Canada’s Quiet Purge: How the MAiD Program Became a Death Sentence for the Poor
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Canada’s Quiet Purge: How the MAiD Program Became a Death Sentence for the Poor
By Cam | London, Ontario | October 2025
Category: Investigative / Social Justice
Introduction
My name is Cam. For six years I have worked with London, Ontario’s homeless community. Six years on the frontlines of what most people would rather not see. I have held the hands of people dying from overdoses, watched others vanish into psychosis, and witnessed suffering that could make even the hardest skeptic reach for prayer.
But I have also seen the best of humanity, and it did not come from politicians or boardrooms. It came from the alleys, the shelters, and the corners of downtown that most avoid. I have seen people the world calls “junkies” rescue strangers from traffickers, run into burning buildings to save others, protect children, and nurse wounded animals back to life.
These are people who have every reason to give up, yet they do not. Beneath the ash and the addiction, there exists a society of its own with rules, values, and an unspoken order. Members watch each other’s backs. They look out for those around them. I once had a group of people experiencing homelessness guard my car all night during Canada Day, unasked and unpaid.
It is a world most Canadians do not see, and many do not want to. To too many, the unhoused are an inconvenience, a blemish on the cityscape. To the federal government, it seems they have become something far darker: expendable.
Make no mistake. The MAiD program, Medical Assistance in Dying, is no longer just a compassionate end-of-life option. It is evolving into something sinister, a quiet system that invites the most vulnerable to disappear.
Death, Rebranded as “Dignity”
According to official government definitions, MAiD allows adults with grievous and irremediable medical conditions to end their lives through a medically assisted procedure. There are eligibility rules, consent safeguards, and supposedly strict assessments.
That sounds humane until you start seeing who is being targeted.
In 2023, a relative of mine, a registered nurse, told me something that did not sit right. After a physio appointment near Dundas and downtown London, this relative noticed a small pop-up tent surrounded by encampments. It was not a typical tent. It was the kind used at community fairs, neat, branded, and staffed.
They approached, thinking it was a health outreach booth. What they found were three clean-cut individuals handing out MAiD pamphlets. When asked who qualified, they were told plainly that anyone homeless, struggling with addiction, or living with mental illness could apply.
Let that sink in. The government offering death to those in poverty instead of help.
At first, I wanted to believe it was a misunderstanding. Surely no one in power would rather fund euthanasia than housing. But the deeper I dug, the darker it got.
The Numbers Do Not Lie and Neither Do the Streets
Between January 2024 and early 2025, I interviewed 243 people living on the streets of London. These were not random conversations. I recorded names, places, and stories. Out of those 243, forty-eight people said they already knew about MAiD. One hundred and ninety-five said they had been approached or offered information without asking, usually at hospitals, drop-in centers, or by “social workers” on outreach teams.
Almost all of them fit the same profile: poor, disabled, or battling addiction. Many were mentally unwell, some illiterate, most desperate.
When you talk to them, you realize these are not informed choices. They are nudges from a system that has stopped pretending to care.
A Country That Treats Poverty as a Terminal Illness
We like to think Canada is gentle, civil, and progressive. But what is civilized about telling someone sleeping under a bridge that death is their best shot at relief?
How is it “dignity” when the same government that cannot fund mental health beds has no trouble funding lethal injections?
It is not compassion. It is cost-cutting.
The MAiD program has become the government’s quiet way of thinning out the poor. The paperwork is clean. The optics are polished. And the bodies vanish without protest.
What Is Really Dying Here
I have spent too many nights sitting beside people society left to rot, people who still offered me coffee from their last coin. These are not lost causes. They are human beings crushed by policy, not fate.
When the government starts marketing death as healthcare, that is not mercy. That is surrender.
Canada is not only killing its homeless. It is killing the idea that every life has worth.
If this is how we treat the broken, what does that say about the rest of us?
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