By Gabrielle Peters, April 1, 2026
On March 18, the Alberta government tabled hope. With the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act, the government decommissioned Track 2 MAiD – euthanasia for those who are not deemed to be nearing their reasonably foreseeable natural death. While the legislation must navigate federal-provincial jurisdiction in order to remain inside the province’s purview, it nonetheless puts a crack in Canada’s formalization of the idea that it is better to be dead than disabled.
In addition to putting Track 2 permanently out of service, the legislation makes clear that in March 2027, when the federal government’s inclusion of mental illness as a sole qualifying condition for MAiD is set to begin, it will not happen in Alberta.
Likewise, aware that proponents of MAiD include MAiD for minors and MAiD by advance directive in their list of wants, Alberta has rejected those practices in advance.
People might be surprised that some parts of the legislation do not already exist, like mandatory training for providers of MAiD or requiring reasonable attempts to contact the healthcare professional who had been the patient’s primary care provider in the twelve months prior.
The move to prevent the practice of doctor-shopping for MAiD outside the province is another essential element in this legislation, particularly given that, as researchers have pointed out, the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers has an activist philosophy and practice, and a very high concentration of MAiD deaths are carried out by a small number of physicians and nurse practitioners. By refusing to fund MAiD outside of the province, Premier Danielle Smith is ensuring Alberta dollars are tied to Alberta’s regulations, oversight, and enforcement.
The Bill also has the transformative benefit of prohibiting healthcare professionals from raising MAiD with a patient who has not requested it.
This change makes it safer for disabled people to seek medical care by eliminating the possibility that we will be forced to confront offers to kill us when we show up seeking help to live. Saying “no thank you” to a doctor is uncomfortable in the best circumstances due to the power imbalance. This is even more pronounced for those of us dealing with ongoing and significant health issues, and more so again if access to housing, transportation, assistance with personal care, medical and mobility devices, income, and sometimes our very freedom and right to live in the community are tied to a physician’s signatures.
What happens to disabled people seeking medical care can be very different from what the non-disabled public experiences, both in quantity and quality. The nature of ableism is that it allows people to genuinely believe that wishing us (or themselves if they become disabled) dead is not hateful, but somehow rational, scientific, and even compassionate. It’s reassuring to know that disabled people in Alberta will be able to receive healthcare in MAiD-free exclusion zones even if it turns out that, yet again, a court fails to challenge the ableism written into a Charter challenge attempting to make it mandatory for facilities to offer MAiD.
Making the MAiD conversation with a doctor something you must opt-in for instead of opt-out of will change lives.
Ever since some lobbyists for euthanasia and assisted suicide used the occasion of the murder of a disabled child to build support for their cause, arguing that Robert Latimer did the right thing in murdering his 12-year-old daughter Tracy in 1993, disabled people have pleaded with Canadian leaders to listen.
The United Nations special rapporteur on rights of persons with disabilities, and later the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), listened to disabled people. The Alberta bill aligns with the UN CRPD’s recommendations for a repeal of Track 2 and other urgent changes.
Political leaders across the ocean in Scotland heard us and voted no to the legalization of assisted dying in their country.
Contrary to how opponents of MAiD are often portrayed, those of us celebrating this bill represent a great diversity of beliefs, ideas, backgrounds and identities. If anyone has a cabal of zealots trapped in a dogmatic ideology capable of funding meetings with politicians, running oily slick campaigns, placing multi-thousand-word-long essays in major newspapers, and getting lobbyist-crafted, emotionally laden messaging and manipulative terminology adopted by governments and media, it is the proponents – not the opponents – of MAiD.
Tabling this legislation is the metaphorical equivalent of standing in front of a train, (or if you watch The Simpsons, a monorail), that has not only picked up incredible speed but grown in dimension; it took political courage.
The politics here are not easy. Provincial disability benefits leave people living below the poverty line, a line which itself fails to consider the additional living costs faced by disabled people. The Alberta government has also chosen to stand alone in clawing back the meagre crumbs thrown at those disabled people who met the requirements for the Canada Disability Benefit.
But let’s be clear: the state refusing to fund and provide a killing service is the baseline we build from. Without that, there is simply no foundation. If disability – and only disability – makes one killable, then why would a state build the infrastructure, policies, and programs necessary to support disabled life? Particularly when one is an expense and the other represents considerable cost-saving?
Many Canadians may be unaware that in 2021 MAiD was expanded beyond those whose deaths were never reasonably foreseeable, let alone that this expansion was based on the decision of a single Quebec judge. Dr. Tim Stainton called the decision of the federal government not to appeal the Quebec judge’s decision “shocking.”
The two applicants in the pivotal Quebec case reveal the converging despair of the desperate and the illusions of the entitled under MAiD. Jean Truchon died by MAiD in a long-term care facility in 2020 amidst the COVID deaths of other residents. He spoke of feeling isolated after being cut off from visits from friends. Canada ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2010, but disabled people are still waiting for the policies necessary to uphold those obligations (including Article 19 and the right to live in the community). Death is not a solution to discrimination; it is a deepening of it. Meanwhile Nicole Gladu, who had told reporters in 2017 she wished to die “with a glass of rosé champagne in one hand and a canapé of foie gras in the other,” died of natural causes in 2022. A court’s indulgence of her Instagram-able death fantasy resulted in the deaths of far less financially privileged disabled people across the country.
Alberta’s Bill is a move in the right direction for disabled Canadians, but it is not perfect. It offers more clarity than the ambiguous language of the federal MAiD legislation’s “reasonably foreseeable natural death” – words that have no actual meaning in science or the practice of medicine – by specifying a term of twelve months as reasonably foreseeable. Evidence shows that prognostic error increases when time left to live is measured in months instead of days or weeks, and more so when the condition is uncommon or complicated by other issues. Meanwhile, how much do bias and prejudice tip the scales from hope and help towards less effort because less time is less loss to public coffers and no loss for society?
It also remains to be seen how successful enforcement will be if/when any part of the new Act is violated.
Finally, it must be said that discussing safeguards in the context of euthanasia is itself a difficult concession for many disabled Canadians. It is not our desire to assist in designing a better hangman’s noose. We do not believe there is such a thing as safe MAiD in a society where disability too often remains synonymous with poverty, isolation, exclusion, and shame. All lives are not valued equally.
History is jagged. When an exemption to homicide was first carved out of the Criminal Code to allow for MAiD, and then when it was expanded further, disabled people’s rights dropped to a new low in Canada. Physicians killing disabled people (who are not expected to die within the next twelve months) is not an option in Alberta. That’s new in Canada, and that is something we celebrate. It also demands that we make certain those disabled people are supported to live.
Gabrielle Peters is a disabled writer and policy analyst living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is co-founder of Disability Filibuster and past Co-Chair of the Vancouver City Planning Commission. She has written chapters for three anthologies including one focused on Canada’s MAiD. Her work has appeared in Macleans, Policy Options, The American Journal of Bioethics, The Canadian Journal of Disability Studies and other publications. She was appointed to the BC Coroner’s panel that reviewed the heat deaths following BC’s 2021 heat dome, has testified before the Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying (AMAD) and has been a speaker at international human rights events. In 2022 she was included in Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50 list.
