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Bill 18: Alberta moves to limit assisted death

Five years after Canada expanded Medical Assistance In Dying to people with disabilities who are not dying, Alberta has said enough

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Five years after Canada expanded Medical Assistance In Dying to people with disabilities who are not dying, one province has said enough. Alberta’s Bill 18 would refuse to deliver Track 2 MAID within its health system.

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It is an important signal, but provincial legislation cannot amend the federal Criminal Code.

Alberta’s Bill 18 restores the same protections to the lives of persons with disabilities that all other Canadians already expect and rely upon. It affirms that every life has equal value and that disability must never serve as a justification for state‑facilitated death.

Now, the federal government must follow suit by amending the Criminal Code.

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Canada’s MAID law distinguishes between two pathways. Track 1 applies to people whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable, those nearing the end of life. Track 2 applies exclusively to people with disabilities whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable.

This means that people with disabilities do not have “equal access” to MAID, they have greater and unique access that exists only because they are persons with disabilities. If a person who is not dying and has no disability is suffering, our systems work to prevent suicide. It is profoundly harmful that we fail to offer the same protection to people with disabilities.

Bill 18 recognizes this reality. Track 2 discriminates against persons with disabilities and reinforces dangerous stereotypes about the worth of their lives. People with disabilities experience suffering caused and compounded by poverty, isolation, inadequate housing, chronic underfunding of disability supports and gaps in health care.

Offering state‑sanctioned death in response to systemic failures is not compassion, it is discrimination. Governments have a responsibility to fix the conditions that make life unbearable so that people have real choices and support to live well.

This March marks five years since the federal expansion of MAID beyond end‑of‑life circumstances. By definition, every person who receives Track 2 MAID has a disability.

More than 2,000 Canadians have died under Track 2, and each year brings a higher toll than the last. Health Canada reports a 17 per cent increase in 2024 alone. These are not abstract numbers — they represent lives lost because our law makes non‑dying people eligible for assisted death based on disability.

Last March, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities called on Canada to repeal Track 2 MAID because it violates the right to life for persons with disabilities, as guaranteed in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The committee warned that Track 2 was rooted in discriminatory and “ableist perceptions of the quality and value of the life of persons with disabilities.”

As a state party to the UN Convention, Canada is obligated to bring its laws into compliance with these protections.

While Ottawa has failed to act on the UN’s warning, Alberta has taken the first meaningful step. The most significant aspect of Alberta’s legislation to regulate the delivery of MAID in the province’s health-care system is that it would cease providing Track 2 MAID. This aligns with what the disability community has long argued — Track 2 is not a neutral expansion of choice but a measure that targets persons with disabilities who are not dying.

Alberta rightly recognizes this as discrimination — not a right to be protected.

Alberta has acted to correct the dangerous imbalance. In many cases, people with disabilities have easier access to assisted death than to the supports required to live safely and with dignity. This helps protect people in Alberta, but resolving the underlying legal issue requires federal reform.

The federal government must protect the lives and equal worth of persons with disabilities by repealing Track 2 MAID.

Krista Carr is CEO with Inclusion Canada and Trish Bowman is CEO with Inclusion Alberta.

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