Published November 11, 2024
For years, there have been clear signals that euthanasia providers in Canada may be breaking the law and getting away with it. That is the finding of the officials who are responsible for monitoring euthanasia deaths to ensure compliance in the province of Ontario. Newly uncovered reports reveal that these authorities have thus far counted over 400 apparent violations — and have kept this information from the public and not pursued a single criminal charge, even against repeat violators and “blatant” offenders.
In Canada, medical assistance in dying, or MAID, is regulated by criminal law. Practitioners must comply with federal and provincial criteria or face lengthy prison sentences. Among other requirements, they must carefully assess whether people who request euthanasia are eligible, uphold all the safeguards against abuse, and report each request and each death.
Euthanasia advocates often tout the strictness of these laws as evidence that the safeguards are working. “Like most clinicians that do this work, I’m acutely aware of what happens … if I break the rules anywhere,” says Stefanie Green, a former president of the leading organization of Canadian euthanasia practitioners, on a podcast. “There’s criminal liability sitting in the back of my head, blaring out loud and neon signs: 14 years in jail.”
In Ontario, the responsibility for lighting up those neon signs falls to the Office of the Chief Coroner. Since 2014, that office’s head has been Dirk Huyer, who has publicly boasted that “Every case is reported. Everybody has scrutiny on all of these cases. From an oversight point of view, trying to understand when it happens and how it happens, we’re probably the most robust in Canada.”
But private documents reveal a different side of the story.
From 2018 to 2024, in presentations held behind closed doors and in reports that were nominally public but garnered little attention, Huyer has shown that his office has identified hundreds of “issues with compliance” with the criminal law and regulatory policies. In 2023, his office raised these concerns for a quarter of all euthanasia providers in Ontario.
Most of the information in these documents, which were shared with The New Atlantis by three physicians who had access to them on condition of anonymity, is being newly made public or reported on for the first time in this article.
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Alexander Raikin is a Visiting Fellow in the Bioethics and American Democracy Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His research focuses on the dignity of human life and end-of-life issues, especially on its impact on the field of medicine and broader ethical questions of social belonging.
