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Bill 18 Wants to Restrict the Right to Die in Alberta

By Kelley Korbin

Originally published on April 5, 2026 in issue 02 of Forward Weekly

Last month, the UCP government tabled sweeping legislation that will drastically reduce access to medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Alberta. Performatively positioned as necessary to protect vulnerable people, Bill 18 introduces a sweeping set of regulations that will functionally deny people suffering from serious and incurable illnesses from exercising their constitutionally protected right to choose a medically assisted death.

The bill “enshrines” pre-existing Criminal Code of Canada prohibitions — like banning minors and people without the capacity to make their own healthcare decisions from accessing an assisted death, and granting healthcare practitioners the right to refuse to conduct assessments or provide MAID. It also stipulates that assessors and providers undergo training, though it’s unclear whether the government will use the existing federally accredited curriculum or create its own — controlling both the content and access to training.

Those are just a few of the barriers Bill 18 would introduce.

If passed, not only will publicly funded healthcare facilities be allowed to refuse MAID care on their premises, but any facility that opts out will be granted an “exclusion zone” of 150 meters. In other words, any patient in one of these facilities — or even one a football field and a half away — would have to be transferred elsewhere, which is especially difficult and complex for people who are seriously ill or have a disability.

What’s more, Bill 18 would bar healthcare practitioners from posting MAID information or even raising the topic unless a patient expressly mentions it first, completely undermining a patient’s right to informed consent. Considering that those same providers can still advise a patient on refusing treatment or ending life-prolonging care, the contradiction exposes the policy’s selective logic.

What good is a patient’s right to keep their healthcare choices private and confidential when they cannot access that choice without disclosing it to family who may be estranged or even oppose their decision?

And even if a prospective patient can find a facility that authorizes the service and a doctor or nurse practitioner to provide MAID, they will still need a “family member” — narrowly defined as an adult parent, spouse or partner, child, sibling, grandparent, or grandchild — to witness their death or possibly be denied care. What good is a patient’s right to keep their healthcare choices private and confidential when they cannot access that choice without disclosing it to family who may be estranged or even oppose their decision?

Still, the most egregious aspect of the proposed law is its insult to the “vulnerable” Albertans it purports to protect.

MAID was legalized ten years ago after the Supreme Court ruled that banning assisted dying violated the Charter of Rights. The leading plaintiff, Kay Carter, lived with spinal stenosis, an agonizing but not terminal illness. Crucially, the court did not stipulate any timeline for a person’s death in order to qualify for MAID. That principle is reflected in what’s now known as Track 2 MAID, which allows people who suffer from serious and incurable (but not necessarily fatal) conditions to be approved under strict safeguards. Bill 18 would reverse that right, restricting access to those expected to die within 12 months, a change that would have excluded Carter herself and could also exclude people with diseases like Huntington’s, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

The bill doubles down on its attack on Track 2 MAID by also pre-emptively banning advanced requests and where mental illness is the sole underlying condition — categories that are already prohibited under current law.

The intensity with which Danielle Smith’s government attacks Track 2 might lead you to believe there’s an epidemic of vulnerable, otherwise healthy people dying with MAID. In fact, research published in The American Journal of Bioethics finds that by any measure — income, education, ethnicity, access to palliative care — MAID recipients are more privileged than those who die naturally or live with chronic illness.

The UCP is creating the false impression that MAID in Canada is a runaway train in need of an emergency brake.

Still, conservatives continue to perpetuate the myth that MAID is being accessed for conditions like seasonal depression or disabilities that do not meet the law’s strict “grievous and irremediable” criterion. That couldn’t be further from the truth. According to Health Canada’s most recent annual report, 95.5 percent of people who accessed MAID in Canada had a terminal illness. The UCP’s plan to “protect” the 4.5 percent who meet the stringent Track 2 safeguards by stripping them of their Charter rights implies such people lack the agency and autonomy to make healthcare decisions. Such paternalism does nothing to address the actual systemic issues that might actually improve the lives of people with serious and incurable disabilities.

One might assume Alberta is enacting these changes as a result of its 2024 public engagement campaign but the results of that survey remain “under review” two years later, perhaps because findings leaked to CTV found that a majority of Albertans do not support limiting access to MAID.

In 2022, my father peacefully ended his suffering the way most Canadians say they want to die — at home. His family — and even our rabbi — supported his decision enough to give him the goodbye he wanted in an environment where he was most comfortable. Under Bill 18, people who live in hospitals or care homes that opt out of MAID – or even close by those facilities – would be denied a similar sendoff.

MAID in Canada is not perfect. And while the vast majority of MAID deaths are peaceful and even beautiful, a very small number are contentious, which leaves room for rational evaluation, discussion and improvement. But that is not the spirit of Bill 18, a bad faith law designed to perpetuate disinformation and stoke fear. By “introducing” safeguards that are already enshrined in the law, while dismantling others such as patient privacy and informed consent, the UCP is creating the false impression that MAID in Canada is a runaway train in need of an emergency brake. Not so. But the rights Bill 18 threatens, those are very real.

None of us is immune to being struck by a cruel and incurable illness. Based on current statistics, in such a situation up to five percent of us might opt to exercise our right to a dignified, intentional farewell and an end to suffering that’s become intolerable. I don’t know what my decision would be, but I do know I want the right to make it.