MAiD’s losing bet

It might not yet be the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius but at least one hopeful light is shining in the effort to illuminate the reality of medically assisted death.

Former Quebec Premier Philippe Coulliard sent emanations across the MAiD universe earlier this month when he voiced strong second thoughts about his government’s 2014 approval of non-culpable homicides in health care facilities.

“I’m not sure that I would have again voted for that law with the extension that we have seen in the recent years,”Couillard famously told a CBC interviewer on Oct. 10.

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Crucially, the former neurosurgeon also acknowledged he was warned by those seeking to prevent MAiD what would happen once it was legalized in Quebec, and that those warnings have fulfilled precisely the apocalyptic prophecies predicted.

Alas, Couillard refuses to go further than he has already gone, telling Canadian Catholic News in an email that he has nothing more to say. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition’s Alex Schadenberg is absolutely correct to call out this peek-a-boo approach. 

As Schadenberg told CCN’s Paul Schratz, the question for the premier who opened the legal door to rampant medicalized killing is simply this: “What are you going to do about this now?” 

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It’s a query that deserves an answer not just from one particular retired politician but all those who pushed Canada to our current state of MAiD madness. 

That would be the point where what was supposed to be a rare deadly procedure reserved for the last days of terminally ill patients in agony has become our fifth leading cause of death.

It would be the point where the federal government, which meekly followed Quebec’s lead on MAiD and passed its own legislation in 2016, has claimed puff-chested credit for declining to extend medical killing to the mentally ill. It should, rather, have immediately declared unthinkable any idea that Canadians suffering mental crises and so unable to make fully rational decisions might be killed by the State. 

Instead, federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser made the mentally ill yet another poker chip in the ongoing MAiD gamble. Fraser announced Oct. 7 that as a swap for keeping MAiD from the mentally ill, Ottawa will let those at risk of dementia decide in advance whether medical professionals can inject them with poison once they’ve lost the capacity to decide for themselves. Far from closing a legal door that was opened much too wide, this is just sneaking in from the dark alley what couldn’t be brought in from the day lit street.

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Predictably, it has only emboldened MAiD’s obsessive advocates, who immediately announced they will pursue their deadly idée fixe through the courts to make the case for the mentally ill having a Charter right to be killed. Given the legal debacle that was the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2015 Carter decision, Canadian Catholics might be well advised to stock up on votive candles and begin praying ceaselessly for a saner decision this time.

Prayer boosts hope, of course, as do visible signs of changing reality in the world. At the very least, former Premier Couillard’s change of heart can be seen as one sign of God’s light dawning as far as MAiD is concerned.

A version of this article appeared in the October 25, 2026 issue of The Catholic Register with the headline "MAiD’s losing bet".