intravenous (IV) feeding while continuing to request installation of low-intensity amber-spectrum lighting.

While visiting Roger I thought it would be good for more people got to know Roger, to visit him and long-term to join a team of people who oversee his care and enable him to return home.

If you live in the London Ontario region and are willing to help Roger, then contact Alex Schadenberg at: alex@epcc.ca

A Canadian hospital is slowly starving and abusing a disabled man to death

Meghan Schrader

By Meghan Schrader

Meghan is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and an EPC-USA board member. 

Sign the petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed (Link).

A hospital in Canada is slowly starving and abusing a disabled man to death. 

Seriously, can someone airlift Roger Foley out of there?

Hospital staff have, of course, offered Roger Foley “MAiD.” It’s not that “MAiD” made the hospital staff abuse Foley, doctors and nursing staff bully disabled people all the time in jurisdictions where “MAiD” is not legal. However, now healthcare staff have a new, lethal implement of structural oppression at their disposal: they have the power to bully Foley into being offed by a state-sanctioned serial killer. This is an example of the disgusting consequences of a movement run by privileged individuals who are willing to subject disabled people to a new implement of degradation and violence; all so they can plan their deaths like they planned where to go to a first tier college. For instance, in “A Designed Death: Where and When the World Allows it, Avovah Wittenberg Cox asserts:

“For Boomers used to planning and controlling many of life’s choices, from when to have children to what kind of milk in their coffee, defining a good death seems like something they may want to discuss with their families – and decide for themselves.”

Roger Foley

An agenda of allowing any and every Boomer to control their deaths implies expanding “MAiD” beyond the terminally ill, and I think this quote aptly illustrates the privilege of most MAiD supporters. If you are a wounded soul whose terminally ill loved one shot themselves in the head and then left a suicide note saying they wished they could have used “MAiD,” then I empathize deeply with you. Of course people who have endured that type of trauma would think “MAiD” is a good idea. However, if you are not a horribly suffering person who is simply willing to sacrifice marginalized people so that you can design a boutique death, then I do not sympathize with you. You want to control your death like you planned when to have your children? I want a house next to the ocean in Fiji.

Maybe some of the proponents who are not suffering horribly and are just willing to sacrifice disabled people so that they can plan their deaths like they planned where to have their weddings should consent to being locked up in a hospital, deprived of food, water and toileting and subjected to bright lighting that hurts their bodies; while bullies stand over their beds urging them to die by assisted suicide. It might help them put some of their current fears about suffering and their demands for autonomy into perspective.

Previous articles by Meghan Schrader (Articles Link). 

Previous articles about Roger Foley (Articles Link).

Sign the Petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed.

Sign and share the Petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed (Petition Link). 

Dear Minister of Health Hon. Sylvia Jones, and LHSC Patient Relations,

Roger Foley has not eaten since May 7, 2025. Roger needs to be fed.

Roger Foley has been living at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) for more than nine years. He lives with Spino cerebellar ataxia type 14, a degenerative neurological condition. This condition causes Roger to have severe photo sensitivity (photophobia) to regular lighting, forcing him to keep his hospital room light off. Several years ago, the hospital provided him with special lighting but in early May (2025) the hospital refused to feed Roger unless the regular lighting was turned on. Since Roger requires his room to have limited lighting the hospital staff decided that they could not safely feed Roger. In response, Roger has agreed to have intravenous (IV) feeding while continuing to low-intensity amber-spectrum lighting. 

IV feeding is not a long-term solution since it does not provide adequate nutrition and his veins may eventually collapse. He has already had problems with the IV line. 

Roger purchased a pair of goggles to protect his eyes from the light and enable suitable lighting for him to be fed. The goggles have not been an adequate solution to his problem.

On June 8, 2025, Barbara Kay reported in the National Post that Roger, 

“…filed a complaint against the LHSC with Ontario’s human rights tribunal because his hospital replaced the special lighting in his room, which he needs because his disease causes extreme photo sensitivity, with ordinary lighting.” (1)

Roger Foley is the same man who was pressured to consider MAiD. On August 11, 2022, Maria Cheng reported the following for The Associated Press:

“In one recording obtained by the AP, the hospital’s director of ethics told Foley that for him to remain in the hospital, it would cost ‘north of $1,500 a day.’ Foley replied that mentioning fees felt like coercion and asked what plan there was for his long-term care. ‘Roger, this is not my show,’ the ethicist responded. 

