In Canada, doctors can treat their patients with an unusual medicine: death.

While the nation claims its doctors meet “certain safeguards” before killing their patients under the label “euthanasia,” new documents show more than 428 possible criminal cases in the province of Ontario alone, according to The New Atlantis. This includes repeat and “blatant” offenders.

Canada’s criminal code regulates the “medical assistance in dying” program, or “MAID.” Still, many of its doctors have been killing patients whose deaths could have been avoidable, as they were suffering from being poor, disabled, or lonely, according to The Associated Press. 

Chief Coroner Dirk Huyer oversees physician-assisted suicide in Ontario. He claimed in 2018 that “Ontario has the strongest oversight of any province or territory in Canada” and “every case is reported.” But as noted in The Conversation, Huyer’s office last month released reports showing doctors killed patients with “mental illness and addictions, unclear mental diagnoses and suffering fuelled by housing insecurity, poverty and social marginalization.”

The New Atlantis published presentations and reports from Huyer, showing that for many possible violations of the law regulating assisted suicide, he recommended nothing more than having an “informal conversation” or sending an “educational” or “notice” email.

One-quarter of all assisted suicide mills in Ontario triggered at least one response from Huyer’s office in 2023 about a legal compliance issue, according to a presentation he gave in 2024.

For patients not terminally ill, 15 percent of cases necessitated a compliance response, The New Atlantis reported. In some of these non-terminal cases, the doctor who killed the patient had no expertise in the cause of their suffering and did not discuss the case with an outside expert.

Whenever doctors fail to comply with legislation that regulates the way they kill patients, there are different response “levels” — ascending from (1) “informal conversation” to (2) “educational email” to (3) “notice email” to (4) “report to regulatory body” to (5) “report to police.” 

In his presentation, Huyer referenced 11,614 assisted suicide cases in Ontario from October 2018 to December 2022. Of these, there were 250 incident responses — including 35 “notice emails” and three instances of “reporting to regulatory body.” Eleven providers triggered responses more serious than a notice email.

In 2023 alone, there were 178 incident responses (bringing the total to 428 since 2018). In this window of time, there were 17 “notice emails” and one instance of “reporting to regulatory body.” Five providers triggered three responses each.

It is unclear how many cases, if any, were reported to the police. But Huyer said in December of 2018 that, as of that time, no cases had gone to the police, according to The New Atlantis. In even the most shocking case by that point, where a provider brought the wrong drugs to kill a patient in his or her home, Huyer’s office referred it to regulators. 

“It was horrible. The family, and I’m talking about what’s public, so this isn’t anything non-public, the family and the deceased person suffered tremendously,” Huyer said in a webinar, according to The New Atlantis. The doctor is still licensed to practice medicine. 

According to another slideshow, no cases were reported to police from November 2018 to September 2020.

Physician-assisted suicide is hardly new in Canada. Since legalizing the action in 2016, the country’s government healthcare system has been killing the most vulnerable to save money.

The country tried to let its doctors kill patients for reasons like mental illness in 2022, as The Federalist reported. The Canadian store Simons celebrated the move with a morbid ad saying, “Last breaths are sacred.”

The move was ultimately so radical that Canada had to postpone its implementation.