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Assisted suicide activists should not be running our MAID program

Published

2 years ago

6 minute read

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Shawn Whatley

We should keep the right-to-die foxes out of the regulatory henhouse

The federal government chose a right-to-die advocacy group to help implement its medical assistance in dying legislation. It’s a classic case of regulatory capture, otherwise known as letting the foxes guard the henhouse.

In the “Fourth annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2022,” the federal government devoted several paragraphs of praising to the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers (CAMAP).

“Since its inception in 2017, (CAMAP) has been and continues to be an important venue for information sharing among health-care professionals and other stakeholders involved in MAID,” reads the report.

With $3.3 million in federal funding, “CAMAP has been integral in creating a MAID assessor/provider community of practice, hosts an annual conference to discuss emerging issues related to the delivery of MAID and has developed several guidance materials for health-care professionals.”

Six clinicians in British Columbia formed CAMAP, a national non-profit association, in October 2016. These six right-to-die advocates published clinical guidelines for MAID in 2017, without seriously consulting other physician organizations.

The guidelines educate clinicians on their “professional obligation to (bring) up MAID as a care option for patients, when it is medically relevant and they are likely eligible for MAID.” CAMAP’s guidelines apply to Canada’s 96,000 physicians, 312,000 nurses and the broader health-care workforce of two-million Canadians, wherever patients are involved.

The rise of CAMAP overlaps with right-to-die advocacy work in Canada. According to Sandra Martin, writing in the Globe and Mail, CAMAP “follow(ed) in the steps of Dying with Dignity,” an advocacy organization started in the 1980s, and “became both a public voice and a de facto tutoring service for doctors, organizing information-swapping and self-help sessions for members.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tapped this “tutoring service” to lead the MAID program. CAMAP appears to follow the steps of Dying with Dignity, because the same people lead both groups. For example, Shanaaz Gokool, a current director of CAMAP, served as CEO of Dying with Dignity from 2016 to 2019.

A founding member and current chair of the board of directors of CAMAP is also a member of Dying with Dignity’s clinician advisory council. One of the advisory council’s co-chairs is also a member of Dying with Dignity’s board of directors, as well as a moderator of the CAMAP MAID Providers Forum. The other advisory council co-chair served on both the boards of CAMAP and Dying with Dignity at the same time.

Overlap between CAMAP and Dying with Dignity includes CAMAP founders, board members (past and present), moderators, research directors and more, showing that a small right-to-die advocacy group birthed a tiny clinical group, which now leads the MAID agenda in Canada. This is a problem because it means that a small group of activists exert outsized control over a program that has serious implications for many Canadians.

George Stigler, a Noble-winning economist, described regulatory capture in the 1960s, showing how government agencies can be captured to serve special interests.

Instead of serving citizens, focused interests can shape governments to serve narrow and select ends. Pharmaceutical companies work hard to write the rules that regulate their industry. Doctors demand government regulations — couched in the name of patient safety — to decrease competition. The list is endless.

Debates about social issues can blind us to basic governance. Anyone who criticizes MAID governance is seen as being opposed to assisted death and is shut out of the debate. At the same time, the world is watching Canada and trying to figure out what is going on with MAID and why we are so different than other jurisdictions offering assisted suicide.

Canada moved from physician assisted suicide being illegal to becoming a world leader in organ donation after assisted death in the space of just six years.

In 2021, Quebec surpassed the Netherlands to lead the world in per capita deaths by assisted suicide, with 5.1 per cent of deaths due to MAID in Quebec, 4.8 per cent in the Netherlands and 2.3 per cent in Belgium. In 2022, Canada extended its lead: MAID now represents 4.1 per cent of all deaths in Canada.

How did this happen so fast? Some point to patients choosing MAID instead of facing Canada’s world-famous wait times for care. Others note a lack of social services. No doubt many factors fuel our passion for MAID, but none of these fully explain the phenomenon. In truth, Canada became world-famous for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide because we put right-to-die advocates in charge of assisted death.

Regardless of one’s stance on MAID, regulatory capture is a well-known form of corruption. We should expect governments to avoid obvious conflicts of interest. Assuming Canadians want robust and ready access to MAID (which might itself assume too much), at least we should keep the right-to-die foxes out of the regulatory henhouse.

Shawn Whatley is a physician, a Munk senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and author of “When Politics Comes Before Patients: Why and How Canadian Medicare is Failing.”

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Canadian university censors free speech advocate who spoke out against Indigenous ‘mass grave’ hoax

Published on December 23, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Dr. Frances Widdowson was arrested and given a ticket at the University of Victoria campus after trying to engage in conversation about ‘the disputed claims of unmarked graves in Kamloops.’

