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There are stories you read that make you stop in your tracks because you can’t believe what you’re seeing.
And then there are stories that make you stop and ask what on earth is happening to an entire country.
This one is both.
Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program was originally presented as this very narrow, last-resort option. They told us it was just for terminal illness and unbearable pain. That was the marketing pitch.
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But disturbing story after story has shown that everybody was duped. This isn’t just a “last resort” move. It’s becoming something much more ghoulish than that.
Now a 26-year-old man with seasonal depression is dead, approved under Canada’s “last resort” system.
At what point does this phony so-called “compassion” turn into something darker? Seems like we’re already at that point, folks.
A family has accused Canada’s laws of ‘killing the disabled and vulnerable’ months after their son, who suffered from seasonal depression, died by assisted suicide. Kiano Vafaeian, a 26-year-old blind man with Type 1 diabetes, died in December using Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, which allows patients with ‘grievous and irremediable’ medical conditions to request a lethal drug.
Eligibility was expanded in 2021 to include people with chronic illnesses, disabilities and, pending parliamentary review, potentially individuals with certain mental health conditions. Vafaeian faced mental health struggles stemming from a car accident at 17, and according to his mother, his depression often flared during the winter months. For years, the family had successfully prevented their son from using the program. Last year, however, Dr Ellen Wiebe, a MAID provider in British Columbia, approved Vafaeian’s death – news the family only learned about days later.
Vafaeian’s mother, Margaret Marsilla of Ontario, alleged that Wiebe was ‘coaching’ her son on how to qualify as a Track 2 patient – those whose natural deaths aren’t deemed ‘reasonably imminent,’ according to Fox News Digital. ‘We believe that she was coaching him on how to deteriorate his body and what she can possibly approve him for and what she can get away with approving him for,’ Marsilla told the outlet. Marsilla has since been battling fiercely to undo the Track 2 modification and to support Bill C-218, a legislative effort intended to restrict MAID for those whose only condition is a mental illness.
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You can sit there and argue the details all day long. You can debate timelines, approvals, and paperwork nonstop. But step back for one second and look at the direction this program is heading in…
Like we said earlier, this was supposed to be about unbearable, imminent death. Now we are talking about a 26-year-old whose condition was seasonal depression.
How did we get here so fast?
Here’s the part that makes all of this even harder to process.
This wasn’t some steady collapse. It was not a slow, irreversible death march toward the end. There were rebounds, good stretches, and signs of momentum in this young man’s life.
The Daily Mail piece goes on:
At 17, a severe car accident derailed Vafaeian’s college plans, and he spent years moving between family members’ homes, his mother said.
Marsilla said her son was initially angry, insisting she had ‘violated’ his right to choose death, but she told Fox that he began improving quickly the next year and even moved back in with the family in 2024. ‘He tried his best when he was in one of those good highs of life,’ she told the outlet.
‘Then winter, fall started coming around, he started changing and then everything that we had worked for from spring and summertime just disappeared… he would start talking about MAID again.’ Nevertheless, Marsilla said her relationship with her son had been improving, and in September she moved him into a fully furnished Toronto condo with a live-in caregiver.
Vafaeian texted his mother that he was ‘looking forward to a new chapter,’ explaining that he was trying to save money so they could travel together. By October, he’d joined a gym and completed 30 personal training sessions.
This is what complicates the entire story.
This man was truly improving and making plans for the future. Then the seasons shifted, and his depression returned, and the conversation turned back to MAID.
Depression does that. It rises and falls, and it distorts reality in that moment. But it also passes. Especially with treatment and support.
And then everything changed…
After the rebounds and the “new chapter,” this is how it ended.
The Daily Mail piece concludes:
Soon, however, he walked away from it all, with his mother saying that ‘something snapped in his head.’
Vafaeian checked into a luxury Mexican resort on December 15, posting photos with staff. Two nights later, he flew to Vancouver – and three days after that, he texted his mother that his physician-assisted suicide was scheduled for the next day.
He ultimately turned to Dr Wiebe after being rejected by several other doctors. She divides her medical practice between MAID and reproductive care, including abortion, contraception and delivering newborns.
She went ahead with Vafaeian’s procedure, news of which reached his parents only days later. They said they were never notified that Wiebe had even given approval, according to Fox.
‘This whole process came to us as a shock,’ Joseph Caprara, Vafaeian’s stepfather, told the outlet.
Vafaeian’s death certificate now lists the ‘antecedent causes’ of his assisted suicide as blindness, severe peripheral neuropathy – nerve damage outside the brain and spinal cord that causes pain and numbness – and diabetes.
But his parents said his medical records did not back up the claim that ‘severe peripheral neuropathy’ was a qualifying factor for his assisted suicide.
And that ending is where the story gets deeply ghoulish and unsettling.
You can debate assisted suicide policy all you want, but when the timeline moves this fast and the family is left searching for answers, it forces some much harder questions about what the heck is going on with this system.
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Is this really what Canada had in mind when it opened the door to assisted suicide? Maybe. But at some point, a country has to decide whether it is in the business of fighting for vulnerable people or killing them, and that’s where Canada is right now.
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