Paula Simons: Stealing Freedom, Danielle Smith’s MAID law

Alberta’s UCP are largely religious controlled by hate-filled religious terrorists who believe we live only through suffering. They hate Canada’s charter as faithfully as Harper does, and love to hurt others. Despicable agents of cruelty. And, they hate the law, unless it can be used to harm or torture others.

‪@senatorpaulasimons.bsky.social‬:

While Albertans were distracted by separatist nonsense, you may have missed the fact that Danielle Smith has functionally stripped Albertans of their constitutional right to MAID, making us 2nd-class Canadians. Where was the outrage? Well, here’s mine.

The Nenshi NDP didn’t raise a fuss – perhaps fearing to engage with a divisive social issue.In my view, Nenshi doesn’t believe in MAID and is a coward. Carney is a catholic, I bet vehemently opposed to MAID and is using Alberta as his test case to take MAID away from all Canadians. Catholics more than any other religion, love to cause suffering in others, are opposed to women having any rights, especially not to our own fucking bodies, and are opposed to MAID. The Carney govt has been largely silent about this erosion of Alberta’s access to health care. But since every single Albertan is one day going to die – this issue affects the rights of everyone of us.

And if the government can you this one legal trick to force MDs and NPs not to administer MAID, they could use the same loophole to deny access to abortion or gender affirming care.

Stealing Freedom, Danielle Smith’s MAID law by Paula Simons, May 29, 2026, Alberta Views

Kay Carter was a retired teacher, an avid traveller, a mother of seven. She lived in a BC retirement home when she was diagnosed with a painful, progressive neurological condition, spinal stenosis. In 2010, unable to access medical assistance in dying in Canada, the 89-year-old travelled to Switzerland to obtain the care denied to her here.

Gloria Taylor was a devout Christian and a lover of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. A mother and grandmother, she was working at a residential care facility for people with developmental disabilities in the Okanagan when she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS.

Taylor too wanted to die on her own terms. So, along with the Carter family, she lent her name to a case brought by the BC Civil Liberties Association, a constitutional challenge of the law against MAID. They won at BC’s Supreme Court and at its Court of Appeal. Taylor died before the case went to the Supreme Court of Canada. But in 2015, in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), that court found criminalizing MAID unjustifiably infringed section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The law, said the Court, was of no force and effect if it prohibited a physician-assisted death for a competent adult who clearly consented to the procedure and had a grievous and irremediable medical condition, including an illness, disease or disability that causes enduring and intolerable suffering.

In response Justin Trudeau’s government passed a law allowing MAID in cases where a person’s death was reasonably foreseeable. But that law was immediately challenged in the courts, because it didn’t deal with people dying by inches, with intolerable, irremediable suffering. Finally, in 2021, Ottawa passed Bill C-7, which extended access to MAID to all people encompassed by the Carter ruling.

The Senate debate on C-7 was deep, profound and moving, as we worked through the thorny legal and ethical issues. Medical assistance in dying was one of the most thoroughly and thoughtfully debated public policy decisions in history—and one widely supported by Canadians and Albertans.

So what to make of Danielle Smith’s decision to ban MAID for people precisely like Kay Carter and Gloria Taylor?

Alberta’s Bill 18, the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act, purports to protect vulnerable Albertans. In fact, it flies in the face of the Supreme Court ruling and of federal law. It denies Albertans with intolerable, irremediable medical suffering their Charter right to MAID. People who want to die with dignity, people who want one final chance to exercise agency after so much agency has been taken from them.

The new law also infringes mightily on the rights of those whose deaths are imminent.

Bill 18 forbids doctors to refer suffering patients to another province for a MAID assessment. It forbids health facilities from displaying information on MAID in a poster or pamphlet. It forbids Alberta doctors and nurses from even discussing MAID with a patient, unless the patient initiates the conversation.

All of this may be wide open to legal challenge. But of course, all Smith’s government need do is invoke the notwithstanding clause to get around that pesky Charter.

Criminal law remains a federal domain. Alberta can’t jail physicians if they violate these new laws. Healthcare, though, is provincial jurisdiction. So Bill 18 threatens people who practise MAID, or even provide information about it, with discipline by their professional colleges—and could ultimately cost them their licences. Indeed, it undermines the autonomy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons by making such sanctions mandatory.

