Death Instead of Treatment

Track 1: Death Reasonably Foreseeable

MAID was legalised for individuals whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable — effectively limiting it to terminal illness. This was the initial framework: assisted death for people who were dying anyway, with safeguards including two independent medical assessments and a 10-day reflection period.

Track 2: Death NOT Reasonably Foreseeable

Bill C-7 expanded MAID to individuals whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable — opening it to chronic conditions, disabilities, and non-terminal illness. Track 2 requires a 90-day assessment period and two independent assessments. This expansion fundamentally changed MAID from end-of-life care to a response to suffering. The distinction matters: under Track 1, the patient is dying; under Track 2, the patient is suffering but not dying. The system's failure to alleviate suffering becomes the justification for death.

Delayed Three Times, Never Cancelled

The government proposed extending MAID to individuals whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. This expansion has been delayed three times — from March 2023 to March 2024, then to March 2025, then to 2027. Each delay acknowledged that the healthcare system was not ready to provide adequate mental health services as an alternative to MAID. The delays confirm the core thesis: the system cannot treat mental illness adequately, so it delays (but does not cancel) the expansion that would allow it to kill patients instead. When mental health services remain inadequate in 2027, will the expansion proceed on the grounds that suffering is "irremediable" because the system failed to treat it?

Veterans Called for Help, Were Offered Death

At least four confirmed cases have been documented in parliamentary testimony where Veterans Affairs Canada staff offered MAID to veterans who called seeking mental health support. As documented in the veteran suicide analysis, veterans die by suicide at 1.4x (male) and 1.9x (female) the civilian rate. When veterans seeking help for PTSD, depression, and service-related trauma are offered death instead of treatment, the system has inverted the purpose of care. The veterans' mental health crisis is directly connected to the military degradation documented across this site — the same system that degrades military capability also fails to treat the humans damaged by military service.

System Failure Creates MAID Eligibility

The pattern documented across multiple cases: (1) Patient develops mental health condition or chronic pain. (2) Patient seeks treatment through the public healthcare system. (3) Wait times for specialist care exceed months or years. (4) Patient's condition worsens during the wait. (5) The worsened condition is assessed as "irremediable" — the legal threshold for Track 2 MAID. (6) Patient is offered MAID. The system's failure to provide timely treatment creates the legal grounds for death. The "irremediability" is not inherent to the condition — it is produced by the healthcare system's failure to treat it.

15.1 Million Canadians Modelled as Fiscal Liabilities

The Pearce Study (Joshua Pearce, Western University, published February 2025 in OMEGA — Journal of Death and Dying, DOI: 10.1177/00302228251323299) provides peer-reviewed academic modelling of MAID as a cost-avoidance strategy. The study calculates that 15.1 million Canadians living with chronic conditions consume approximately 80% of healthcare expenditure ($264B of $330B annually). The study models the "economic impact" of extending MAID utilisation to this population — presenting scenario analysis for multi-billion dollar cost savings.

This is not conspiracy theory. This is a peer-reviewed study published in an academic journal that explicitly models the financial incentive for the government to extend MAID to chronic condition patients. The demographics-to-death analysis integrates this research into the full pipeline documentation.