By They said it couldn’t happen, but now it’s happening on a seemingly regular basis. Canada has spent a decade dressing state-assisted killing in the sterile language of medicine, dignity and personal choice. An Ontario family now alleges that the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying program killed their 83-year-old grandmother after she rejected euthanasia, failed to understand what was happening and did not consent on the morning of her death.
If the family’s account is accurate, this was not a paperwork error or an imperfect medical procedure, explained The Daily Mail. A vulnerable woman was deliberately killed without her consent under a government-authorized program. That is state-sanctioned murder, regardless of whether Canadian officials call it “medical assistance.”
Brigitte Stegemann, known to relatives as “GG” or “Oma,” died July 10 at The Pearl long-term care home in Cannifton, near Belleville. She had lived there for two years as her physical and cognitive health declined and had recently been diagnosed with untreatable Stage 4 stomach cancer.
Her granddaughter, Brigitte Kranendonk, served as Stegemann’s power of attorney for personal care and had been her primary caregiver for 12 years. Kranendonk told the Daily Mail that she discussed MAiD with her grandmother after the cancer diagnosis, but the devout Christian rejected it because it violated her faith.
“No, I don’t want that,” Stegemann reportedly said.
After doctors fitted her with a medical port, she repeatedly tore it out while screaming, “I don’t want the death shot!”
Those statements would appear to leave little room for confusion. Yet discussions about ending Stegemann’s life resumed in June while Kranendonk and her husband were away on a 10-day trip. Staff contacted Kranendonk about routine matters during that period but allegedly did not tell her that private MAiD conversations were taking place. By the time she returned, an assessment had already been conducted.
When Kranendonk asked who had initiated the process, she said a nurse became “very abrasive, very defensive” and told her, “Well, I’m just trying to advocate for her. I’m just trying to do what’s right for her.”
Kranendonk attended a later assessment and said the physician never plainly told her grandmother that the proposed medication would kill her. Instead, the doctor allegedly said, “We’re going to give you medicine, you’re going to feel at peace. And I just want you to know that you won’t have a bowel movement.”
After Kranendonk objected that Stegemann, whose first language was not English and who suffered from severe hearing loss, did not understand, the physician reportedly added, “We’re going to make sure you won’t have any more pain.”
The family says Stegemann also failed basic questions intended to evaluate her mental capacity. She incorrectly answered questions about her own family, including how many siblings she had, even though she was the second-youngest of 14 children and some of those siblings remained alive. The family was then asked to leave the room.
The physician later told them, “I have deemed her capable of making her own decisions,” and scheduled her death for July 10. Kranendonk said the family was left “shocked and distressed.”
Two days before the scheduled procedure, Kranendonk abandoned the euphemisms and told her grandmother exactly what was about to happen.
“I used very frank terms. I said: ‘Do you know that you’re going to die on Friday?’” she recalled.
Stegemann reacted with disbelief and cried for 45 minutes. “I’ve made a mistake,” she said. Kranendonk described her grandmother as “bawling. Inconsolable.”
That moment cuts through every bureaucratic defense of what happened next. Canada’s own MAiD rules state that a person may withdraw a request at any time and in any manner. The government generally requires patients to affirm their consent immediately before receiving the lethal drugs, although a tightly regulated written waiver may be used in certain circumstances. Even then, the arrangement becomes invalid if the patient demonstrates refusal or resistance through words, sounds or gestures. The government’s rules are explicit: approval for death is not supposed to become an irreversible appointment.
On July 10, Stegemann’s family took her outside for fresh air and a scoop of strawberry ice cream, her favorite, while they waited for her pastor. Staff soon insisted that she be brought inside so an intravenous line could be started well before the physician arrived.
Kranendonk said the nurse repeatedly pierced her grandmother’s arms while struggling to find a vein. “There was a phenomenal amount of blood,” she said. “It is all over my Oma’s arm, it is all over her nightie, soaking through her pillow, all over the sheets, there is so much blood. And throughout all this time, mind you, the nurse is not wearing gloves.”
When the physician arrived, Stegemann allegedly remained silent, with her hands clasped in prayer, and did not answer questions. According to the family, the physician administered the drugs anyway. Stegemann died shortly afterward with her hands still locked in a prayer position.
“She did not consent the morning of the procedure,” Kranendonk said. “She was a vulnerable human being, and they saw an opportunity.”
The Pearl had reportedly never conducted a MAiD procedure before. “So I don’t know if they just dropped the ball, because they didn’t know what they were doing,” Kranendonk said.
The long-term care home and the medical practitioners involved have not commented publicly, although they are understood to maintain that Stegemann legally consented. Police have opened an investigation.
“This incident is currently open and under investigation with our Criminal Investigations Division. We are unable to provide any additional information at this time,” a Belleville Police spokesman said.
Kranendonk has also asked Ontario’s Chief Coroner’s Office and the Patient Ombudsman to investigate. Those inquiries will have to determine what Stegemann signed, whether she possessed the capacity to understand it, whether she had a valid waiver of final consent and whether her statements and conduct amounted to a withdrawal of consent.
The allegations represent the latest warning about a Canadian euthanasia regime whose supposed boundaries keep moving. NCP previously reported that Canadian doctors were considering extending euthanasia to severely ill newborns who could never consent. Now a family says the same system killed an elderly Christian woman who had repeatedly rejected it.
MAiD accounted for 4.7 percent of all Canadian deaths in 2023, according to Health Canada’s annual report. What began in 2016 as a supposedly narrow exception for people near death has expanded into a system responsible for nearly one out of every 20 deaths in the country.
Supporters insist MAiD is about personal autonomy. Stegemann’s case exposes what happens when the machinery of state-approved death begins moving faster than the wishes of the person it is preparing to kill. Autonomy means nothing if “No, I don’t want that,” “I don’t want the death shot!” and “I’ve made a mistake” can all be ignored.
A government cannot authorize doctors to kill a woman without her consent and hide behind soothing language about peace, medicine and dignity. If investigators substantiate what Stegemann’s family has described, Canada’s MAiD system did not help her die. It murdered her.
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