Here's How Saskatchewan’s Disability Crisis Became Canada’s Shame

In a province where surviving with a disability is made nearly impossible, MAID data exposes a system rigged for quiet desperation, while the Sask Party offer handouts to corporate donors.

Ironically, this piece was supposed to be published yesterday - but instead, I found myself sponging off the bile of a Telemiracle activist who, like the charity itself, seems more invested in shallow optics than real systemic change. Maybe it’s time for Telemiracle executives, planners, and especially its donors, to take note: your fundraising isn’t fixing anything.

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Unless otherwise noted, all statistics in the following are drawn from Health Canada’s Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), 2023.

Every December, Health Canada releases its annual report on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), but no province faces the music quite like Saskatchewan. In advance of next month’s numbers being released, let’s look at what we know so far.

Canadian disability advocates have been ringing alarm bells about MAID for years, calling it a fundamental threat to the lives of disabled people - a view echoed by the United Nations and international human rights observers, who’ve decried Canada’s willingness to offer MAID as an “option” when social supports are lacking.

The numbers out of Saskatchewan are the clearest proof yet that these warnings were right all along: with the highest rates of disabled people receiving MAID in Canada by a huge margin, Saskatchewan exposes how systemic deprivation - not just disease - is ending lives.

This is no abstract policy debate; it is the grim, measurable outcome of what happens when a government substitutes death for care.

A system that quietly, efficiently, and wilfully consigns Saskatchewan’s disabled seniors to die, while calling it a “choice.”