Fact File: No ‘plan’ to ‘euthanize’ 15 million Canadians with MAID

Podcast clips recently shared on social media claim that Health Canada plans to save money by “euthanizing” 15 million Canadians.

The clips cite a journal article that presents a scenario in which members of specific vulnerable groups receive medical assistance in dying, with or without consent. The authors estimate that from 2027-2047 that would result in a total of 16.7 million MAID deaths in Canada.

There are no “plans” by Heath Canada to force MAID on patients, who must meet certain criteria to choose assisted dying, and a palliative care doctor says the article’s scenario overstates the number of expected MAID deaths. One of the article’s co-authors emphasized the paper was a “scenario analysis” and acknowledged its findings do not represent the current reality of MAID in Canada.

THE CLAIM

“Canada plans to euthanize 15 million people during the next 20 years as an alternative to palliative care … The government is on track to save a staggering $1.273 trillion,” reads an Oct. 27 post to the X platform, formerly Twitter.

The X post was one of several that shared a clip from a podcast episode discussing medical assistance in dying.

In the clip, host Kelsi Sheren cites a February article that appeared in Omega — Journal of Death and Dying. Sheren says the paper outlines Health Canada’s “plans” to save money by providing 14.7 million Canadians with MAID instead of palliative care, a number likely misstated based on the article’s scenario of 16.7 million.

Sheren repeated the claim during an appearance on the Jillian Michaels podcast, which was clipped and shared to TikTok and X.

On that podcast, she said the journal article estimates how much money Canada could save once adults with mental illness become eligible to apply for MAID.

“Anybody could qualify. You don’t have to be dying (to receive MAID) … you just have to have a hard time,” she said.

THE FACTS

Canada legalized MAID in 2016 after the Supreme Court of Canada invalidated parts of the Criminal Code prohibiting the practice. Only adults can access MAID under certain conditions, including irreversible illness, disease or disability.

Adults whose only medical condition is a mental illness, but who otherwise meet the conditions for MAID, are set to become eligible to apply for it in March 2027 (which is when federal legislation extending the exclusion of that eligibility expires).

The claim MAID is a replacement for palliative care is misleading, as Health Canada reported that in 2023, 75 per cent of MAID recipients accessed palliative care before their deaths.

The article from the Journal of Death and Dying referred to in the podcast clips does not outline a government plan to “euthanize” millions with MAID. But the authors do present scenarios in which all or some members of certain vulnerable groups receive MAID over a 20-year period and estimate potential cost savings related to those deaths.

Health Canada called the social media claims “false” and “disinformation.”

“MAID is only available for those who make the request themselves and are assessed as eligible,” a spokesperson said in an email.

Joshua Pearce, a co-author of the journal article, said the paper was intended as a scenario analysis. “The study estimated both the numbers of deaths and economic benefits for the government of Canada if vulnerable groups that cost the government more than they provide in tax revenue selected MAID, if proposals went through that expanded MAID to mental illness. The ‘if’ in that sentence is important,” Pearce, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Western University in London, Ont., told The Canadian Press in an email.

ARTICLE PRESENTS ‘FALSE SCENARIO,’ DOCTOR SAYS

The article claims that “the total number of potential MAID deaths, if vulnerable populations were allowed to opt for it” would amount to around 16.7 million people between 2027 and 2047, not 14.7 million.

In 2023, the most recent year data is available, MAID accounted for 4.7 per cent of all deaths in Canada, or 15,343 deaths.

In order to calculate the projected number of MAID deaths among vulnerable groups — defined as “individuals with severe mental health issues, the homeless, drug users, retired elderly, and Indigenous communities” — the article’s “non-voluntary” scenario assumes all members of those groups would receive MAID and speculates that the “killing” could be outsourced.

“We considered non-voluntary to be all the instances where the individual’s request is not entirely free of external pressure or influence,” Pearce said. “Their consent may be compromised by incapacity, coercion, or inability to meaningfully withdraw. This may also include individuals where MAID is administered without their consent too.”

For the voluntary scenario, the authors estimate projected MAID deaths at 2,674,080. The figure includes people who previously attempted suicide, those with severe mental health issues and older adults living in poverty as among those who would choose MAID.