‘My piece of this was to talk to you, (to see) if you had an interest in assisted dying.’” (2)

Roger wants to leave the hospital but the Ministry of Health has not approved him for self-directed funding for home care. Self-directed funding for home care is a program that exists in Ontario whereby a person hires their own caregivers rather than a business providing them. Self-directed funding for home care is the least expensive and most effective way to provide care.

Roger has not been fed since May 7.

We, the undersigned, request that Roger receive the necessary accommodation for room lighting to enable him to be fed while protecting him from his severe photo sensitivity. 

Sign and share the Petition: Roger Foley needs to be fed (Petition Link). 

Contact person: Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (info@epcc.ca)

(1) https://nationalpost.com/opinion/barbara-kay-a-disabled-mans-fight-for-life-in-an-age-of-maid
(2) https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c631558a457188d2bd2b5cfd360a867

Alex Schadenberg and Roger Foley on the Cruelty of Canada’s Euthanasia Regime

Wesley Smith conducted an interview with Alex Schadenberg and Roger Foley for his podcast titled: The Cruelty of Canada's Euthanasia Regime. (Link to listen to the podcast).

Wesley Smith, Alex Schadenberg

Wesley J Smith

Euthanasia is bad medicine and even worse public policy. Once a society accepts the principle that killing is a splendid answer to suffering, the kinds and extent of suffering that come to be seen as appropriate reasons to cause death expands continually.

Often, this suicide agenda — let’s call it — advances so slowly that, over time, people become acclimated to policies that were once unthinkable. But that has not been the case in Canada, where the government and much of the population enthusiastically embraced what the law euphemistically calls medical assistance in dying, or MAID. As a result, the “slippery slope” can be seen slip sliding away in real time to the unfortunate point that euthanasia is now the fifth leading cause of death in Canada. Indeed, in just a few short years, euthanasia has become so normalized that more than 15,000 people are killed by medical professionals in that country each year.

Roger Foley

Joining Wesley to discuss all this are Alex Schadenberg and Roger Foley. Schadenberg founded the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. He is probably the most effective opponent of euthanasia in Canada and internationally.

Roger Foley has seen the cruelty of Canadian euthanasia permissiveness up close and very personal. He lives with Cerebral Ataxia, a rare, genetic, progressive disease that damages the nervous system, causing people with CA to lose control of their muscles over time. Because of his disability, he has been pressured on several occasions to ask for euthanasia — as if being lethally injected were a proper treatment for his condition. His story illustrates what can happen when a society decides that death with dignity is more important than life with dignity.

(Link to listen to the podcast).

Related Resources Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

• Alex Schadenberg’s Blog
• New Documentary The Euthanasia Deception Exposes the Shocking Truth of Assisted Suicide | Press Release
• Exposing Vulnerable People to Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide by Alex Schadenberg | Amazon
• Roger Foley: A Passion to Live | Alex Schadenberg’s Blog

Wesley J Smith
Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism

Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

Follow Wesley Profile on Twitter, Facebook

Roger Foley - Trapped in a hospital for 9 years and told that death is his way out.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Roger Foley, London Health Sciences Centre

Yesterday I published the article: Roger Foley has served more than 9 years in hospital care. He deserves to be sent home with self directed care. (Link).

James Reinl wrote an article that was published in the Daily Mail on June 8, 2025 titled: I've been trapped in a hospital for NINE YEARS and staff tell me the way out is killing myself. Reinl explains Roger Foley's dilemma:

A disabled Canadian man has told the Daily Mail about his living hell of nine years in a hospital where he says caregivers badger him to end his life by lethal injection.

Roger Foley is stuck in a room in the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) in London, Ontario, where staff repeatedly drop hints about euthanasia, he says.

He suffers from spinocerebellar ataxia, an incurable brain disease that makes it difficult to move. He needs to be lifted so he can eat, drink, and take medication.

Last month the hospital switched out the amber lights in his room for bright bulbs that leave Foley, who is light sensitive, in pain and unable to be lifted for meals, he says.

The 49-year-old ate his last mouthful of food on May 6 and has since received sustenance through a drip.

Now, his strained veins are collapsing, and he is at risk of a heart attack or other health crisis, he adds.

