Great Reset
Assisted suicide activists should not be running our MAID program
From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Shawn Whatley
We should keep the right-to-die foxes out of the regulatory henhouse
The federal government chose a right-to-die advocacy group to help implement its medical assistance in dying legislation. It’s a classic case of regulatory capture, otherwise known as letting the foxes guard the henhouse.
In the “Fourth annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada 2022,” the federal government devoted several paragraphs of praising to the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers (CAMAP).
“Since its inception in 2017, (CAMAP) has been and continues to be an important venue for information sharing among health-care professionals and other stakeholders involved in MAID,” reads the report.
With $3.3 million in federal funding, “CAMAP has been integral in creating a MAID assessor/provider community of practice, hosts an annual conference to discuss emerging issues related to the delivery of MAID and has developed several guidance materials for health-care professionals.”
Six clinicians in British Columbia formed CAMAP, a national non-profit association, in October 2016. These six right-to-die advocates published clinical guidelines for MAID in 2017, without seriously consulting other physician organizations.
The guidelines educate clinicians on their “professional obligation to (bring) up MAID as a care option for patients, when it is medically relevant and they are likely eligible for MAID.” CAMAP’s guidelines apply to Canada’s 96,000 physicians, 312,000 nurses and the broader health-care workforce of two-million Canadians, wherever patients are involved.
The rise of CAMAP overlaps with right-to-die advocacy work in Canada. According to Sandra Martin, writing in the Globe and Mail, CAMAP “follow(ed) in the steps of Dying with Dignity,” an advocacy organization started in the 1980s, and “became both a public voice and a de facto tutoring service for doctors, organizing information-swapping and self-help sessions for members.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tapped this “tutoring service” to lead the MAID program. CAMAP appears to follow the steps of Dying with Dignity, because the same people lead both groups. For example, Shanaaz Gokool, a current director of CAMAP, served as CEO of Dying with Dignity from 2016 to 2019.
A founding member and current chair of the board of directors of CAMAP is also a member of Dying with Dignity’s clinician advisory council. One of the advisory council’s co-chairs is also a member of Dying with Dignity’s board of directors, as well as a moderator of the CAMAP MAID Providers Forum. The other advisory council co-chair served on both the boards of CAMAP and Dying with Dignity at the same time.
Overlap between CAMAP and Dying with Dignity includes CAMAP founders, board members (past and present), moderators, research directors and more, showing that a small right-to-die advocacy group birthed a tiny clinical group, which now leads the MAID agenda in Canada. This is a problem because it means that a small group of activists exert outsized control over a program that has serious implications for many Canadians.
George Stigler, a Noble-winning economist, described regulatory capture in the 1960s, showing how government agencies can be captured to serve special interests.
Instead of serving citizens, focused interests can shape governments to serve narrow and select ends. Pharmaceutical companies work hard to write the rules that regulate their industry. Doctors demand government regulations — couched in the name of patient safety — to decrease competition. The list is endless.
Debates about social issues can blind us to basic governance. Anyone who criticizes MAID governance is seen as being opposed to assisted death and is shut out of the debate. At the same time, the world is watching Canada and trying to figure out what is going on with MAID and why we are so different than other jurisdictions offering assisted suicide.
Canada moved from physician assisted suicide being illegal to becoming a world leader in organ donation after assisted death in the space of just six years.
In 2021, Quebec surpassed the Netherlands to lead the world in per capita deaths by assisted suicide, with 5.1 per cent of deaths due to MAID in Quebec, 4.8 per cent in the Netherlands and 2.3 per cent in Belgium. In 2022, Canada extended its lead: MAID now represents 4.1 per cent of all deaths in Canada.
How did this happen so fast? Some point to patients choosing MAID instead of facing Canada’s world-famous wait times for care. Others note a lack of social services. No doubt many factors fuel our passion for MAID, but none of these fully explain the phenomenon. In truth, Canada became world-famous for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide because we put right-to-die advocates in charge of assisted death.
Regardless of one’s stance on MAID, regulatory capture is a well-known form of corruption. We should expect governments to avoid obvious conflicts of interest. Assuming Canadians want robust and ready access to MAID (which might itself assume too much), at least we should keep the right-to-die foxes out of the regulatory henhouse.
Shawn Whatley is a physician, a Munk senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and author of “When Politics Comes Before Patients: Why and How Canadian Medicare is Failing.”