A Canadian academic who spoke out against claims there are mass unmarked graves of kids on former Indigenous residential schools, and who was arrested on a university campus as a result for trespassing, is fighting back with the help of a top constitutional group.

Dr. Frances Widdowson was arrested and given a ticket on December 2, 2025, at the University of Victoria (UVic) campus after trying to engage in conversation about “the disputed claims of unmarked graves in Kamloops,” noted the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) in a recent news release.

According to the JCCF, Widdowson was trying to initiate a “good faith” conversation with people on campus, along with the leader of OneBC provincial party, Dallas Brodi.

“My arrest at the University of Victoria is an indication of an institution that is completely unmoored from its academic purpose,” said Widdowson in a statement made available to LifeSiteNews.

She added that the “institution” has been “perpetuating the falsehood” of the remains of 215 children “being confirmed at Kamloops since 2021, and is intent on censoring any correction of this claim.”

“This should be of concern for everyone who believes that universities should be places of open inquiry and critical thinking, not propaganda and indoctrination,” she added.

UVic had the day before Widdowson’s arrest warned on its website that those in favor of free speech were “not permitted to attend UVic property for the purpose of speaking publicly.”

Despite the warning, Widdowson, when she came to campus, was met with some “100 aggressive protesters assembled where she intended to speak at Petch Fountain,” noted the JCCF.

The protesters consisted of self-identified Communists, along with Antifa-aligned people and Hamas supporters.

“When she declined to leave, she was arrested, detained for about two hours, and charged under British Columbia’s Trespass Act—an offence punishable by fines up to $2,000 or up to six months’ imprisonment,” said the JCCF.

According to Constitutional lawyer Glenn Blackett, UVic actions are shameful, as it “receives hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars annually while it facilitates the arrest of Canadians attempting to engage in free inquiry on campus.”

Widdowson’s legal team, with the help of the JCCF, will be defending her ticket to protect her “Charter-protected freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.”

Widdowson served as a tenured professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, before she was fired over criticism of her views on identity politics and Indigenous policy, notes the JCCF. She was vindicated, however, as an arbitrator later found her termination was wrongful.

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.

However, as the claims went unfounded, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic and many of them on Indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada since the spring of 2021.

Last year, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the former Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of Indigenous children.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, new private members’ Bill C-254, “An Act To Amend The Criminal Code” introduced by New Democrat MP Leah Gazan, looks to give jail time to people who engage in so-called “Denialism.” The bill would look to jail those who question the media and government narrative surrounding Canada’s “Indian Residential School system” that there are mass graves despite no evidence to support this claim.

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Digital ID

Canadian government launches trial version of digital ID for certain licenses, permits

Published on December 22, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) department has officially confirmed it is developing a digital ID for certain licenses and permits.

The Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) department has officially confirmed it is developing a digital ID for certain licenses and permits, called “GC Issue and Verify,” which has already been listed on the Google Play store, as a trial-only app for certain users.

The digital ID claims the government can replace and be full “digital versions” of the “physical credentials they already provide today, like work permits and boating licenses.”

“Instead of only having physical credentials in their wallets, people will also be able to securely store their digital credentials on their mobile devices,” says the government.

According to ESDC officials, the digital IDs can be shared online or in-person “when needed, making it easy for departments, organizations, and businesses to validate their information.”

The government argued that since many Canadians already use “digital credentials without realizing it,” such as a digital ticket “stored on our mobile device instead of using a printed ticket,” this would be the same for IDs such as licenses.

ESDC said that “digital options” will be voluntary and that people can still use “traditional physical methods of verification,” instead.

READ: Canada releases new digital ID app for personal documents despite privacy concerns

The reality is that digital IDs and similar systems have long been pushed by globalist groups like the World Economic Forum, an organization with which Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has extensive ties, under the guise of ease of access and security.

Also, Canadians do not want digital IDs, as noted by Canada’s Privy Council research from 2023, which said there is strong public resistance to the use of digital IDs to access government services.

Both GC Wallet and GC Issue and Verify are now being tested with federal partners, those being Transport Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

During COVID, the Canadian federal government released a digital-type app called ArriveCAN app for travel that was a form of digital ID. The app was riddled with technical glitches along with privacy concerns from users.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Canadian government hired outside consultants tasked with looking into whether or not officials should proceed with creating a digital ID system for all citizens and residents.

Opp0sition MP Leslyn Lewis, recently warned Canadians to be “on guard” against a push by the ruling Liberal Party to bring forth digital IDs, saying they should be voluntary.

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