MAiD Helping Die - Easier Than Help Live

 

VOICE of NANAIMO | Op‑Ed

October 13, 2025

When “Help to Live” Sounds Like “Help to Die”

MAID’s Track 2 and the disability line Canada keeps crossing

 

MAID in Canada didn’t start here. In 2016, Parliament sold it as a narrow end‑of‑life option for people in intolerable suffering who were already dying. In 2021, the guardrails were redrawn. Bill C‑7 removed the “reasonably foreseeable death” test and created two tracks: Track 1 (for those near end‑of‑life) and Track 2 (for those who aren’t). Track 2 added extra safeguards—another assessor with relevant expertise, at least 90 days to assess, proof that supports were explained—but it also changed the cultural signal. For Canadians living with disabilities, the state went from saying “we’ll help you live” to “we’ll also help you die.”

That shift isn’t theoretical. Health Canada’s most recent report shows 15,343 MAID deaths in 2023—about 1 in 20 deaths nationwide—with 622 under Track 2 alone. British Columbia accounted for 18% of all provisions, one of the highest shares in the country. These are not fringe numbers. They shape practice, training, and expectations in real clinics with real people who often arrive asking for help with housing, care hours, equipment, or pain relief—not a lethal option.

And yes, despite official lines, people are hearing MAID raised in contexts where the presenting problem is clearly social or economic. Veterans Affairs Canada confirmed four incidents where a department employee inappropriately discussed MAID with veterans. The department apologized and tightened guidance. Good. But the fact that corrective memos were needed tells you how easily a medical exit can leak into non‑medical despair.

Disability advocates have been sounding the alarm for years. Inclusion Canada’s CEO, Krista Carr, told Parliament this month that current policy pathways leave people with disabilities exposed. The law insists that poverty or lack of services alone don’t qualify you for MAID. In practice, people routinely face long waitlists for pain clinics, rehab, home supports, adaptive housing, and mental‑health care. When “options” to relieve suffering are unaffordable, unavailable, or months away, the so‑called free choice starts to look like a budget‑cut masquerading as autonomy.

Here in B.C.—and right here in Nanaimo—the ethical stakes are not abstract. Our province is a MAID hotspot by volume. We should be the national model for doing Track 2 with humility, restraint, and transparency. That means: airtight informed‑consent standards; mandatory documentation that every reasonable support was offered and made practically accessible; and an independent review of every Track 2 case that cites social suffering. If the wheelchair lift is back‑ordered, the pain clinic is six months out, and the home‑care hours were just cut, that is not a medical indication for death—it’s a systems failure. Fix the system.

Parliament has already recognized danger at the margins by delaying the separate expansion to MAID for mental illness as a sole condition to March 17, 2027. That pause should be used for something more than press releases. Use it to repair the front end of care: immediate access to assistive devices, timely pain and palliative teams (yes, for non‑terminal patients), flexible home‑support hours, and housing that a disability pension can actually cover.

What should decision‑makers do tomorrow? Three simple moves. First, legislate a “supports‑first” test for Track 2: MAID cannot proceed until documented, good‑faith efforts to deliver concrete supports have been made and tried. Second, require an assessor with lived disability expertise on every Track 2 file—no exceptions. Third, publish province‑level case reviews so the public can see where social failures are driving MAID requests and where fixes actually prevent them.

None of this denies MAID to those who meet clear medical criteria and persist in their request. It simply restores the moral order: the state must exhaust help‑to‑live before it offers help‑to‑die. If we get that backwards, we stop being a compassionate society and start being an efficient one. And that’s not a compliment.

— VON Editorial Board