A medical bed is photographed in the trauma bay during simulation training at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto on Aug. 13, 2019.Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press
A United Nations committee reviewing Canada’s treatment of disabled people is calling on Ottawa to repeal medical assistance in dying for anyone without a terminal illness, a procedure referred to as the “Track 2” option for MAID.
The new report from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities also recommends Canada create a federal MAID watchdog to investigate complaints, and that the country invest heavily in addressing the systemic failures that lead disabled people to apply for assisted death in the first place.
The report, released last month, says MAID is offered as state-sanctioned relief from suffering to people who are failed by governments that don’t properly fund access to health care or accessible housing. The report also points to shortcomings in the prevention of homelessness and gender-based violence, and failures to provide adequate welfare support and at-home mental-health care.
Critics of Canada’s MAID laws heralded the report as echoing their long-stated concerns that systemic hardships are forced upon disabled people while assisted death is seen as a solution to their intractable living situations. So far in the 2025 election campaign, no federal party has proposed changes to MAID.
The UN committee, made up of a dozen independent experts monitoring adherence to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Canada ratified in 2010, reported it is “extremely concerned” by the fact that Ottawa broadened Canada’s MAID laws in 2021 to offer death to people who have incurable physical illnesses.
This second track for MAID patients caters to people with disabilities, the report states, based on negative and ableist perceptions of the quality and value of their lives, including that “‘suffering’ is intrinsic to disability rather than the fact that inequality and discrimination cause and compound ‘suffering’ for persons with disabilities.” Track 2 MAID has expanded rapidly since it was legalized, but it represented only 4 per cent of the 15,343 people who died this way in 2023, the last year for which Health Canada has published data.
The committee also called on Ottawa to scrap the proposed expansion of MAID eligibility in 2027 to people whose sole underlying illness is a mental disorder, and for it to ban any federal support for advanced requests. Quebec announced similar plans last October so that people with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease can get approved before their mental capacity declines.
Health Canada has no plans to repeal the Track 2 MAID and stands by the system it has helped create, spokesperson Tammy Jarbeau said in a statement.
Ms. Jarbeau said stricter safeguards baked into Track 2 applications include requiring patients to be informed of the other “available and appropriate means to relieve their suffering,” such as counselling, mental health and disability support services and palliative care. Patients must also be offered consultations with professionals who provide these services, she said.
Gabrielle Peters, a disabled writer and policy analyst who co-founded the grassroots organization Disability Filibuster to oppose Track 2, found the UN recommendation “incredibly validating.” She noted the UN experts, like many disabled Canadians, are highly critical of the federal government’s decision not to appeal the landmark 2019 Quebec Superior Court case that struck down the restriction limiting the procedure to the terminally ill.
“This report does represent a consensus view of disability experts from across the globe and MAID is not some niche gripe of a handful of disgruntled [disabled people] – it is a matter of immense global concern to people with disabilities who recognize all of the signs of a resurgent eugenics era,” said Ms. Peters, a former member of the Vancouver City Planning Commission who has testified before Parliament on MAID.
Trudo Lemmens, a University of Toronto professor and Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy, also called the report a very serious indictment of Canada’s MAID system.
“This cannot be pushed aside, as we often have seen in the Canadian context, as, you know, ‘It’s people who are opposed to MAID, it’s conservatives, it’s people with religious objections.’ This is a credible international human rights body that makes some very strong recommendations,” Mr. Lemmens said.
Ellen Wiebe, a controversial and prolific provider of MAID who has been at the centre of two recent lawsuits, disagrees. Dr. Wiebe, who has used a wheelchair for more than three decades, said if Canada follows through with the UN committee’s recommendation to abolish the second track of MAID it will take away the rights of people like herself.
“It sounds like they not only want to take the rights away for disabled people, but women, people of colour, Indigenous people. This is not making sense,” she said.
She did agree, however, with the international group’s assessment that Canada is not supporting its poorest and most marginalized people.
Dying With Dignity Canada, the country’s largest pro-MAID advocacy organization, echoed those sentiments and called on Ottawa to solve this structural vulnerability by promoting stable housing, income assistance and food security, as well as pharmacare and dental care.
“We cannot solve one injustice by creating another; those with a disability must have the same right to autonomy and end-of-life choice as all people across Canada,” the organization said in a statement.