By They said it would never happen, but now it has, and there will likely be more to come. An Ontario oversight report is drawing renewed scrutiny to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) regime after an elderly woman was euthanized the same day an urgent request was pursued despite earlier statements that she wished to withdraw and seek hospice care instead.
You read that right. When they aren’t preparing to fight a war with the United States, authorities in Canada are killing elderly women who did not want to die. That’s Canadian compassion.
The case involves a Canadian woman in her 80s, identified only as “Mrs. B,” whose death was examined by Ontario’s MAiD Death Review Committee in a report released through the Office of the Chief Coroner. The committee’s findings describe a compressed and contentious decision-making process that left little time to assess whether the request reflected Mrs. B’s settled wishes or the pressures surrounding her care, according to The Daily Mail.
According to the report, Mrs. B suffered serious complications following coronary artery bypass graft surgery. She opted for palliative care and was discharged home with support services, with her husband acting as her primary caregiver. As her condition worsened, the burden on her husband intensified despite intermittent nursing visits.
The report states that Mrs. B “reportedly expressed her desire for MAiD to her family,” prompting her husband to contact a referral service on her behalf. Yet during an initial assessment, Mrs. B told the evaluator she wished to withdraw the request, citing “personal and religious values and beliefs,” and said she preferred inpatient hospice care.
The following morning, her husband brought her to hospital, where clinicians found her medically stable but noted that her husband was “experiencing caregiver burnout.” Her palliative care physician applied for inpatient hospice placement due to the strain on her caregiver. That request was denied.
Later that same day, the husband sought an urgent second MAiD assessment. A different assessor deemed Mrs. B eligible. When the first assessor was consulted, they objected, raising concerns about the claimed urgency, the abrupt change in Mrs. B’s expressed wishes, and the possibility of “coercion or undue influence” linked to her husband’s burnout. The assessor asked to re-evaluate Mrs. B the next day.
That request was rejected. The MAiD provider cited the need for urgent action based on clinical circumstances. A third assessor was brought in, agreed with the second assessment, and Mrs. B was killed that evening.
Committee members expressed deep unease with how the case unfolded. Many concluded that the accelerated timeline prevented a meaningful examination of Mrs. B’s social circumstances, her care needs, the impact of the denied hospice placement, caregiver burden, the consistency of her MAiD request, and the sharply differing views among assessors.
The report also raised concerns about possible external pressure arising from caregiver exhaustion and the lack of available inpatient palliative or hospice care. Committee members noted that the husband acted as the primary advocate in pursuing MAiD, with limited documentation showing that Mrs. B independently initiated the request. Assessments occurred in his presence, further heightening concerns that she may have felt pressured.
Canada legalized MAiD in 2016 for individuals whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable. Since then, eligibility has expanded to include people with chronic illnesses or disabilities, with further expansion to certain mental health conditions still under review. Critics have warned that Canada’s program is the “biggest threat to disabled people since the Nazis.” Supporters followed up those critics by pushing to expand euthanasia to infants, a move that would make the Great White North the second country since Nazi Germany in the 1930s to allow such a barbaric practice. The framework is significantly more permissive than physician-assisted dying laws in the United States, where only a handful of states and the District of Columbia allow the practice under tightly defined conditions.
Taken together, the cases underscore unresolved tensions within Canada’s MAiD system, where Canadian leaders appear to have lost all touch with humanity or morality. Isn’t socialized medicine grand?
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