They're hiding the evidence...

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Are there growing systemic risks in Canada's euthanasia regime called maid medical assistance in dying? I contacted Ontario's chief coroner Dr. Dirk Hire to find out. So, let's dig in.

[00:00:13]It seems that in certain provinces like Ontario, death certificates are set up to obscure medical assistance in dying or made from the public view. The tracking and review process is held by a select few. And there's growing skepticism toward official assurances that this is all being done ethically and transparently. From physician non-compliance to coercive expansion, the official position on death certificates leaves much to be desired.

[00:00:39]So, I reached out to Ontario's chief coroner, who the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the CPSO, cites as the source of guidance directing physicians to list the underlying condition prompting a made request on death certificates rather than made itself or the medications used. Dr. Hyer clarifies that this directive does not come from his office and explains that a formal administrative process follows all deaths. The office of the registister general under the ministry of public and business service delivery and procurement issues death certificates once the death is officially registered.

[00:01:17]>> The legislation was passed and it's we don't have responsibility for death certificates. Right. So it's the office of the registar general that decides what's included on medical certificates of death. And in n 2018, if I recall correct, there was a provincial legislation.

[00:01:34]And one of the things that was passed was there could be nothing that is included that would nothing that but nothing that could allow a practitioner who provided maid or the institution where maid was provided to be um accessible by the public. And because medical certificates of death can ultimately come out into the public, there was decision made um that made would not be put on medical certificates of death in Ontario.

[00:02:07]Within that, it also aligned with what the purpose of a medical certificate of death is. And the purpose of a medical certificate of death is to help those who are in the health care field, those who are in statistics, those are in health policy to understand the uh underlying illness patterns that occur across the province that ultimately and nationally that ultimately lead to um people dying. And so the inclusion of the underlying disease condition or disabil illness disease condition or disability would align with the purpose of the medical certificate of death.

[00:02:49]It's not uh goal to track numbers of individual discrete episodes necessarily and we have all made deaths reported to us. So, we have the numbers and the tracking and they also have to be reported to the federal government and they're reported regularly as well.

[00:03:09]>> My takeaway is that the deliberate exclusion of made from death certificates is framed as a privacy safeguard to prevent disclosure of who administered the procedure and where it happened.

[00:03:20]>> We review every death. As the chief corner reviews every death and so we have the trends and patterns and we can analyze all of those um and we we look at patterns we report that there's there's a number of reports that we've prepared over time uh related to that.

[00:03:35]So we review each death we have a team that reviews each death and so we capture all of the numbers of maid deaths through the work that we do.

[00:03:44]>> Okay, >> that's a more robust and and actually reliable way to do it.

[00:03:48]>> Dr. Dr. Hire notes that just nine nurses make up the province's maid review team and they're responsible for reviewing every assisted death. When asked about Alexander Raiken's 2024 report titled a pattern of non-compliance, which alleged potential criminality and widespread non-compliance in Ontario cases, Dr. Hire dismissed it, sharing that his responses were never included in the report. And at the same time his office acknowledges and reports on compliance issues, they're typically treated like a minor administrative error rather than the warning signs.

[00:04:22]They potentially are >> a media media report.

[00:04:25]>> Yes.

[00:04:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. He didn't accept any of my responses to any of the questions.

[00:04:32]>> Okay.

[00:04:32]>> That he proposed to me.

[00:04:35]And so how would you respond to that now given >> I'm not going to respond to something that he didn't accept responses to.

[00:04:42]Right. So he didn't include my responses into his report. So it's not one that I rely on or endorse. I I provided responses to the questions which he chose not to include and my responses not being included. Therefore, I don't rely on on the there's there's factors within anything that's reported.

[00:05:04]He reported stuff without including perspectives or responses from me and no I don't endorse it.

[00:05:11]>> Okay, that's good to know. Um he I mean in there there was this an allegation that there's a pattern of non-compliance and hundreds of cases flagged for being and I'll use again allegedly non-compliant. Are you finding any patterns like that in the data as it unfolds?

