MAID Gone Mad in Canada

National Review Online

Thursday, May 28, 2026

 

Encouraging doctors to get involved in people killing themselves in a society with socialized medicine and declining religiosity has ghastly consequences. Who knew? Canadians can’t say that nobody warned them.

 

Social conservatives are often accused of being overwrought in predicting a parade of horribles from each step down the proverbial slippery slope of social “progress.” By the time those horribles materialize — and in most cases, sooner or later, they do — we are on to the next cause, or we’re told that people are just accustomed to this now.

 

After all, who wants to settle for slow progress when one can enjoy the swift forward momentum of jumping out the window?

 

The antiseptic acronym MAID, for Medical Aid in Dying, is almost too perfect in how it evokes the modern nanny state: a nice lady who just tidies things up for you. It was sold, as it has been sold in nations such as Britain and American states such as Oregon and New York, as compassion for those suffering terribly at the very end from incurable ailments that robbed them of their minds, their movements, and their dignity.

 

That was the teaser rate. Now, the real bill is due. As has happened in other jurisdictions, Canada started with strict criteria in 2016 and then loosened them in 2021 to apply to anyone considered to be suffering gravely, whether or not they were close to the grave. On a per capita basis, Canadians today are more likely to die of MAID than Americans are to die of gun violence.

 

Now, MAID in Canada has its own poster boy: Dr. James MacLean. If MacLean’s case is not as sensationally grisly as, say, that of Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic or as flamboyant as the euthanasia crusading of Jack Kevorkian, it nonetheless underlines the banality of evil at work in Canada.

 

As reported this week by the Toronto Globe and Mail and the National Post, two of MacLean’s MAID cases in 2024 have come under scrutiny following public complaints. In one, MacLean signed off on the death of a 45-year-old man with Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s, which involves inflammation of the bowels, is chronic and frequently painful, entails expensive medical care, and can lead to an early death, especially if not properly treated. But it is a far cry from the kinds of immediate end-of-life situations MAID was billed to address; many people live with it for years and years.

 

As the Cleveland Clinic observes, “Crohn’s disease isn’t usually life-threatening. Life expectancy is generally normal. But ongoing inflammation can increase your risk of colon cancer and cause other complications. . . . Treatment can help manage irritation and reduce symptoms. Most people with Crohn’s disease can live full, active lives.” At least in America, that is.

 

The National Post tells us the basis upon which Dr. MacLean thought it appropriate for the man to be put down: “because of his illness, didn’t have an active social network, had difficulty maintaining a job, found personal relationships difficult and was dependent on family for housing and financial support. He had a history of mental illness, previous bouts of suicidal thinking and on-going alcohol and opioid misuse that cost him his driver’s licence.” His family told the Globe and Mail that “he was still able to pursue hobbies such as skydiving and maintain friendships. They said the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of work as a timber framer sent him into depression and alcohol abuse.” Think how many lives this describes, and what sort of mentality deems them worth ending at 45, with no hope of a redeeming second act.

 

In a cavalier twist that seems almost parodically Canadian, MacLean performed his entire assessment of the man outside of a Tim Hortons coffee shop. Six months later, meeting again outside of the coffee shop after communicating with the patient by text, MacLean drove the man to the “industrial-like facility” for MAID after the man refused to ride there with his sister. His family objected to the death and was not consulted in the assessment. As MacLean texted the man, “Do they think it is going to negatively impact them? It is not about them.”

 

In the second case, MacLean tried and failed to kill a 67-year-old cancer patient who had previously consented to MAID; MacLean was called in when the man lost consciousness. When the doctor wasn’t able to obtain a fresh kit from the pharmacy — pause here for a second to think of a pharmacy playing executioner’s handmaid — he simply grabbed one off the shelf that turned out to be missing the drug that was supposed to paralyze the man’s muscles to stop his breathing. MacLean gave him a powerful sedative and pronounced him dead anyway when his heart stopped, then left before his breathing resumed.

 

The doctor’s excuse was that “he believes the stress of the situation, including the last-minute and urgent request for his attendance and the substantial number of people present with significant tension amongst them, contributed to initial failed provision of MAID.” Doctors endure stress and time pressures routinely, but this sounds like the small voice of conscience, not quite stilled, in the “significant tension” over using medicine to kill rather than heal.

 

Just imagine how the botched execution of a mass murderer caused by the failure to administer the correct sequence of drugs would be received: as a moral stain on the entire “cruel and unusual” enterprise and grounds to force the pharmaceutical companies to discontinue the toxic drugs. But when the state approves this sort of thing for people who committed no crime besides illness and despair, we get what happened here: a “caution” for Dr. MacLean and an order that his practice be better supervised for six months. He can’t be taken off his rounds, after all, because those Canadians just won’t kill themselves.