The Deadly Secret Behind ‘Compassionate’ Health Care

Canada’s medical assistance in dying program has gone off the rails. Last week, two Canadian doctors sounded the alarm, telling the New York Times “too many people are receiving the procedure without the opportunity for careful reflection about it with a health provider … In some cases, patients are being approved who should not be.” In one case, a woman in her 70s told her doctors that she felt she had lost her value as she was struggling to cook meals for her family. The woman was approved for MAID, though thankfully she decided not to go through with it.

More Canadians die at the hands of their own government than Americans are killed with firearms. Considering that Canada is about a tenth the size of the United States, this news is disturbing. But in Canada, it’s business as usual. 

Canada legalized MAID in 2016 for people with terminal illnesses, after the Supreme Court of Canada determined that this right was “critical to their dignity and autonomy.” The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was a key reference in the decision, as the court determined that criminal laws prohibiting “physician-assisted dying” interfere with Canadians’ rights to life, liberty, and security of the person.

A problem with arguing that MAID is a “right,” of course, is that it opens up the debate to one around who is being “deprived” of this “right.” While the original law required that an individual’s death be “reasonably foreseeable” in order for them to be eligible, everything changed when a new federal bill challenging this exclusion was introduced. This bill passed in 2021, creating a “Track 2” option for MAID: “an assessment pathway for individuals requesting medical assistance in dying whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.”

This opened up the possibility of allowing those with disabilities, with mental disorders, and simply suffering physically in ways they no longer wanted to or could tolerate to access MAID. The slippery slope had been unlocked. What constitutes “chronic suffering,” anyway? It’s an incredibly imprecise measure and open to widely varied interpretation depending on the individual.

Since 2021, rates of physician-assisted death have exploded. In 2016, 1,018 people in Canada died via MAID, but that number rose to a shocking 10,064 in 2021. That year, only 4% of those who filed written applications were deemed ineligible.

A recently publicized case out of Ontario describes a distraught granddaughter asking her grandmother, Brigitte Stegemann, who had been living in a care home, “Do you know that you’re going to die on Friday?” The 83-year-old began crying and was “inconsolable,” saying, according to her granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk, “I’ve made a mistake.” According to the care home, Stegemann had legally consented. But Kranendonk says she was hard of hearing, that English was not her first language, and that she had “answered every question wrong” when given a cognitive test to assess her ability to consent to MAID.

When a nurse failed to insert an IV correctly, a medical port was placed under her skin to administer the “medicine” that would kill Stegemann. After it was fitted, The Daily Mail reports, “the 83-year-old repeatedly ripped it off, screaming: ‘I don’t want the death shot!’”

Kranendonk felt her grandmother was pushed into the situation and that the whole procedure was rushed through, with Stegemann confused about what she was agreeing to. The Daily Mail headline was shocking: “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother was euthanised against her will under Canada’s assisted dying system — she died covered in blood with her hands clasped in prayer.”

In London, Ontario, a doctor assessed a patient with inflammatory bowel disease and a history of mental health issues outside a Tim Hortons. Thomas Dillon, 45, suffered from Crohn’s disease and had a history of depression, alcohol abuse, and opioid addiction. Dr. James MacLean determined Dillon was eligible for MAID under Track 2, personally driving his patient, after his coffee shop assessment, to the MAID provision location, described in news reports as “an industrial-like facility where bodies are prepared for funerals.”

According to statistics, 76,475 people have died by assisted suicide between 2016 and 2024. MAID now accounts for at least one in 20 deaths in Canada (official 2025 and 2026 stats have not yet been released by the government). With groups like The Canadian Psychiatric Association arguing that “patients with a psychiatric illness should not be discriminated against solely on the basis of their disability, and should have available the same options regarding MAID as available to all patients,” these numbers seem likely to increase. 

What’s happening in Canada is not as simple as more and more people eagerly requesting MAID. It is also being suggested to patients by doctors as an “option.” In Vancouver, an 83-year-old woman named Miriam Lancaster was taken to the hospital with foot pain, and was offered MAID by a young doctor in the ER.

“The very first thing she said to me was, ‘I would like to offer you MAID,’” Lancaster told EWTW News, adding that she knew what MAID was as her husband had been offered MAID three years prior, at the same hospital. Lancaster and her husband were both Catholic, and she explained that, as such, “There is no way that we are going to take measures to end our lives — that is in the hands of the Lord.” 

“Just as soon as you arrive at the hospital, and you’re of a certain age, that is just offered before asking any questions,” she told City News.

Bringing up euthanasia is not prohibited in Canada, except in Alberta, where a recently passed bill will ban doctors from raising MAID with a patient without them first bringing it up. This is the norm already in the minority of states in the U.S. where euthanasia is legal. Similarly, in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, where MAID is legal, raising or initiating assisted dying with a patient in prohibited. As assisted suicide advances across the U.S., these precedents should concern all Americans.

The aim of MAID is purportedly compassion. When a person is suffering to such an extent, and when their death is near and inevitable, the argument that we should respect the individual’s wishes to be put out of their misery may sound like the right thing to do. Arguably, it is any individual’s prerogative to choose death if they wish. So MAID has been framed as the “compassionate” and “kind” way forward. 

But it is also rational to assume that the goal of a doctor is to do everything possible to keep their patient alive, not propose death to resolve discomfort, distress, or disease. 

Proponents of MAID use words like “dignity” and “compassion” in its defense. But what about dignity in life? And true compassion for the living, via genuine care and treatment? In truth, MAID sounds like a cost-saving solution for the government, not care for its citizens. 

***

Meghan Murphy is a writer from Vancouver, now living in Mexico. Find more of her work at www.meghanmurphy.ca.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org