Scott Adams, author of the comic strip Dilbert, recently disclosed that he had planned to end his life due to the pain of his untreatable cancer. In May, he announced that he only expected to live a few more months. At the time, alternative treatments were no help.

He scheduled his suicide for June 29.

In California, where Adams lives, medical assistance in dying (MAID) is legal. Adams didn’t go through with his plan though. He canceled the appointment when a hormone-blocking treatment started to relieve the intolerable pain. While a terminal cancer diagnosis remains, this alternative treatment extended his life.

Euthanasia wasn’t the answer. When given another option, Adams chose to live. A bill recently introduced in Canada’s Parliament could help Canadians do the same.

A Tale of Two MAID Systems

Canada, like California, legalized doctor-assisted suicide in 2016, and it will expand the program in 2027 unless prevented from doing so by legislation like the Right to Recover Act.

Both Canada and California have approximately the same population, but 15 times more Canadians die by MAID than Californians. That’s because in California, a doctor gives the lethal drug to the patient, and the patient must administer the drug, taking his own life.

In Canada, the patient can have the doctor inject the life-ending cocktail of drugs. Canadians pick their doctor almost every time, ostensibly freeing themselves of the stigma of suicide but with the same, unalterable result.

In 2023 alone, more than 15,000 Canadians had their doctors end their lives, an increase of more than 15 percent since 2022. Among these were 622 patients whose deaths were not imminent. A main reason these individuals requested euthanasia was the presence of a disability. They cited loneliness or that they felt like a burden in their reasons given for requesting to die, leading one expert to conclude Canada’s euthanasia regime commits “social murder.”

In Adams’ quirky cartoon strip, he pokes fun at the ineptitude of bureaucracy, people in positions of power who make the worst decisions. There’s a new chapter unfolding in Canada’s euthanasia regime that reads like one of those comic strips, but it is no joke. It could cost tens of thousands of lives in the near future.

The Liberal government plans to expand MAID for people who request it for the sole condition of mental health in 2027. They’re rolling out this cost-saving, life-ending measure despite warnings by a group of Canadian psychiatrists that doctors who green-light MAID for mental health patients “will be wrong over half the time … provid[ing] death to marginalized suicidal individuals who could have improved.” In their moment of greatest need and at their most vulnerable, people with mental health conditions will be offered the morgue by the medical bureaucracy, not medicine.

A Critical Chance to Stop the Madness

Like Adams, who received treatment that extended his life for a terminal disease, people with mental health conditions, which aren’t terminal, have other options than death. The Canadian medical system is preparing to push them off that ledge to their deaths, rather than yank them back from the brink.

Earlier this summer, Canadian MP Tamera Jansen introduced the Right to Recover Act, a bill that would permanently stop the expansion of MAID solely for mental illness. The bill was cosigned by Conservative MP Andrew Lawton, whose personal story serves as a powerful example of what’s at stake.

Lawton has written publicly about his previous struggles with mental health and how if MAID laws for mental health were in place when he experienced a mental health crisis, he might be dead (and it could have been a doctor who killed him). But he got help.

That was more than a decade ago. Today, Lawton is an elected member of Parliament who represents an important constituency. He is effectively using his position and his voice on important issues like MAID expansion. Lawton’s story highlights that people with mental health issues heal and move beyond crisis to make a real positive effect in their communities. On the current path of MAID expansion, thousands of Canadians will lose their lives unnecessarily if the Right To Recover Act doesn’t succeed.

Advocates of assisted suicide often argue that MAID is all about the dignity of the terminally ill. Euthanasia laws are passed around the world as “solutions” to irremediable conditions. But they always expand in scope to claim the lives of people who have other treatment options. This is a critical moment for the future of Canadian health care in which sanity can win over despair. Canadian MPs can choose to kill the government’s plan, not the Canadians who are struggling.