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree speaks to Bill C-2 (Screenshot from CBC video)
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has launched a petition calling upon the Prime Minister of Canada to strike the criminalization of cash payments of $10,000 or more from Bill C-2 and to introduce legislation protecting the right of Canadians to use cash of any amount for legal transactions.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree introduced Bill C-2, or the Strong Borders Act, in the House of Commons on June 3, 2025. According to a Government of Canada statement, Bill C-2 will equip law enforcement with tools to secure borders and to combat crime, the drug trade, and money laundering.
Buried deep within the Bill, however, are provisions that would make it a criminal offence for businesses, professionals, and charities to accept cash payments of $10,000 or more in a single transaction or in a series of related transactions.
Bill C-2 at page 59
Justice Centre President John Carpay warns that the criminalization of cash transactions threatens the privacy, freedom of expression, and autonomy of all Canadians. When cash transactions are criminalized, governments, banks, and law enforcement can track and interfere with legitimate purchases and donations.
“We must not criminalize everyday Canadians for using physical currency. Once $10,000 is criminalized, it will be all too easy for future governments to lower the threshold to $5,000, then $1,000, and eventually nothing.”
Bill C-2 is just one point in a concerning anti-cash trend in Canada.
Quebec’s controversial Bill 54, passed into law in March 2024, allows police to assume that any person carrying $2,000 or more in cash is connected to criminal activity. Officers can seize the cash, and citizens must prove their innocence to get the cash back.
“Restricting the use of cash is a dangerous step towards tyranny,” continued Mr. Carpay. “Cash protects citizens from surveillance by government and banks, credit card companies, and other corporations. In a free society, violating the right of law-abiding citizens to use cash is not the answer to money laundering or the drug trade.”
Signers of the petition call upon the Prime Minister of Canada to strike the criminalization of cash payments from Bill C-2.
Signers of the petition also call upon the Prime Minister of Canada to introduce legislation that protects Canadians’ right to use cash of any amount for legal transactions.
Business
Telegram founder Pavel Durov exposes crackdown on digital privacy in Tucker Carlson interview
From LifeSiteNews
By Robert Jones
Durov, who was detained in France in 2024, believes governments are seeking to dismantle personal freedoms.
Tucker Carlson has interviewed Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who remains under judicial restrictions in France nearly a year after a surprise arrest left him in solitary confinement for four days — without contact with his family, legal clarity, or access to his phone.
Durov, a Russian-born tech executive now based in Dubai, had arrived in Paris for a short tourist visit. Upon landing, he was arrested and accused of complicity in crimes committed by Telegram users — despite no evidence of personal wrongdoing and no prior contact from French authorities on the matter.
In the interview, Durov said Telegram has always complied with valid legal requests for IP addresses and other data, but that France never submitted any such requests — unlike other EU states.
Telegram has surpassed a billion users and over $500 million in profit without selling user data, and has notably refused to create government “backdoors” to its encryption. That refusal, Durov believes, may have triggered the incident.
READ: Arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov signals an increasing threat to digital freedom
French prosecutors issued public statements, an unusual move, at the time of his arrest, fueling speculation that the move was meant to send a message.
At present, Durov remains under “judicial supervision,” which limits his movement and business operations.
Carlson noted the irony of Durov’s situating by calling to mind that he was not arrested by Russian President Vladimir Putin but rather a Western democracy.
Former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has said that Durov should have stayed in Russia, and that he was mistaken in thinking that he would not have to cooperate with foreign security services.
Durov told Carlson that mandates for encryption “backdoors” endanger all users, not just suspects. Once created, such tools inevitably become accessible to hackers, foreign agents, and hostile regimes.
“In the US,” he commented, “you have a process that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement a backdoor and not tell anyone about it.”
READ: Does anyone believe Emmanuel Macron’s claim that Pavel Durov’s arrest was not political?
Durov also pointed to a recent French bill — which was ultimately defeated in the National Assembly — that would have required platforms to break encryptions on demand. A similar EU proposal is now under discussion, he noted.
Despite the persecution, Durov remains committed to Telegram’s model. “We monetize in ways that are consistent with our values,” he told Carlson. “We monetized without violating privacy.”
There is no clear timeline for a resolution of Durov’s case, which has raised serious questions about digital privacy, online freedom, and the limits of compliance for tech companies in the 21st century.
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