It’s a legal loophole. A moral outrage. And a perplexing political strategy.

An Environics poll from this January found 79 per cent of Albertans agree with the Carter decision and support MAID for people with irremediable medical suffering. We are also much more likely to opt for MAID in cases of irremediable suffering than are most other Canadians. In 2024 Quebec had the highest rate of residents who opted for MAID for conditions that weren’t immediately terminal. Alberta was a close second. That’s perfectly consistent with a culture that puts a high premium on personal liberty, independence and self-determination.

Smith has tried to distract us, by claiming to be protecting children and people without mental capacity from euthanasia, and stopping people from making advance directives for MAID. But those things aren’t currently allowed by federal law. Indeed, much of Bill 18 bans things that aren’t actually happening.

Forget the UCP fearmongering. Alberta is doing an end run around the Constitution, depriving the most vulnerable of their Charter rights and denying health professionals the ability to do their jobs responsibly. Like it or not, Alberta is still a part of Canada. This legislation, though, makes Albertans second-class Canadians. It robs us all of the freedom to make fundamental choices about how we live—and how we die.

Paula Simons is an independent Alberta senator and member of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

St Albert Day of Protest May 28, 2026

Sign on left: “There isn’t enough room on this sign to list all of the UCP’s CORRUPTION.

Sign on the right: “Bill 2 Bill 9 Bill 18 Bill 20 Bill 55 Bill 11 Bill 25 Bill 28 STOP TAKING OUR FREEDOM AND WASTING OUR MONEY!!!

Refer also to:

Lovers of the notwithstanding clause (e.g. Danielle Smith and her Nazi UCP) “either don’t like the outcome courts reach or they know it’s the only way [to] shield their blatantly unconstitutional laws.”

The ugliness and cruelty of Canada’s anti-rights anti-MAID’ers (aka slippery slope enthusiasts, who seemingly delight in causing suffering in others, or psychiatrists with egos in the game blinding them to charter violations of those with mental illness). No to Tamara Jansen (MP – Cloverdale – Langley City) private members anti MAID Bill C-218! No to Euthanasia Prevention Coalition interfering in Claire Elyse Brosseau’s lawsuit! Leave Ms. Brosseau in peace. It’s her life, not yours you selfish cruel fucks.

MAID must be made available for those with mental illness; it’s our charter right. Keep fucking religion out of it notably by the kid raping catholic church, which violates the law regularly forcing suffering and pain on innocent people and their loved ones. The cruelty of the religious never ceases to astound me. Thank you Mr. Picard for your compassionate caring kind writing.

ARPA are cruel bullying bigots. Stop abusing trans people! It’s our charter right to get MAID in Canada. It’s illegal for Alberta religious terrorists (UCP) to take away MAID by limiting it to inaccessibility, same as religious hospitals not providing abortion. But what else is new, the religious believe they can shit on the law, and our rights, all in the name of fairy tales. No one is forcing you or anyone else to get MAID or trans care. Hands off our rights and stop your hate and vicious cruelty to others.

Here comes charter-violating Danielle Smith’s and kid-raping catholics’ attack on our legal right to MAID. Smith and her religious Nazis can’t bear anyone legally escaping years/decades of suffering. Instead of going after mental health sufferers, the UCP need to mandate that religious (notably the cruel catholic Covenant Health run) hospitals *publicly funded with our tax dollars including from non religious people like me* must grant MAID when requested instead of forcing further suffering on dying patients. It’s our charter right! But, of course, the charter-hating, Kid Rapist worshipping douche and her team of cruel religious fucks won’t. Hell is rural Alberta voters.

Alberta MAID Survey online until Dec 20, 2024. Dear Health Minister Adriana LaGrange/UCP/TBA: Keep your charter violating rape religions and religious inhumanity out of my right to MAID.

Charter challenge against MAID law is a challenge against Charter rights: Emmett Macfarlane debunks myths spread by coalition of disability rights advocates (slippery slope enthusiasts)

Bravo! Excellent humane ruling on our right to medical assistance in dying (MAID). Justice Feasby: “The harm to M.V. if an injunction is granted goes to the core of her being. The choice to live or die with dignity is MV’s alone to make.”