In Canada, MAID is voluntary and recipients can withdraw their request at any time during the process; it is illegal to administer MAID without consent.

Dr. James Downar, the head of the division of palliative care at the University of Ottawa, said the article presents a “false scenario” that grossly inflates the projected number of MAID recipients and cost savings.

He said that roughly 15,000 people received MAID the last year data is available, representing around five per cent of all deaths, but the authors’ estimate would involve an average of around 800,000 MAID deaths per year. The total number of deaths in Canada in 2023 was 326,215.

“That is more than a 50-fold increase in MAID overnight and sustained for 20 years … they’re suggesting that, according to their model, there were more than double the number of deaths that would happen in Canada every year for the next 20 years. That’s nonsense,” Downar said.

Some doctors and nurses have raised ethical concerns about accepting MAID requests from patients whose suffering might be addressed by better social supports. The journal article says increased funding for mental health support and better psychological services “could reduce the number of MAID cases by addressing mental health needs early on.”

However, Downar said the article’s assumptions that many people from vulnerable groups would choose MAID is incorrect.

“Reports repeatedly show that in Canada, every single marginalized group in society has a lower rate of MAID than the privileged counterpart. Low education has a lower rate of MAID than higher education … racialized or Indigenous people have a much lower rate of MAID than (the white majority),” Downar said.

Those individuals wouldn’t be eligible for MAID just because they’re part of a vulnerable group, he added.

The claim that the potential MAID deaths would save the government $1.27 trillion is hypothetical.

There are few public reports about MAID cost projections. A 2020 report from the Parliamentary Budget Office projected a $149 million total net reduction in provincial health care costs for 2021. The projection factored in extra deaths related to new legislation expanding MAID access, but noted the cost “represents a negligible portion of the health-care budget of provinces.”

A 2017 research article in Canadian Medical Association Journal estimated MAID could reduce annual health-care spending in Canada between $34.7 million and $138.8 million, while the implementation of MAID “will likely remain at least cost neutral” even if the savings are overestimated.

Both the Parliamentary Budget Office report and the CMAJ article are from before MAID law changes took effect in 2021 — including the removal of the requirement for a natural death to be reasonably foreseeable — and from a time when there were fewer annual MAID deaths.

ARTICLE ARGUES AGAINST EXPANDING MAID TO MENTALLY ILL

Dr. Kirsten Patrick, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, said the article’s assumptions about MAID access and costs are “pointless.”

“It’s this completely hypothetical mathematical exercise where they’ve taken a bunch of numbers and said, ‘OK, so what if we did allow folks to access MAID who were in these kinds of circumstances, who didn’t have a life-limited illness, but they were kind of tired of life and thought that they were a burden’ … It doesn’t reflect reality,” she said.

Patrick noted that the Journal of Death and Dying is indexed, indicating it met standard checks for legitimacy.

However, she said the article contains biased language — like calling hypothetical outsourced MAID providers “killers” and “lower-cost hitmen” — and likely wouldn’t pass the review process at CMAJ.

Responding to criticism that the article’s mathematical modelling does not reflect the current reality of MAID in Canada, co-author Pearce said, “That is true.”

“Currently, MAID is limited to physical illness not mental illness …. There has been proposed legislation to expand MAID further to mental illness in Canada. This expansion keeps getting delayed in part because of the enormous ethical issues that our article clarifies,” he said.

Pearce said he does not have medical credentials but he has completed previous studies analyzing the deaths of humans. He said it is accurate to use “killer” and “hitmen” to refer to the hypothetical use of lower-cost workers to end patients’ lives through MAID.

Pearce and co-author Uzair Jamil argue against expanding MAID to vulnerable populations, including the mentally ill. “In conclusion, while the potential financial benefits of expanding MAID are considerable, the ethical costs are far too great,” they write.

Downar said the article makes “really inappropriate assumptions” and pointed to the authors’ lack of medical credentials.

“This article contains some of the same (anti-MAID arguments) that you hear in the MAID policy discussion, but because none of them can be sustained on the basis of real data, they’ve essentially created an alternate reality and used that as an opportunity to sort of give new life to arguments that … died long ago,” he said.

The Canadian Press previously fact checked false claims about MAID for minors in Canada in 2025 and 2023.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2025.

Marissa Birnie, The Canadian Press