[00:05:32]It depends what you define as non-compliance. So we do find issues where people have not done everything exactly correct for every circumstance.

[00:05:42]And so what we do so non-compliance may have been that the date of the witness signature as mandatory there has to be a witness to a request that the date may have been incorrect. So what we do is we then go back and we talk to the witness and we say hey were you there when this happened? and they go, "Oh, yeah. Oh, I screwed up the witness date. That wasn't good." So, that's non that's non-legislative compliance. But there's an example of one. So, many of those issues of non-compliance were situations such as that. So, what we do is we look at the whole case. So, all the different aspects, the reporting, the the request, the assessments by the two, the medical cause of the medical um history, the medical records. We review the whole case in totality. And if everything else makes sense and there's no other concerns, then we often provide uh an educational update to the the practitioner and say, "Hey, you know what? This is an issue. Um need to change your practice to make sure that the dating is correct in in future occurrences." So, it's really the the the nuancing or the subtlety or the individuality of those as opposed to taking it as one um non-compliance to the worst degree. These the vast majority were um of um um smaller issues that did not with further review and looking at the whole case and the whole death that we did not see other concerns that raised overall concern about the individual circumstance. If there is one that's significant and there's a significant uh variation from what we we think is best practice, we will report that to the college of physicians and surgeons. And if we thought there was something that potentially was criminal, as we do with any other death investigation that we're involved with, we would report that to the police if we saw something like that.

[00:07:43]>> Well, Dr. Hire confirms the coroner only becomes involved after a death occurs and does not review health systems. He has issued multiple maid reports raising a critical question about who is responsible for catching preventative red flags before harm occurs.

[00:07:59]>> We we have a maid death review committee that's looked at issues and themes and trends and provided recommendations on how the system can improve. So this is something that we do uh on an ongoing basis. So, we have lots and lots of reports. As I say, if you hit made death review committee chief corner, you'll find most of them because they're variously uh put online by other people.

[00:08:21]We're trying to still develop our web system to have them all in place because it's the Ontario web uh site that we need to get them on to, which we have them all available and ready to go. Um, but you'll see all kinds of things that we've talked about on this. We've done themes in different areas. um dementia um uh reasonably foreseeable time timing of reasonably foreseeable deaths um systemic vulnerabilities complex cases.

[00:08:48]So we have a number of very long 70page reports that talk about all of these different things. In a 2025 lessons learned report on voluntariness, the coroner's office flagged concerns about jointmade requests, warning that in close relationships, especially where illness or dependency exists, ensuring truly independent and voluntary consent become significantly more complex. It found gaps in documentation and inconsistent safeguards and recommended separate assessments and stricter verification of voluntariness. A second report on track 2 made cases found safeguards were sometimes misunderstood or missed entirely, including premature approvals and misapplied eligibility rules with calls for clearer standards, and more rigorous oversight. A 2026 review involved a case of a 62-year-old woman and exposed major breakdowns in end of life planning, procedural difficulties, visible patient distress, and a method that deviated from best practice resulting in prolonged pain and suffering, which is exactly what MADE is supposed to prevent, ultimately prompting calls for stronger protocols and better preparation. Across these reports, a pattern emerges. vulnerable patients, complex cases, and inconsistent safeguards, raising the question of whether the system is prepared for further expansion into 2027 under the Liberal government.

[00:10:06]>> People with only a mental disorder will be euthanized as of March 2027, that's uh next year.

[00:10:15]This despite the overwhelming evidence that people with mental disorders can be treated and that most psychiatrists cannot determine which patient has an irrediable, which means an irreversible uh condition.

[00:10:30]>> Are these internal reviews enough to protect Canadians? Or is the system quietly normalizing death as a solution to pain, loneliness, and other healthc care failures? Tell me what you think in the comments below. For Rebel News, I'm Tamary Ugalini.

[00:10:45]You can watch Rebel News's exclusive documentary on this topic at madeumentary.com titled The Dark Side of Canadian Compassion. It delves into this increasingly prominent practice and explores how Canada is expanding the program to include the mentally ill. All of that at made mid documentary.com.