Last week, I visited Roger Foley at the hospital. During the visit we discussed that he has not received any food since May 6, which was more than a month. Roger is receiving fluids with some sustenance through an IV tube, but that does not provide the necessary nutrition to sustain him.

Yesterday I wrote that Roger, who I have been communicating with for several years, does not want to live in the hospital. Roger has served his time and deserves to be sent home. The catch is that based on his disability he needs significant care.

Roger proposed, from the beginning, that he be sent home with self-directed care, meaning that Roger would hire the care team to provide for his needs. Self-directed care is a program that exists in Ontario, but Roger has been denied access to the program.

Reinl reports Roger as stating:

His state-funded at-home caregivers were negligent, dragging him across floors and banging him into walls, he says.

He ended up in hospital with food poisoning in February 2016 and he has been there ever since.

Foley says he will only go home once he can choose his own caregivers, in what is called 'self-directed' care — a rarity in the province's tax-funded healthcare system.

Reinl explains the stand-off that Foley has with the London Health Sciences Centre:

Last month, hospital bosses took away the soft amber lighting Foley needs in favor of the regular blue lights that hurt his disease-ravaged eyes, he says.

As a result, he cannot be lifted to eat and has since been fed through a drip, he says.

That raises the risks of heart attacks, infections and blood clots, he says.

'They know that my body can only last so long without access to food, medicine, and water, and they know that my eyes can't tolerate the light,' he said.

'They would be more than happy if I died of a heart attack.

Foley wants to leave the hospital and go home, Reinl writes:

He says he yearns to get back to his one-bedroom apartment on Highbury, where he can compose music and carry out voluntary work for disability rights charities.

Foley's home has an accessible shower and gym. If he is granted self-directed care, he could also see his mom, two brothers, and niece more often, he says.

'That's my light at the end of the tunnel,' he says.

An online fundraiser for his legal battle has so far raised nearly $3,000.

As I stated in my article yesterday when you do the math, self-directed care is the least expensive and preferable option for care.

The hospital is an incredibly expensive place to care for Roger and he does not want to be there. "Care agencies" bill the government for the cost of the care and the costs associated with the agency.

Self-directed care, whereby Roger would hire his own care team, is the least expensive and the preferable option since most of the cost is limited to the cost of the care team.

It is time to release Roger from the confinement of the hospital room and send him home with self-directed care. Roger has already created a proposed model of care that outlines the requirements of his team and the cost associated with his care.

Roger deserves to be sent home and be approved for self-directed care.

Roger Foley has served more than 9 years in hospital care. He deserves to be sent home with self directed care.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Roger Foley lives at the LHSC

Last week, a friend and I visited Roger Foley, who is living at the London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) for more than 9 years. Roger lives with cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative neurological condition.

Living in a hospital means that Roger lives in a small room without the freedom to control his environment. To make matters worse, the hospital staff have asked him, on several occasions, about MAiD and they have regularly broached the topic of suicide.

Roger, who I have been communicating with for several years, does not want to live in the hospital. Roger has served his time and deserves to be sent home. The catch is that based on his disability he needs significant care.

Roger proposed, from the beginning, that he be sent home with self-directed care, meaning that Roger would hire the care team to provide for his needs. Self-directed care is a program that exists in Ontario, but Roger has been denied access to the program.

Roger was offered care that would be provided through a "care agency". In the past when Roger's care was provided by a care agency he was not in control of his care team which resulted in several horrific experiences including food poisoning and a care giver falling to sleep while he was in the bath, to name a few. Remember, he can't get out of the bath without assistance.

Further to that, when you do the math, self-directed care is the least expensive and preferable option for care.

The hospital is an incredibly expensive place to care for Roger and he does not want to be there. "Care agencies" bill the government for the cost of the care and the costs associated with the agency.

Self-directed care, whereby Roger would hire his own care team, is the least expensive and the preferable option since most of the cost is limited to the cost of the care team.

It is time to release Roger from the confinement of the hospital room and send him home with self-directed care. Roger has already created a proposed model of care that outlines the requirements of his team and the cost associated with his care.

Roger deserves to be sent home and be approved for self-directed care.

Previous articles about Roger Foley: 

• UN disability envoy demands protection for people with disabilities from euthanasia in Canada (Link).
• People with disabilities oppose expansion of MAiD in Canada (Link).
• Canada is getting comfortable with killing people with disabilities (Link).

The callous cruelty of euthanasia in Canada.

