Canada is Cooked
Approaching a Matriarch Who Can No Longer Cook I Bill Vassilopoulos
10/13/20263 min read
Canada is Cooked: Approaching a Matriarch Who Can No Longer Cook
By Bill Vassilopoulos
The public narrative surrounding Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) for psychiatric conditions is built on a grand political illusion. Parliament debates sunset clauses, passes statutory extensions, and promises strict boundaries to assure the public that individuals suffering solely from mental illness are legally barred from state-sanctioned lethal injection.
The political theater surrounding Conservative Private Member’s Bill C-218—which sought to permanently block MAiD for mental illness—demonstrates this exact hypocrisy. While politicians quibble over wording and reject bills that would establish immediate statutory protections, vulnerable Canadians whose primary torment is psychological are already dying under the current framework.
They aren't waiting for legislative amendments or parliamentary games to resolve. They are passing through "Track 2"—the legal mechanism created for non-terminal conditions—by presenting comorbid physical ailments, chronic pain, or functional decline alongside their psychiatric suffering.
The system claims mental illness is excluded. In clinical practice, the line has already been erased.
The Dual-Diagnosis Loophole: How the System Approves Death Today
Under Canada's current two-track MAiD model, Track 1 applies to individuals whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable. Track 2 applies to those whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, requiring a minimum 90-day assessment period and evaluations by assessors knowledgeable in the patient's condition.
This is where the administrative machinery bypasses its own stated rules:
The Intersection of Physical Pain and Mental Despair: When a patient with severe depression, BPD, or PTSD presents with chronic pain, fibromyalgia, or age-related frailty, clinicians are permitted to evaluate the physical symptom as the primary condition. The underlying, driving force behind the request—unbearable psychological agony—is absorbed into the diagnosis.
The Subjectivity of "Grievous and Irremediable": Track 2 requires an "incurable illness, disease or disability" causing "intolerable suffering." Because suffering is entirely subjective, assessors who are philosophically aligned with euthanasia can easily validate a physical complaint as the legal justification, even when psychiatric distress is the true catalyst.
Assessors as Gatekeepers and Facilitators: Because a patient only needs two willing assessors to receive a lethal injection, individuals rejected by clinicians who recognize their primary distress as psychiatric can simply seek out secondary or tertiary assessors until they find practitioners willing to sign off.
When Existential Despair Becomes an Administrative Qualifier
To understand how easily psychological distress is converted into a legal green light under Track 2, look at a case detailed in The New York Times by University of Toronto psychiatry professors Dr. Gary Rodin and Dr. Madeline Li.
An Ontario matriarch in her 70s, suffering from an underlying physical condition, lost the ability to cook Sunday dinners for her family. That loss triggered a profound, unaddressed psychological crisis: she felt she was no longer useful, that her value to her loved ones had vanished, and that her life was no longer worth living. Rather than having her existential grief met with immediate, comprehensive psychiatric support, she entered the MAiD pipeline—and received formal approval for state-sanctioned death.
She ultimately delayed the procedure after counseling helped her realize her family valued who she was, not what she performed. But the administrative truth remains damning: she was officially approved for lethal injection while in the grip of existential despair over lost domestic utility.
When clinicians can sign off on death for a senior who feels worthless because she can no longer cook, the defeat of bills like C-218 is revealed for what it is: political cover. The system simply takes the psychological pain, rebrands it under an underlying physical condition, and signs the papers.
Exposing the Policy Fraud
The political maneuvering in Ottawa—defeating protective legislation while promising future policy tweaks—serves as a smokescreen. It allows health authorities to project an image of caution to the public while allowing clinicians to execute Track 2 provisions that routinely cross into psychiatric territory.
We must stop accepting the bureaucratic fiction that mental health is protected under current law:
Independent Clinical Auditing: Every Track 2 MAiD approval involving co-occurring psychiatric conditions or subjective pain complaints must face mandatory, independent peer review before any procedure is scheduled.
Strict Exclusion of Comorbid Psychological Drivers: If an individual’s desire to die is fundamentally driven by psychiatric despair or existential loss of purpose, a secondary non-terminal physical condition must not be used as an administrative loophole to authorize death.
Full Public Accountability: Health authorities must be required to publish detailed, un-sanitized data on how many Track 2 recipients had primary or secondary psychiatric diagnoses at the time of their death.
Politicians can keep passing delays and playing procedural games with bills like C-218, but the reality on the ground remains unchanged. Canadians with severe mental health challenges are dying by state intervention today—not because the law allows it, but because the system is designed to look the other way.
To dive deeper into these systemic issues, qualitative interviews, and frontline insights, digital and audiobook editions of Eyes Above the Water are available on my website.
Folks remember: you are irreplaceable, unrepeatable, highly valued... and you are more than a number.
Warmly, your friend,
Bill
Sources & Reference Material
We Implemented Canada’s Assisted Dying Law. We’re Concerned. — Dr. Gary Rodin and Dr. Madeline Li, The New York Times (Op-ed detailing clinical cases where existential despair and psychiatric factors overlapped with MAiD approvals).
Fact File: Headlines falsely claim woman approved for MAID because she couldn't cook — The Canadian Press / CTV News (Reporting on the clinical context of the case and the op-ed co-authors' statements regarding psychological factors).