This article was published by National Review online on June 1, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith

The New York Times Magazine has a very long article out today highlighting cases of nonterminally ill people being killed by doctors in Canada. It is too long to comment on the whole thing. (Please take the time to read it.) But one story described was so starkly abandoning, I have to bring it to your attention.

The story describes a woman named Paula, who seems to have been deeply depressed and experiencing chronic pain that could not be diagnosed. She had been abused by her father. She had attempted suicide more than once. After her mother died of cancer, she hit the skids, and she was on the verge of homelessness. Her life went into what would eventually become a literal death spiral. From, “Do Patients Without a Terminal Illness Have the Right to Die?”:

Paula stopped seeing her therapists and her social workers. She stopped seeing a family doctor because she couldn’t find one. She stopped taking mood stabilizers. She didn’t have a cellphone or a computer, and she spent hours a day just talking on an old black landline phone to people back in Perth. Still, Paula said, she was managing things — she was holding it together — until the concussion.

She was beaten up by two women with whom she had been feuding at the housing complex, suffering a concussion, which caused her life to spiral even further. She wanted euthanasia. Tests showed no brain damage. But she was miserable and wanted to die. She went on a crusade to find a doctor — any doctor — who would approve her being killed by lethal injection under Canada’s “Track 2” euthanasia protocol for the nonterminally ill.

She finally found a death doctor who was willing to kill her, despite knowing that many of her problems were social:

Fundamentally, he [the death doctor] didn’t think the best way to protect poor and marginalized patients was to force them to stay alive, because in some counterfactual version of events, in which the world was a better and more just place, they might have chosen differently. That wasn’t how anything in medicine worked; a doctor always treated the patient as she was. How could it be otherwise? If only those who were rich or well connected were recognized to have autonomy and allowed to choose? . . .

He had read the report from Paula’s neurologist, which said that Paula did not have permanent brain damage and was not eligible for MAID. But he thought the specialist, who was not a MAID provider herself, misunderstood the eligibility criteria. There was nothing in the law that said that Paula’s neurological condition had to be tied to actual, physical damage to the brain. Paula’s pain was real either way. She felt it the same either way.

On the day of the homicide, Paula says she is “terrified.” Of course! She is about to be killed! A “pastor” arrives to “counsel” her. She pushes the killing! This made me regurgitate my lunch:

Then the minister walked in. Paula had spent days calling religious leaders and asking if they would come sit with her while she died. Some said they would not but that they would pray for her. Others wouldn’t even do that. But then, finally, someone agreed to come. She introduced herself as the Rev. Takouhi Demirdjian-Petro, from the United Church of Canada, and she was tall and sturdy, in a pink clerical blouse. She looked down at Paula and took stock of the tearful situation. “You’re in the hands of the everlasting love of God,” she said firmly.

Paula started to cry harder, until she was nearly convulsing. “God have mercy on my soul.”

“God is with you,” the minister said. “And he is guiding you.”

“What if I get lost?” Paula asked. “My mind doesn’t have a very good GPS. I’m scared of getting lost.”

“You won’t. I promise you, honey.” The minister told Paula that she had a vision of Paula’s mother waiting for her, like a mother might wait for her daughter at the airport. “And I’m not B.S.ing you. So just let go of this empty, empty world.”

The death doctor arrives:

For days, Paula had worried that, at the final moment, she would waver, as she did when she tried to take her life before: pick up the pills, put them down, pick them up again; wade into the river, swim back, over and over. She imagined that when Wonnacott reached for the syringe, she would flinch. But Paula was calm and still as the drugs went in. “I don’t feel anything,” she whispered.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “This is horrible. I’m just so sorry.” Paula coughed as if she might vomit. Deep, guttural hacks. After a few moments, her body relaxed. A wet tissue fell from her hands. Her skin slowly turned a pale white.

Soon, Paula is dead.

Paula is not an anomaly. I just interviewed a Canadian man named Roger Foley for my Humanize podcast. The episode will be posted in a week. He is in a hospital with a progressively disabling condition for which doctors, he says, have repeatedly pushed euthanasia on him for several years — as they concomitantly deny him the kind of care that would make his life easier to bear. I’ll link to that interview here when it’s posted.

I also included Alex Schadenberg, the founder of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, in the interview. He described how hospital “MAiD teams” visit patients who might qualify to be killed, offering their death services. Can. You. Imagine?

Euthanasia is awful “medicine” and even worse public policy. It exposes the most vulnerable among us to abandonment and death. It pretends to be kind. It claims to be compassionate. But in the end, it justifies the most callous cruelty.

Euthanasia: Canada's doctors can kill you.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An article by Nicholas Tomaino that was published by WSJ.com on September 2, 2024 titled: Welcome to Canada, the Doctor Will Kill You Now exposes how Canada legalized euthanasia (MAiD). Tomaino writes:

Canada has undergone a crash course in what the country calls “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID. The experiment began in 2015, when the Canadian Supreme Court ruled in Carter v. Canada that “laws prohibiting physician-assisted dying interfere with the liberty and security” of people with “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions. Parliament codified the decision the following year.

Lawmakers thought they were imposing limits. “We do not wish to promote premature death as a solution to all medical suffering,” then-Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said. The plaintiff’s lead lawyer in Carter argued that “in almost every case,” doctors will want to “help their patients live, not die.” “We know physicians will be reluctant gatekeepers.”

Yet Krauthammer was right. The Superior Court of Quebec soon ruled that MAID was unconstitutional because it required that an applicant’s death from “a grievous and irremediable medical condition” be “reasonably foreseeable.” Parliament amended its “discriminatory” regime in 2021, opening wider the door to facilitated death. The new law dropped safeguards, such as the minimum 10-day assessment period between request and provision. It also proposed mental illness as an eligible condition, the implementation of which the government has delayed until 2027. The message for everyone else remains the same: If you want to die, you needn’t wait.

Tomaino is explaining how Canada legalized euthanasia and makes reference to comments by Charles Krauthammer. The short version is, Canada's Supreme Court, in 2015, struck down Canada's laws that protected people from euthanasia and assisted suicide. Parliament legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in June 2016 using the term MAiD, Medical Assistance in Dying. In 2019 a Quebec court decision (Truchon) decided that Canada's law was too restrictive because it limited killing to terminally ill people. Parliament then expanded Canada's law in March 2021 by (among other things) removing the terminal illness requirement in the law.

Alexander Raikin

Tomaino continues:

The consequence, Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Alexander Raikin notes in a new study, is that what was meant to be exceptional has become routine. Using two government data sets, he estimates the program is at least the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada, claiming a reported 13,241 lives in 2022, up from 1,018 in 2016.

Mr. Raikin notes the government believed doctors wouldn’t merely rubber-stamp applications. Yet in 2022 more than 81% of petitions resulted in death, including for “vision/hearing loss” and “diabetes.” He documents that the percentage of denied written requests has been falling for years, from 8% in 2019 to 3.5% in 2022, even as the number of applications has increased. The upshot has been that 44,958 people have been put to death between 2016-22. One estimate, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2020, predicted that “approximately 2,000 euthanasia” cases could be expected annually. The MAID toll that year was 7,611. Thus “either in absolute numbers or when weighed as a percentage of deaths,” Canada has the “fastest-growing assisted-dying program” in the world.

Roger Foley

Tomaino comments on Roger Foley, a man who has been told by hospital staff that he should die by MAiD

Roger Foley, who suffers from a degenerative neurological disorder, cerebellar ataxia, has witnessed MAID since its infancy. In 2009, as Mr. Foley’s condition worsened, he resigned from his job at the Royal Bank of Canada. After several years in home care, in which he claims he was mistreated, he was placed in a mental-health ward.

“I became extremely suicidal,” Mr. Foley, 48, says in a Zoom interview from his bed in the hospital, where he’s lived since 2016. After he shared those thoughts with staff, he says they began to float the idea of euthanasia. That alarmed him, so he began to record conversations secretly. He later shared them with Canadian journalists.

In one, a hospital ethicist threatens Mr. Foley with denial of insurance coverage and says it would cost him “north of $1,500 a day” to stay in the hospital. When Mr. Foley protested, the ethicist retorted: “Roger, this is not my show. My piece of this was to talk to you about if you had interest in assisted dying.”

He didn’t. “I have a passion to live,” Mr. Foley says. He wants to volunteer and write songs. Many people like to “use the term ‘end suffering,’ ” he says. In practice, that means “Don’t help the sufferer, end the sufferer.”

Canadians were told that euthanasia would only be available as a last resort but in reality it has been normalized and is killing many more people than anyone anticipated.